over to us.
“Whoever can learn how to get at the key and decipher those hieroglyphics will not only add a chapter to archeology, but he’ll be rich—in my opinion—enormously rich. Why, my dear sir, there is more treasure in Mexico today that has never——”
The voice was drowned in the din of the orchestra starting up a new dance.
Kennedy turned. At another table were two men talking earnestly. One was the very type of the German savant, including the whiskers and the near-sighted glasses. The other looked very much as if he were an American college professor.
The savant, at least, seemed to be at home in the Bohemian atmosphere, but the other man looked for all the world as if he momentarily expected to be discovered by some of his students and have his reputation ruined forever.
“Who is that?” asked Kennedy of Mrs. Hawley. “Do you know them?”
“At the next table?” she answered looking around. “Why, that is Professor Neumeyer, Freidrich Neumeyer, the German archeologist. He has been all over Mexico—Yucatan, Mitla, the pyramids, wherever there are ruins. I never cared much about ruins—guess I’m too modern. But Colonel Sinclair does. He goes in for all that sort of thing—has collections of his own, and all that.
“I believe he and Neumeyer are great friends. I don’t know the other man, but he looks like one of the professors from the University.”
Kennedy continued to divide his attention between the party at our table and the archeologist. His companion, as I myself had observed, seemed entirely out of place outside a classroom or archeological museum, and I soon dismissed him from my thoughts.
But Neumeyer was different. There was a fascination about him, and in fact I felt that I would really like to know the old fellow well enough to have him tell me the tales of adventure combined with scholarship, with which I felt intuitively he must be bursting.
AS THE hour grew later more people arrived, and the groups were continually splitting up and new ones being formed. Thus it came about that Kennedy and myself, having been set down I suppose as mere sightseers, found ourselves at last alone at the table, while Señora Ruiz and another gay party were chatting in animated tones farther down the room.
I looked at Craig inquiringly, but he 6hook his head and said in a whisper:
“I hardly think we are well acquainted enough yet to do much circulating about the room. It would look too much like ‘butting in.’ If any one speaks to us we can play them along, but we had better not do much speaking ourselves—yet.”
It was a novel experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I did every new phase of life in cosmopolitan New York.
The hour was growing late, however, and I began to wonder whether anything else was going to happen, when I saw a waiter go down quietly and speak to Señora Ruiz. A moment later the party of which she was a member rose and one by one disappeared up what had been the stairs of the house when it was formerly a residence. Others rose and followed, perhaps ten or a dozen, all of whom I recognized as intimate friends.
It had no effect on the crowd below, further than to reduce it slightly and put an end to the dancing of Ruiz.
“Private dining-rooms upstairs?” inquired Kennedy nonchalantly of the waiter as he came around again for orders.
“Yes,” he replied. “There’s a little party on up there in one of them tonight.”
Our friend Neumeyer and his guest had left some time before, and now there seemed to be little reason why we should stay.
“We have gained an entrée, anyhow,” observed Kennedy, moving as if he were going.
He rose, walked over to the door and out into the hall. Down the staircase we could hear floating snatches of conversation from above. In fact it seemed as if in several of the dining-rooms there were parties of friends. One was particularly gay, and it was easy to conjecture that that was the party of which Señora Ruiz was the life.
Craig rejoined me at the table quickly, having looked about at practically all the private dining-rooms without exciting suspicion.
“It’s all very interesting,” he observed to me. “But although it has added to our list of acquaintances considerably, I can’t say this visit has given us much real information. Still you never can tell, and until I am ready to come out in what I call my ‘open investigation,’ these are acquaintances worth cultivating. I have no doubt that Valcour and Sinclair would have been welcomed by that Ruiz party, and certainly from their actions it can not be that it is generally known yet that Valcour is dead.”
“No,” I agreed.
I had been going over in my mind the names of those we had met and the names I had heard mentioned. Not once had any one said the name of Morelos.
“There has been no one of the name of Morelos here,” I suggested to Craig.
“No,” he answered with a covert glance around. “And I did not make any inquiries. You may have noticed that all these people here seem to be supporters of the Government. I was about to inquire about him once when it suddenly occurred to me that he might be connected with the rebels, the Constitutionalists. I thought it would be discretion to refrain from even mentioning his name before these Federals.”
“Then perhaps Sinclair is playing the game with both factions,” I conjectured hastily, adding, “and Valcour was doing the same—is that what you mean?”
“The dancing has begun again,” he hinted to me, changing the subject to one less dangerous.
I took the hint and for a few moments we watched the people in the sensuous mazes of some of the new steps. Intently as I looked, I could see not the slightest evidence that any one in the cabaret knew of the terrible tragedy that had overtaken one of the habitués.
As I watched I wondered whether there might have been a love triangle of some kind. It had all been very unconventional. Had the Bohemian Valcour come between some of these fiery lovers? I could not help thinking of the modern dances, especially as Valcour must have danced them. I could almost imagine the flash of those tango-slippers and her beautiful ankle, the swaying of her lithe body. What might she not do in arousing passions?
Speculate as I might, however, I always came back to the one question, “Who was the mysterious Señor Morelos?”
I could think of no answer and was glad when Kennedy suggested that perhaps we had seen enough for one night.
III. The Secret Service
CHAPTER III
THE SECRET SERVICE
WE HAD scarcely turned down the street when I noticed that a man in a slouch-hat, pulled down over his eyes, was walking toward us.
As he passed I thought he peered out at us suspiciously from under the shelter of the hat.
