Nothing more was said by either of us, and at last we reached the
financial district. We entered a tall skyscraper on Wall Street
just around the corner from Broadway and shot up in the elevator
to the floor where Whitney and his associates had a really
palatial suite of offices.
As we opened the door we saw that Lockwood was still there. He
greeted us with a rather stiff bow.
"Professor Kennedy and Mr. Jameson," he said simply, introducing
us to Whitney, "friends of Professor Norton, I believe. I met them
to-day up at Mendoza's."
"That is a most incomprehensible affair," returned Whitney,
shaking hands with us. "What do you make out of it?"
Kennedy shrugged his shoulders and turned the remark aside without
committing himself.
Stuart Whitney was a typical promoter, a large, full-blooded man,
with a face red and inclined to be puffy from the congested veins.
His voice alone commanded respect, whether he said anything worth
while or not. In fact, he had but to say that it was a warm day
and you felt that he had scored a telling point in the
conversation.
"Professor Norton has asked me to look into the loss of an old
Peruvian dagger which he brought back from his last expedition,"
explained Kennedy, endeavouring to lead the conversation in
channels which might arrive somewhere.
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