All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 62: what you’re looking at

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52 ing to find her, if I have to stand South America on its ears and shake it!” ‘Nonsense, Jim! If it was a visitation of the flesh, it was some Chola girl looking for her sheep.” Again Arnold shook his head. “ Bob, do Chola girls leave such things as this lying around? If they do, you’d better investigate hereabouts, and look no further for Cooper’s mine.” With the words, he laid in Jones’s hand a stone, an oblong green pebble nearly an inch in length and the thickness of this little finger. It had been rudely cut and was rimmed with a band of beaten gold. At one end a ring had worn thin and parted, as though the stone had been the pendant of a chain. In the depths of the gem burned a somber, quenchless fire. ” It was an emerald! CHAPTER VIII. THE GHOSTS OF CHAVIN. OR some time Jones gazed at the stone in silence, turning it in his hand, ex- amining it on all sides—thinking. On the surfaces of its golden rim he saw the traces of a design which once had orna- mented it, but which was nearly worn away. The pattern seemed to have been of inter- twined serpents alternated with spirals; though these last might have been meant to represent shells. Except for its band of gold, the gem was the counterpart in shape and size and cut- ting of the one which the dying Cooper had laid on Jones’s table in the Coropolis Apartments in Dorchester seven years be- fore. When he had noted these things, and felt the influence of the train of reflections which they had evoked, it was with a troubled face that the big man returned the jewel to his friend: He had no further doubts to offer to Arnold’s story. But who was the girl? How came she to have an emerald so like that other, possession of which had been fraught with such fateful consequences to himself? “T’m not superstitious, Jim,” he said; “‘ but this makes a man think queer things ALL-STORY WEEKLY. in spite of himself. You know the story of Halford Cooper; and you know what has ‘happened since he brought me the tale of an emerald mine, and substantiated it with that other stone. You have seen it.” Arnold nodded. ‘‘ Yes; I remember it well, Bob. This one is just like it. That’s the deuce of it—that and the girl. Did Cooper tell you just how he came to get that particular stone, and who did the cut- ting of it?” Jones’s face clouded. ‘There were reasons at the time why I did not get Cooper’s yarn as clearly as I should have,” he responded. “If he told me such things, I cannot recall them. Then he died. ‘“ But I had the stone, and later the map. They seemed sufficient proof of his’ story about the mine.’’ Jim lighted his pipe. The morning had come clear and beautiful, with a golden sun in a turquoise sky. Far away against the blue, but seeming. in that limpid atmos- phere so near as to overhang the glen, stood the gleaming twin spires of Huascaran. Arnold wondered if his visitor of the night might be looking at them, too. The thought made him feel friendly toward the white-headed giant, and he shook his head at it. “It’s a devilishly odd coil, old man, take it all in all,” he observed, blowing a cloud of smoke. “That girl was white, and she answered me in English, though she was dressed like a princess of Egypt.” ‘“And you say she wore a necklace of emeralds?” Jones asked. ‘She wore one of some kind of stones, Bob; but this one she left behind is the only one I can swear to. I think that the others were like it, though.” “That of itself would not be so remark- able,” pursued Jones. ‘Spanish tradition has much to tell of hidden Inca treasure— and we are.in Inca country. “They may have worked emerald mines hereabouts; or, for that matter, Cooper’s discovery may be one of their workings, though that is a long way from here. The necklace may have come from the grave of some Inca potentate. The big question is: Who is she?” | comiclboolk C©