"Yes, yes," remarked Whitney, with a nod of interest. "He has told
me of it. Very strange, very strange. When he came back he told me
that he had it, along with a lot of other important finds. But I
had no idea he set such a value on it--or, rather, that any one
else might do so. It would have been easy to have safeguarded it
here, if we had known," he added, with a wave of his hand in the
direction of a huge chrome steel safe of latest design in the
outer office.
Lockwood, I noted, was listening intently, quite in contrast with
his former cavalier manner of dismissing all consideration of
ancient Inca lore as academic or unpractical. Did he know
something of the dagger?
"I'm very much interested in old Peruvian antiquities myself,"
remarked Kennedy, a few minutes later, "though not, of course, a
scholar like our friend Norton."
"Indeed?" returned Whitney; and I noticed for the first time that
his eyes seemed fairly to glitter with excitement.
They were prominent eyes, a trifle staring, and I could not help
studying them.
"Then," he exclaimed, rising, "you must know of the ruins of Chan-
Chan, of Chima--those wonderful places?"
Kennedy nodded. "And of Truxillo and the legend of the great fish
and the little fish," he put in.
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