Part 44 (1/2)

Inez had revived and her quick ears had caught her lover's voice and the last words.

Weak as she was, she sprang up and fairly ran into the next room.

”No--Chester--No!” she cried. ”I never suspected--not even when I saw the shoe-prints. No--that is the man,--there--I know it--I know it!”

I hurried after her, as she flung herself again between Lockwood and the rest of us, as if to s.h.i.+eld him, while Lockwood proudly caressed the stray locks of dark hair that fluttered on his shoulder.

I looked in the direction all were looking.

Before us stood, unmasked at last, the scientific villain who had been plotting and scheming to capture both the secret and Inez--well knowing that suspicion would rest either on Lockwood, the soldier of fortune, or on the jealous Indian woman whose son had been rejected and whose brother he had himself already, secretly, driven to an insane suicide in his unscrupulous search for the treasure of Truxillo.

It was Professor Norton, himself--first thief of the dagger which later he had hidden but which Whitney's detectives had stolen in turn from him; writer of anonymous letters, even to himself to throw others off the trail; maker of stramonium cigarettes with which to confuse the minds of his opponents, Whitney, Mendoza, and the rest; secret lover of Inez whom he demanded as the price of the dagger; and murderer of Don Luis.

Senora de Moche and Alfonso, behind me, could only gasp their astonishment. Much as she would have liked to have the affair end in a general vindication of the curse she could not control a single, triumphant thrust.

”His blood,” she cried, transfixing Norton with her stern eyes, ”has cried out of t.i.ticaca for vengeance from that day to this!”

”Want any help?”

We all turned toward the door as Burke, dust-covered and tired, stamped in, followed by a man whose face was bandaged and b.l.o.o.d.y.