"'Some time since, a small exploring expedition started inland from the Salinas coast of the Caribbean.'" He stopped and asked: "Isn't that the country you are exploiting?"
"Yes," said Wyndham, with some dryness. "It's not a healthy country for white explorers, unless they're acclimatized. But go on."
"'The party consisted of a commercial botanist, a student of tropical diseases, a mining expert, and a trader stationed on the coast.'"
"Peters!" said Wyndham, looking at Marston. "No doubt, he persuaded the others; I expected the fellow would try to get on our track."
"That's the name," said Chisholm and resumed:
"'The party engaged a number of half-breed porters and set off, although they had been warned the bush country was disturbed. The belt of swampy forest was penetrated by the Spaniards four hundred years since, but it is, for the most part, little known by white men, and its Mestizo and negro inhabitants dislike strangers.'"
"The newspaper man seems remarkably well informed," Wyndham observed. "I expect he has a correspondent in the neighborhood."
"'When some time had gone and no news of the explorers reached the coast, the government got alarmed,'" Chisholm went on. "'Señor Larrinaga, the head official for the district, fitted out a rescue expedition and searched the forest. They found one survivor, the trader Peters, exhausted by suffering.'"
"Peters said Ramon Larrinaga was getting an important man," Marston interposed. "Sorry, sir! please don't stop."
"'Peters' story was tragic. The porters had got uneasy soon after the start, but their employers forced them to go on, until one night, when the party stopped at an empty village, they vanished. In the morning, Peters left his companions, with the object of overtaking the porters, but lost their track, and returning in two or three days, found the others dead. They were in a native hut and he saw no indication that violence had been used. Since the party carried their own provisions, it did not look as if they had been poisoned. Señor Larrinaga had some trouble to reach the village. The half-breeds and negroes in the forest belt are turbulent and rebellious and the rescue party was small. He, however, pushed on and when he arrived found the hut had been burned and nobody about. Two of the explorers had previously undertaken the development of rubber and mining concessions for merchants of this city, by whom their mysterious fate is much regretted.'"