Gold of the Gods Part 32

He rose quickly and threw open the door into Whitney's suite. I sprang after him.

There, in the shadows, I saw a dark form, starting back in quick retreat. But we were too late. He was cat-like, too quick for us.

In the dim light of the little explosions we could catch a glimpse of the person who had been craftily working with the dread drug to drive Whitney and others insane. But the face was masked!

He banged shut the door after him and fled down the hall, making a turn to a flight of steps.

We followed, and at the steps paused a moment. "You go up, Walter,"

shouted Kennedy. "I'll go down."

It was fifteen minutes later before we met downstairs, neither of us with a trace of the intruder. He seemed to have vanished like smoke.

"Must have had a room, like ourselves," remarked Craig somewhat chagrined at the outcome of his scheme. "And if he was clever enough to have a room, he is clever enough to have a disguise that would fool the elevator boys for a minute. No, he has gone. But I'll wager he won't try any more subst.i.tutions of stramonium-poisoned cigarettes for a while. It was too close to be comfortable."

We were baffled again, and this time by a mysterious masked man. Could it be the same whom we heard over the vocaphone addressed as "Doc"?

Perhaps it was, but that gave us no hint as to his ident.i.ty. He seemed just as far away as ever.

We waited around the elevators for some time, but nothing happened.

Kennedy even sought out the manager of the hotel, and after telling who he was, had a search made of the guests who might be suspected. The best we could do was to leave word that the employees might be put on the lookout for anything of a suspicious nature.

Whitney, the innocent cause of all this commotion, was still in the writing-room with his letters.

"I think I ought to tell him," decided Kennedy as we pa.s.sed down the lobby.

He seemed surprised to see us, as we strolled up to his writing desk, but pushed aside the few letters which he had not finished and asked us to sit down.

"I don't know whether you have noticed it," began Craig, "but I wonder how you feel?"

Whitney had expected something else rather than his health as the subject of a quiz. "Pretty good now," he answered before he knew it, "although I must admit that for the past few days I have wondered whether I wasn't slowing up a bit--or rather going too fast."

"Would you like to know why you feel that way?" asked Craig.

Whitney was now genuinely puzzled. It was perfectly evident, as it had been all the time, that he had not the slightest inkling of what was going on.

As Craig briefly unfolded what we had discovered and the reason for it, Whitney watched him aghast.

"Poisoned cigarettes," he repeated slowly. "Well, who would ever have thought it. You can bet your last jitney I'll be careful what I smoke in the future, if I have to smoke only original packages. And it was that, partly, that ailed Mendoza?"

Kennedy nodded. "Don't take any pilocarpine, just because I told you that was what I used. You have given yourself the best prescription, just now. Be careful what you smoke. And, don't get excited if you seem to be stepping on matches up there in your room for a little while, either. It's nothing."

Whitney's only known way of thanking anybody was to invite them to adjourn to the cafe, and accordingly we started across the hall, after he had gathered up his correspondence. The information had made more work that night impossible for him.

As we crossed from the writing-room, we saw Alfonso de Moche coming in from the street. He saw us and came over to speak. Was it a coincidence, or was it merely a blind? Was he the one who had got away and now calculated to come back and throw us off guard?

Whitney asked him where he had been, but he replied quickly that his mother had not been feeling very well after dinner and had gone to bed, while he strolled out and had dropped into a picture show. That, I felt, was at least clever. The intruder had been a man.

De Moche excused himself, and we continued our walk to the cafe, where Whitney restored his shattered peace of mind somewhat.

"What's the result of your detective work on Norton?" ventured Kennedy at last, seeing that Whitney was in a more expansive frame of mind, and taking a chance.

"Oh," returned Whitney, "he's scared, all right. Why, he has been hanging around this hotel--watching me. He thinks I don't know it, I suppose, but I do."

Kennedy and I exchanged glances.

"But he's slippery," went on Whitney. "He knows that he is being shadowed and the men tell me that they lose him, now and then. To tell the truth I don't trust most of these private detectives. I think their little tissue paper reports are half-faked, anyhow."

He seemed to want to say no more on the subject, from which I took it that he had discovered nothing of importance.

"One thing, though," he recollected, after a moment. "He has been going to see Inez Mendoza, they tell me."

"Yes?" queried Kennedy.

"Confound him. He pretty nearly got Lockwood in bad with her, too,"

said Whitney, then leaning over confidentially added, "Say, Kennedy, honestly, now, you don't believe that shoe-print stuff, do you?"

"I see no reason to doubt it," returned Kennedy with diplomatic firmness. "Why?"

"Well," continued Whitney, still confidential, "we haven't got the dagger--that's all. There--I never actually a.s.serted that before, though I've given every one to understand that our plans are based on something more than hot-air. We haven't got it, and we never had it."

"Then who has it?" asked Kennedy colourlessly.

Whitney shook his head. "I don't know," he said merely.

"And these attacks on you--this cigarette business--how do you explain that," asked Craig, "if you haven't the dagger?"

"Jealousy, pure jealousy," replied Whitney quickly. "They are so afraid that we will find the treasure. That's my dope."

"Who is afraid?"

"That's a serious matter," he evaded. "I wouldn't say anything that I couldn't back up in a case of that kind. I'd get into trouble."

There was nothing to be gained by prolonging the conversation and Kennedy made a move as though to go.

"Just give us a square deal," said Whitney as we left. "That's all we want--a square deal."

Kennedy and I walked out of the Prince Edward Albert and turned down the block.

"Well, have you found out anything more?" asked a voice in the shadow beside us.

We turned. It was Norton.

"I saw you talking to Whitney in the writing-room," he said, with a laugh, "then in the cafe, and I saw Alfonso come in. He still has those shadows on me. I wouldn't be surprised if there was one of them around in a doorway, now."

"No," returned Kennedy, "he didn't say anything that was important.

They still say they haven't the dagger."

"Of course," said Norton.

"You'll wait around a little longer?" asked Kennedy as we came to a corner and stopped.