The Gilded Man: A Romance of the Andes

  V

  THE SEARCH FOR EL DORADO

  "Leave him with me," said Leighton. "Wait for us with Mrs. Quayle."

  "No! No!" answered the girl passionately, kneeling beside David, who waslying on the couch. "You have killed him!"

  "Don't talk nonsense," he said coldly, yet with sympathy in his keengray eyes. "This had to be, and I took my own way about it. Now, go. Heis all right. He is safe with me."

  David drew a long breath. He looked vacantly at Leighton, then turned toUna.

  "Do as he says," he whispered.

  "David, I will stay with you."

  "Not now; I must speak to your uncle."

  "David!"

  She looked into his eyes, trying to read there the mystery that wasparting them.

  "It will be better for all of us," said Leighton gruffly.

  Unable to hide her fears, Una rose and moved away from them. The boardsof the well worn floor creaked harshly as she walked to the far end ofthe room. Pausing at the door, she looked back.

  "I will wait for you," she said.

  When the sound of her footsteps died away, David turned to the old man,who was busied with his scientific apparatus.

  "Well, how do you feel?" asked Leighton, gathering up the notes whichwere strewn on the little table.

  "Curiously here," replied David, drawing his hand across his forehead.Then he asked: "How did you know?"

  "That's easily answered. About two years ago I read, in the Journalof Psychology, a paper by your friend, Raoul Arthur, describing thestrange mental effect produced on a young man by a dynamite explosion ina South American mine. Arthur is something of an authority in abnormalpsychology, and his report of the accident interested me. The name ofthe young man was not given. I made inquiries long before our chancemeeting with you in England. I learned, among other things, who theyoung man was. Before we met on the Derwentwater, I had watched you atthe hotel."

  "You wrote to Raoul Arthur?"

  "I did not," he answered drily. "A newspaper account of the accidentgave me the clue I needed. According to this account, you were killed inthe mine explosion, and no trace of your body or clothing was found. Itwas long afterwards, in Arthur's report, that your reappearance, underpeculiar circumstances, was described. Since then I have learned of yourtravels. But I have noticed that you always avoid any reference to yourSouth American experiences. So, I appealed to the psychometer."

  Leighton, absorbed in his notes, was apparently unaware of theeagerness with which David followed his explanation.

  "It's all very simple," mused the young man. "And yet, it seemed likenecromancy."

  "Science is not necromancy."

  "But the report," urged David; "I didn't know Raoul had written areport."

  "You know he is a psychologist, a hypnotist?"

  "Yes," was the answer, with something of a shudder. "But--why all thiselaborate experiment of yours?"

  "To prove a theory--and to be certain about you."

  "Why?"

  "What a question! You expect to marry Una. Before your marriage takesplace--if it does take place--I wish to clear up whatever mystery thereis hanging over your past."

  "And your experiment has shown you----?" David asked in a low voice.

  "It confirms the theories of Tarchanoff and Jung," he repliedpedantically. "It proves the intimate connection existing between mentaland physical phenomena. The personal result is still incomplete. On thatside I must know more."

  "I will tell you what I can," said David resolutely. "But first--whathas Raoul written about me?"

  "Merely a reference. Read it after you have told me your story. Ourexperiment is still unfinished, you know."

  "Unfortunately, I can't tell you the very thing you want to know. Theseries of words in your test seemed to revive some forgotten nightmare;and the horror of it was that this nightmare kept just beyond myreach--as it always does--its riddle unsolved. This, with your strangeknowledge of what had happened, surprised me into this ridiculousweakness."

  "So I thought," said Leighton. "Now, what do you remember?"

  "I'll have to go back a little. But--you probably know it all, you knowso much of my history."

  "Never mind. I want you to prove the truth of what I know."

  David looked at Leighton doubtfully.

  "Very well," he said, "I'll do what I can."

  Much of his story, as he told it, was decidedly vague. In the mainoutline, however, it was simple enough, although ending in a mysterythat he was unable to clear up.

  Three years ago, it seems, David went to work on a project based ona legend belonging to prehistoric America. Traditions of the immensewealth and the civilization found in certain parts of South Americaby the Spanish conquerors had always fascinated him. And of all thesetraditions the one telling of El Dorado, the Gilded Man, interested himmost.

  From the early South American chronicles he learned that, within a fewyears of Pizarro's discovery of Peru, three other explorers, startingindependently from points on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, aftermonths of perilous adventure, reached a great tableland in the UpperAndes, where Bogota, the capital of Colombia, now stands. It was "ElDorado" who drew these explorers thither. From the Indians on the coastthey had heard stories of the great Man of Gold, who lived among themountains of the interior and who possessed treasure so vast that allthe wealth of the rest of the world could not equal it. Arrived in thismysterious region, they found, not El Dorado, but a superior race ofpeople, somewhat like the ancient Peruvians, showing, in the barbaricsplendor of their temples and palaces, every evidence of wealth andculture. These people, however, known as the Chibchas from their worshipof the god Chibchacum, were suspicious of the Spaniards. A war ofconquest followed, in which thousands of the natives were massacred andtheir finest temples and monuments destroyed. Sajipa, the Chibcha king,was subjected to the cruelest torture by his conquerors in their effortto find out from him where he had hidden his treasure. But he provedhero enough to suffer martyrdom rather than reveal the secret. For thishe was put to death, and the Spaniards contented themselves with thetrivial amount of gold and emeralds extorted from his subjects. Theythen established themselves in colonies on the Plains of Bogota. Theclimate was delightful, the land fertile and, as they soon discovered,rich in minerals. From the few surviving Indians they learned some ofthe native legends. In one of these, the legend of El Dorado, theybelieved they had the clew to the treasure they had been seeking. Thislegend was mixed up with the ancient mythology of the Chibchas, and hadplayed a leading part in their religious ceremonial for centuries beforethe arrival of the Spaniards. It was as follows:

  On the edge of the Bogota tableland, not many miles from the city thatis to-day the capital of Colombia, there is a lake, Guatavita--theSacred Lake of the Chibchas. Geologically, it is a pocket formed by acluster of spurs near the foot of a conical mountain. It is small,circular in shape, and reaches a central depth of 214 feet. Beneath thislake, according to tradition, lived the national god, Chibchacum. Tokeep on the right side of this god, to make atonement for the people, asemi-annual feast was observed--the Feast of El Dorado.

  Twice a year the king of the Chibchas, in celebrating this Feast, wasfloated on a raft to the center of the Sacred Lake. He was then strippedof his royal robes, his body anointed with oil and covered with golddust. Glittering in the sunlight this Gilded Man stood at the edge ofthe royal raft and was saluted by his subjects, who encircled the shoresof the lake, each one bearing an offering of gold and emeralds. Then,as if dazzled by the splendor of their monarch, the people reverentlyturned their faces away from him and, at a signal from the priests,threw their treasures over their heads into the lake, while the GildedMan, followed by the heaps of precious stones and metals which werewith him on the raft, plunged into its waters. No god ever receivedsuch a shower of wealth at his shrine as was thus lavished twice ayear, for centuries, on the god Chibchacum. All this wealth, except aninsignificant sum that the Spaniards rescued, is to-day, according tot
he legend, at the bottom of Guatavita.

  Besides this semi-annual tribute, it was rumored that at the time ofSajipa's murder the entire remaining treasure of the Chibchas had beenthrown into the lake, not as a votive offering, but as a means ofhiding it from the Spaniards. It took fifty men, so runs tradition, tocarry the gold dust to Guatavita from the king's treasury alone. Allthe minor chieftains of the kingdom made a similar sacrifice of theirpossessions on this occasion.

  Years afterwards, the Spaniards, stirred by these stories, attemptedto drain the lake. This meant the piercing of earth and rock wallsnearly nine hundred feet thick and proved too great an undertakingfor the engineering machinery that they had in those days. But beforethey gave up the work they succeeded in lowering the level of the lakesufficiently to recover a certain amount of treasure. Since that timethe secret of Guatavita has remained undisturbed. To solve it David wentto Bogota. Raoul Arthur, who had done most of the practical planning forthe expedition, went with him.

  The motives of the two men engaged in the enterprise were not exactlysimilar. David, according to what he told Leighton, hoped to solvean archaeological riddle and to study a hitherto lost people whoseprehistoric civilization equaled that of their neighbors, the Incasof Peru. Arthur, on the contrary, whose fortune was still to be made,regarded it frankly as a mining scheme that promised fabulous returnsin money, with a comparatively small amount of risk and labor. Thetwo points of view were not antagonistic, and for a time the friendsworked amicably enough together. In Bogota they easily secured from thegovernment the necessary permit to drain Guatavita. But the attractionsof the Colombian capital, the hospitality with which they were received,delayed the actual working out of their plans. Fascinated by the romanceof this picturesque city and charmed by the unique race of mountaineersinhabiting it, David postponed the prosaic task of mining, while Raoulbecame absorbed in studies relating to their proposed venture, meetingpeople with whom his companion seldom came in contact. Lake Guatavitaand its secret was thus, for a time, forgotten--at least by David.

  When the social gayeties of the capital were exhausted, he took up inearnest the work he had planned to do. He bought a full equipment ofthe best mining machinery and hired a large number of laborers. Butthe enterprise proved more difficult than he expected. The Spaniards,who had worked at the problem three centuries before, were bound tofail on account of their lack of engineering machinery. To empty LakeGuatavita, they tried to cut through the mountain which formed one ofthe containing walls of that body of water. Under the circumstancestheir partial success was amazing. The V-shaped gash they cut throughthe mountain is a proof of their industry, even if it failed of its fullpurpose. But it did lower the level of the lake--although this resultwas followed by an unforeseen catastrophe. The sudden release of thewater through the channel opened for it left the precipitous shores ofthe lake unsupported. These shores then caved in, covering whatevertreasure there might be in the center of the basin with masses of rockand earth, and thus placing a new obstacle in the way of the futureminer.

  David and Raoul took the problem from a different angle. They abandonedthe old cuttings of the Spaniards and planned a tunnel through thethinnest part of the mountain to the bottom of the lake. In thisway they hoped to control the outflow of water, after which, theycalculated, the recovery of the treasure would be a mere matter ofplacer mining. To do this they had boring machines and dynamite--moderngiants, of whose existence the old Spaniards never dreamed.

  As a first test of the existence of treasure in the lake, native diversexplored some of the shallow places near the shore. A few ancient goldimages were thus secured, enough to corroborate the legend regardingGuatavita. These images were curiously carved. One represented a smallhuman figure seated in a sort of sedan chair. Another was a heart-shapedbreastplate upon which were embossed human faces and various emblems.Others were statuettes, rude likenesses, probably, of those who threwthem into the lake as votive offerings.

  These gold tokens spurred on the miners. Work on the tunnel was rushed,and a subterranean passage, several hundred feet in length, directedto a point just below the bottom of the lake, was soon completed. Thena peculiarly hard rock formation was reached that the boring machinescould not pierce. To overcome it, dynamite was used.

  "Since dynamite was one of the final words in your test," said David,in telling his story to Leighton, "you know that its use in our venturebrings the climax of my mining experience. How to explain this climax toyou--or to myself--is beyond me.

  "When we decided to use dynamite in our excavations, a long fuse waslaid from the tunnel's entrance to the unyielding wall at the otherend. There this fuse was connected with a dynamite charge placed in thecrevice of the rock to be destroyed. Raoul, waiting to set off the fuse,remained at the opening of the tunnel. I was at the further end, lookingafter the laying of the dynamite. As I started for the entrance, I wasa little behind the others. The latter no sooner gained the outer airthan a muffled roar shook the tunnel. The ground swayed, the terrificconcussion of air seemed to rend my very brain, and I fell unconscious."

  David's story came abruptly to an end. Pale and listless, wearied bythe effort to give a coherent account of his experiences, he lookedhopelessly at Leighton.

  "Well," said the latter, "what then?"

  "If I could only tell you!"

  "Surely, you remember something--there is some clew----"

  "Nothing! Just--darkness."

  "Some faint flashes here and there--glimpses of people, scenes, a house,a street--the sound of voices, a word----?"

  "Nothing!"

  "Try to remember."

  "No use. I've tried it too often. It's all a blank. I thought, foran instant, that in your psychometer test the veil would be lifted.Instead--as you know--I went to pieces."

  "Very well," said Leighton reassuringly, "let us go back to your story.You were in the tunnel when the dynamite went off. You were thrown tothe ground; you lost consciousness. What is the next step in memory?"

  "Wait," said David slowly. "The explosion was on the ninth of May. Thedate was indelibly fixed in my mind; I have verified it since. When Irecovered consciousness----"

  "You mean, your normal consciousness," interjected Leighton.

  "Very well. When I came to myself, then, it was on the morning of thefifth of August."

  "Nearly three months afterwards," ruminated the old man. "You foundyourself----?"

  "Seated in a chair, in a room in a strange house in Bogota."

  "Alone?"

  "Raoul Arthur was with me. He was bending over me, his eyes fixed onmine, making passes with his hand before my face."

  "You were in a hypnotic trance."

  "I was coming out of one apparently."

  "It would be hard to define your condition. Of course, after theexplosion you had been picked up and carried to this house in Bogota,where you had remained, suffering from a severe nervous shock--perhapsconcussion of the brain--for three months."

  "I had been in that house scarcely an hour before my memory was suddenlyrevived."

  "How do you know that?" demanded Leighton sharply.

  "The rainy season was on in August in Bogota. I found myself in myriding dress. My rubber poncho, dripping with rain, was on the floor. Myboots, the spurs still attached to the heels, were caked with mud."

  "And Arthur told you----?"

  "At first, I was bewildered, as one is when suddenly aroused from a longsleep. With full return of consciousness, I asked Raoul how I came to bethere. He said he didn't know."

  "He must have given some explanation."

  "Very little. What he said mystified me more than ever. He declared thata short time before a messenger had come saying that I was in the house,waiting for him."

  "Whose house was it?"

  "Raoul's. He had rented it two months before and was living in it alonewith two servants who were running it for him."

  "And this messenger----?"

  "An Indian, whom neither of us saw or heard of a
gain, although weinquired high and low."

  "The servants must have had information to give?"

  "On being questioned they said I had arrived that morning on horseback,with an Indian, who left me there. This Indian was probably themessenger who informed Raoul of my arrival, and who afterwardsdisappeared. My horse was tethered in the courtyard."

  "The clews seem to have been pretty well obliterated," remarked Leightonsarcastically. "But Arthur must have been able to shed some light on theaffair."

  "He said that when he found me, I did not recognize him and was ina sort of dazed mental state. Then he tried hypnotism. He had oftenhypnotized me before that, and was thus familiar with my condition whilein a trance. Well, as soon as he saw me, after my long disappearance, hedeclared that I showed every symptom of hypnotic trance. So, he at oncetried the usual method for bringing me back to a normal condition--andwith complete success."

  "In his report Arthur emphasizes that as the singular feature of thecase. His account, so far as it goes, agrees with yours. It gives thefacts of the explosion, how you were supposed to be killed, how youdisappeared for three months, and how, when you were found, you were ina trance from which he awakened you."

  "Does he say that, on coming out of the trance, I could remember nothingthat happened during those three months?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, there's the whole case. You know all that I do about it."

  "All that Raoul Arthur knows?"

  "All that he says he knows."

  "Ah, then you have your doubts?"

  "Just a suspicion. I have a feeling that he could tell more about mydisappearance than he chose to tell."

  "Why did you leave him?"

  "I left Bogota the day after I came out of the trance. My distrustof Raoul and the horror that I felt for everything connected with mymysterious experience, made my stay there more than I could stand.But we parted friends, and I've sent him money to go on with theexcavations. How he's getting on I can't tell you. I've lost my interestin El Dorado. I won't visit Bogota again."

  For some minutes Leighton paced up and down the shadowy room. Then hestopped, with the air of one who has reached a decision.

  "Our course is plain," he announced.

  "I've tried everything; there's nothing to be done," said the otherhopelessly.

  "David, you've missed the obvious thing," was the emphatic reply. "Wemust go to Bogota."

  "Go to Bogota!"

  "You and I will face Arthur together. If he knows anything moreabout this matter, he's bound to tell us. If he doesn't know--if yoursuspicions are groundless--we'll solve the mystery of those three monthssome other way. And perhaps we'll stumble upon your Gilded Man at thesame time," he added with a chuckle.

  "And Una----?"

  "She has a way of deciding things for herself. For all I know she maywant to go with us."

  "Would you consent?"

  "There's no reason against it. In a ghost hunt a woman's wit may help."

  "Very well, then," said David, new energy in his words and manner.

  "You agree?"

  "I am entirely in your hands."

  "Then we'll take up our interesting little experiment again in the landof El Dorado--and this time we'll run it out to the end."

  "Without a psychometer, I hope," said David.