doors of their rooms on the first floor, were quite ready to laugh over the incidents of the afternoon. Maria-Teresa’s hand lingered in Dick’s.
“Good night, little Bride of the Sun,” he said, and bending down, kissed the disk on the bracelet. “But surely you are not going to keep that thing on?… A bracelet from the Lord knows where and the Lord knows whom?”
“It is dear to me now, Dick.... Now that you have kissed it, it shall never leave me.... Good night.”
She disappeared into her room, and the young engineer had turned toward his when a shriek was heard, and Maria-Teresa rushed to the landing, in a panic of fear.
“They are in there! They are in there!” she gasped, her teeth chattering.
“What? What?… what is the matter?”
“The three living skulls!”
“Maria-Teresa!”
“I tell you they are! All three of them, staring in through the window!… They looked at me with such eyes… horrible, living eyes.... No, no!… Dick!… Don’t go in!”
Taking the light from her trembling hand, Dick went into the room. There was nothing to be seen. He crossed to the balcony, and threw open the French windows: on one side was the sea, on the other a panorama over the flat country and the Inca burial-ground. Everything was perfectly normal.
“Come, dear.... You must have imagined....”
“Dick, I tell you I saw them!”
“What did you see?”
“There, on the balcony, staring through the panes.... Those three Inca chiefs with their hideous heads.”
“But, Maria-Teresa, be reasonable. They are dead.... You yourself saw them dug up.... Surely you cannot believe in ghosts....”
“Those I saw were not ghosts. They were living.”
Thinking to reassure her, he began to laugh heartily.
“Don’t, Dick, don’t!… I did see them… they were exactly like those in the grave… the sugar-loaf, the cap, and the valise.... Exactly the same!… But what did they come here for?”
Don Christobal, drawn from the smoking-room by the noise, jeered at his daughter’s fears. Uncle Francis, too, appeared in a night-cap, which started everybody laughing except Maria-Teresa. To quieten her, the major-domo was sent round the house and explored the grounds. He returned to report that he had found nothing.
“You are worried by what you saw this afternoon, my child,” said the Marquis.
But Maria-Teresa would not reenter the room, and ordered another on the opposite side of the villa to be prepared for her. Dick, using every argument he could think of, finally convinced her that she had been the victim of a hallucination. Half ashamed of herself, she made him go out to the first-floor balcony with her, trying, in her turn, to efface any unfavorable impression she might have made.
The balcony on which they were was almost directly over the sea, for on this side the beach reached right up to the walls of the villa. After a time, the immense peace of the night completed Dick’s work, and the girl was perfectly quiet when she took off her bracelet.
“I think this is what has been worrying me,” she said. “I never before imagined that I saw a ghost....” And she threw the bracelet into the sea.
“A very good place for it,” agreed Dick. “A ring will do ever so much better. You do at all events know where that comes from.”
Before long the whole house was at rest, and the remainder of the night passed by quietly. But at seven o’clock, when people were beginning to stir again, an agonized scream from Maria-Teresa’s room sent the servants rushing to her aid. When they entered the room, they found their mistress sitting up in bed, staring at her wrist with horror-stricken eyes. The Golden Sun bracelet had returned during the night!
BOOK II—THE LIVING PAST
I
Dick was nearly as frightened as Maria-Teresa when he found what had happened. On the previous night he himself had seen her throw the bracelet into the sea, and yet it was there on her arm again when she woke up. What could it all mean? He could find nothing to say, and in spite of himself began to go over the terrible legend told by the two old ladies. It was preposterous, impossible, but he could not help believing in it now.
The Marquis and Uncle Francis, brought out by the noise, joined the others in the young girl’s room. Don Christobal’s sharp voice drove the servants from the room and brought out the whole story. Dick confessed his duplicity in the matter of the bracelet, and told how the jewel had been thrown away.
Maria-Teresa was shaking with fever, and her father took her in his arms. He was less worried by the strange story told him than by the state in which his daughter was. He had always seen her so calm, so sure of herself, that her terror shook all his own matter-of-fact convictions.
As to Uncle Francis, half-pleased with this striking story for his next book, he could only repeat:—“But it’s impossible, you know. Quite impossible.”
And then it was all explained in the most absurdly obvious way. Little Concha, back from marketing at Ancon, hurried to her mistress’ room and brought the solution of the mystery with her. Childishly naive, she explained that, on going out onto the beach in the morning, she had seen something glitter in the sand. She picked the object up, and found that it was a bracelet, which she recognized as one worn by her mistress on the previous day. Thinking that it had been lost from the balcony, and rushing to give Maria-Teresa a pleasant surprise, she had put it on her arm again without waking her. A huge burst of laughter from them all greeted the end of her simple story and Concha, terribly vexed, ran out of the room.
“It seems to me we are all getting a little mad,” said the Marquis.
“That infernal bracelet is enough to drive one to a lunatic asylum,” added Dick. “We must get rid of it at all costs.”
“No! If it ever came back a second time, I could not answer for my reason.” And Maria-Teresa joined nervously in the laughter. “What we all need,” she added, “is a change of air, of scenery.... We ought to go for a little trip in the mountains, Father, and show a little of our country to Mr. Montgomery and Dick.... Suppose we start to-night?… Back to Lima first, and not a word to Aunt Agnes or Irene, for it would make them both ill.... I shall go into Callao with Dick to give a few orders, and in the evening we take the boat.”
“To get to the mountains?”
“Of course, Father… to get to Pacasmayo.”
“Pacasmayo!” groaned the scientist “A horrible place. I know it. Our liner put in there for four hours. There’s nothing interesting in that part of the world, is there?”
“Nothing interesting! Why, do you know where one goes to from Pacasmayo? To Cajamarca, Mr. Montgomery!”
Uncle Francis straightened himself up:—“Cajamarca!… the Caxamarxa of the Incas!”
“The very place.”
“Cajamarca… the dream of my life, my dear!”
“There
