The Gold of the Gods | Page 9

"I want to refresh my mind on some of
those old Peruvian antiquities and traditions. What the Senorita hinted
at may prove to be very important. I suppose you will have to turn in a
story to the Star soon?"
"Yes," I agreed, "I'll have to turn in something, although I'd prefer to
wait."
"Try to get an assignment to follow the case to the end," suggested
Craig. "I think you'll find it worth while. Anyhow, this will give you a
chance for a breathing space, and, if I have this thing doped out right,
you won't get another for some time. I'll meet you over in the
laboratory in a couple of hours."
Craig hurried up the long flight of white-marble steps to the library and
disappeared, while I jumped on the subway and ran downtown to the
office.
It took me, as I knew it would, considerably over a couple of hours to
clear things up at the Star, so that I could take advantage of a special

arrangement which I had made, so that I could, when a case warranted
it, co-operate with Kennedy. My story was necessarily brief, but that
was what I wanted just now. I did not propose to have the whole field
of special-feature writers camping on my preserve.
Uptown I hurried again, afraid that Kennedy had finished and might
have been called away. But when I reached the laboratory he was not
there, and I found that he had not been. Up and down I paced restlessly.
There was nothing else to do but wait. If he was unable to keep his
appointment here with me, I knew that he would soon telephone. What
was it, I wondered, that kept him delving into the archaeological lore of
the library?
I had about given him up, when he hurried into the laboratory in a high
state of excitement.
"What did you find?" I queried. "Has anything happened?"
"Let me tell you first what I found in the library," he replied, tilting his
hat back on his head and alternately thrusting and withdrawing his
fingers in his waistcoat pockets, as if in some way that might help him
to piece together some scattered fragments of a story which he had just
picked up.
"I've been looking up that hint that the Senorita dropped when she used
those words peje grande, which mean, literally, 'big fish,'" he resumed.
"Walter, it fires the imagination. You have read of the wealth that
Pizarro found in Peru, of course." Visions of Prescott flashed through
my mind as he spoke.
"Well, where are the gold and silver of the conquistadores? Gone to the
melting-pot, centuries ago. But is there none left? The Indians in Peru
believe so, at any rate. And, Walter, there are persons who would stop
at nothing to get at the secret.
"It is a matter of history that soon after the conquest a vast fortune was
unearthed of which the King of Spain's fifth amounted to five million
dollars. That treasure was known as the peje chica--the little fish. One
version of the story tells that an Inca ruler, the great Cacique Mansiche,
had observed with particular attention the kindness of a young Spaniard
toward the people of the conquered race. Also, he had observed that the
man was comparatively poor. At any rate, he revealed the secret of the
hiding-place of the peje chica, on condition that a part of the wealth
should be used to advance the interests of the Indians.

"The most valuable article discovered was in the form of a fish of solid
gold and so large that the Spaniards considered it a rare prize. But the
Cacique assured his young friend that it was only the little fish, that a
much greater treasure existed, worth many times the value of this one.
"The sequel of the story is that the Spaniard forgot his promise, went
off to Spain, and spent all his gold. He was returning for the peje
grande, of which he had made great boasts, but before he could get it he
was killed. Prescott, I believe, gives another version, in which he says
that the Spaniard devoted a large part of his wealth to the relief of the
Indians and gave large sums to the Peruvian churches. Other stories
deny that it was Mansiche who told the first secret, but that it was
another Indian. One may, I suppose, pay his money and take his choice.
But the point, as far as we are concerned in this case, is that there is still
believed to be the great fish, which no one has found. Who knows?
Perhaps, somehow, Mendoza had the secret of the peje grande?"
Kennedy paused, and I could feel the tense interest with which his
delving