Apparently Xaxaguana was busy at the moment, for it was nearly a quarter of an hour ere he appeared, and when he did so his countenance was heavy with concern.
“Pardon me for having kept you so long waiting, my Lord,” he said in a loud voice, “but this terrible occurrence, of which I presume you have heard, has thrown us all into a shocking state of confusion, and when your message reached me I was, in my capacity of senior priest, with the physicians whom we summoned, and who have been endeavouring to discover the cause of the death of our lamented friends the Villac Vmu and Motahuana.” And, as he spoke, he closed the door carefully behind him.
“And have they succeeded?” demanded Huanacocha.
“Oh yes!” answered Xaxaguana. “They are in complete agreement that the cause of death in each case was senile decay. They were both very old men, you know.”
“Senile decay!” exclaimed Huanacocha, in astonishment. “Surely you are not serious, Xaxaguana. Why, they were at my house last night, as you know, and nobody who then saw them will ever believe that they died of old age. They were almost as active and vigorous as the youngest of us, and neither of them exhibited the slightest symptoms of senile decay.”
“Possibly not,” assented Xaxaguana; “nevertheless that is the verdict of the physicians. And, after all, you know, these exceedingly old men often pass away with the suddenness of a burnt-out lamp; a single flicker and they are gone. I must confess that, personally, I am not altogether surprised; for when they returned from your house last night it occurred to me that they seemed to have suddenly grown very old and feeble; indeed I said as much when the news of their death was brought to me.”
“You did, did you?” retorted Huanacocha. “By our Lord the Sun, you are a wonder, Xaxaguana; nothing less! How did you manage it, man, and so promptly too? Why it must all have happened within half an hour of your return home this morning.”
“It did,” said Xaxaguana. “I was still in my bath—for you must know that, being somewhat fatigued with my protracted labours of yesterday, I overslept myself this morning—when the intelligence was brought to me that our two friends had been discovered lying dead in their beds. And they could only have died very recently, for they were neither stiff nor cold.”
“And—I suppose there were no signs—no marks of violence on the bodies; nothing to suggest the possibility of—of—foul play?” stammered Huanacocha.
“No,” answered Xaxaguana; “the physicians found nothing whatever of that kind. How should they? It is certain that both men died in their beds, within the precincts of the temple. And who is there within these precincts who would dare to commit an act of sacrilege, to say nothing of the fact that, so far as is known, there is no one who would be in the slightest degree benefited by their death, or could possibly desire it.”