“No one was lost on it, though,” I ventured at random.
“I suppose you never heard the story of the Antilles?” he inquired, turning swiftly toward me. Then, without stopping: “She had just sailed from San Juan before she was wrecked—on her way to New York from Vera Cruz with several hundred Mexican refugees. Treasure? Yes; perhaps millions, money that belonged to wealthy families in Mexico—and some that had the curse on it.
“You asked a moment ago if everybody wasn’t rescued. Well, everybody was rescued from the wreck except Captain Driggs. I don’t know what happened. No one knows. The fire had got into the engine-room and the ship was sinking fast. Passengers saw him, pale, like a ghost, some said. Others say there was blood streaming from his head. When the last boat-load left they couldn’t find him. They had to put off without him. It was a miracle that no one else was lost.”
“How did the fire start?” inquired Kennedy, much interested.
“No one knows that, either,” answered Guiteras, shaking his head slowly. “I think it must have been smoldering in the hold for hours before it was discovered. Then the pumps either didn’t work properly or it had gained too great headway for them. I’ve heard many people talk of it and of the treasure. No, sir, you wouldn’t get me to touch it. Maybe you’ll call it superstition. But I won’t have anything to do with it. I wouldn’t go with Mr. Everson and I won’t go with you. Perhaps you don’t understand, but I can’t help it.”
Dolores had stood beside her father while he was speaking, but had said nothing, though all the time she had been regarding us from beneath her long black eyelashes. Arguments with the old pilot had no effect, but I could not help feeling that somehow she was on our side, that whether she shared his fears and prejudices, her heart was really somewhere near the Key of Gold.
There seemed to be nothing for us to do but wait until some other way turned up to get out to the expedition, or perhaps Dolores succeeded in changing the captain’s mind. We bowed ourselves out, not a little puzzled by the enigma of the obdurate old man and his pretty daughter. Try as I might among the busy shipping of the port, I could find no one else willing at any reasonable price to change his plans to accommodate us.
It was early the next morning that a young lady, very much perturbed, called on us at our hotel, scarcely waiting even the introduction of her plainly engraved card bearing the name, Miss Norma Sanford.
“Perhaps you know of my sister, Asta Sanford, Mrs. Orrin Everson,” she began, speaking very rapidly as if under stress. “We’re down here on Asta’s honeymoon in Orrin’s yacht, the Belle Aventure.” Craig and I exchanged glances, but she did not give us a chance to interrupt.
“It all seems so sudden, so terrible,” she cried, in a burst of wild, incoherent feeling. “Yesterday Bertram Traynor died, and we’ve put back to San Juan with his body. I’m so worried for Orrin and my sister. I heard you were here, Professor Kennedy, and I couldn’t rest until I saw you.”
She was looking anxiously at Craig. I wondered whether she had heard of our visit to the Guiterases and what she knew about that other woman.
“I don’t quite understand,” interposed Kennedy, with an effort to calm her. “Why do you fear for your sister and Mr. Everson? Was there something—suspicious—about the death of Mr. Traynor?”
“Indeed I think there was,” she replied, quickly. “None of us has any idea how it happened. Let me tell you about our party. You see, there are three college chums, Orrin and two friends, Bertram Traynor and Donald Gage. They were all on a cruise down here last winter, the year after they graduated. It was in San Juan that Orrin first met Mr. Dominick, who was the purser on the Antilles—you know, that big steamer of the Gulf Line that was burned last year and went down with seven million dollars aboard?”
Kennedy nodded to the implied query, and she went on: “Mr. Dominick was among those saved, but Captain Driggs was lost with his ship. Mr. Dominick had been trying to interest some one here in seeking the treasure. They knew about where the Antilles went down, and the first thing he wanted to do was to locate the wreck exactly. After that was done of course Mr. Dominick knew about the location of the ship’s strong room and all that.”
“That, of course, was common knowledge to any one interested enough to find out, though,” suggested Kennedy.
“Of course,” she agreed. “Well, a few months later Orrin met Mr. Dominick again, in New York. In the mean time he had been talking the thing over with various people and had become acquainted with a man who had once been a diver for the Interocean Marine Insurance Company—Owen Kinsale. Anyhow, so the scheme grew. They incorporated a company, the Deep Sea Engineering Company, to search for the treasure. That is how Orrin started. They are using his yacht and Mr. Dominick is really in command, though Mr. Kinsale has the actual technical knowledge.”
She paused, but again her feelings seemed to get the better of her. “Oh,” she cried, “I’ve been afraid all along, lately. It’s dangerous work. And then, the stories that have been told of the ship and the treasure. It seems ill-fated. Professor Kennedy,” she appealed, “I wish you would come and see us. We’re not on the yacht just now. We came ashore as soon as we arrived back, and Asta and Orrin are at the Palace Hotel now. Perhaps Orrin can tell you more. If you can do nothing more than quiet my fears—”
Her eyes finished the sentence. Norma Sanford was one of those girls who impress you as quite capable of taking care of themselves. But in the presence of the tragedy and a danger which she felt but could not seem to define, she felt the need of outside assistance and did not hesitate to ask it. Nor was Kennedy slow in responding. He seemed to welcome a chance to help some one in distress.
We found Everson and his young wife at the hotel, quite different now from the care-free adventurers who had set out only a few days before to wrest a fortune from chance.
I had often seen portraits of the two Sanford sisters in the society pages of the papers in the States and knew that the courtship of Orrin Everson and Asta Sanford had been a true bit of modern romance.
Asta Everson was a unique type of girl. She had begun by running fast motor cars and boats. That had not satisfied her, and she had taken up aviation. Once, even, she had tried deep-sea diving herself. It seemed as if she had been born with the spirit of adventure.
To win her, Everson had done about everything from Arctic exploration one summer when he was in college to big-game hunting in Africa, and mountain-climbing in the Andes. Odd though the romance might seem to be, one could not help feeling that the young couple were splendidly matched in their tastes. Each had that spirit of restlessness which, at least, sent them out playing at pioneering.
Everson had organized the expedition quite as much in the spirit of revolt against a prosaic life of society at home as for gain. It had appealed strongly to Asta. She had insisted that nothing so much as a treasure hunt would be appropriate for their wedding-trip and they had agreed on the unconventional. Accordingly, she and her sister had joined Everson and his party, Norma, though a year younger, being quite like her sister in her taste for excitement.
“Of course, you understand,” explained Everson, as he hurriedly tried to give us some idea of what had happened, “we knew that the Antilles had sunk somewhere off the Cay d’Or. It was first a question of locating her. That was all that we had been doing when Bertram died. It is terrible, terrible. I can’t believe it. I can’t understand it.”
In spite of his iron nerve, the tragedy seemed to have shaken Everson profoundly.
“You had done nothing that might have been dangerous?” asked Kennedy, pointedly.
“Nothing,” emphasized Everson. “You see, we located the wreck in a way somewhat similar to the manner in which they sweep the seas for mines and submarines. It was really very simple, though it took us some time. All we did was to drag a wire at a fixed depth between the yacht and the tug, or rather, I suppose you’d almost call it a trawler, which I chartered from Havana. What we were looking for was to have the wire catch on some obstruction. It did, too, not once,