“Have you looked upon the pulque when it was sour?” the Jefe quipped incredulously.
“I have not had drink stronger than water since I last departed from San Antonio,” was the reply. “And I shall go now to my house and drink a long long drink, and after that I shall bathe the filth from me, and put on garments whole and decent.”
Not immediately, as he proceeded, did Torres gain his house. A ragged urchin exclaimed out at sight of him, ran up to him, and handed him an envelope that he knew familiarly to be from the local government wireless, and that he was certain had been sent by Regan.
_You are doing well. Imperative you keep party away from New York for three weeks more. Fifty thousand if you succeed._
Borrowing a pencil from the boy, Torres wrote a reply on the back of the envelope:
_Send the money. Party will never come back from mountains where he is lost._
Two other occurrences delayed Torres’ long drink and bath. Just as he was entering the jewelry store of old Rodriguez Fernandez, he was intercepted by the old Maya priest with whom he had last parted in the Maya mountain. He recoiled as from an apparition, for sure he was that the old man was drowned in the Room of the Gods. Like the Jefe at sight of Torres, so Torres, at sight of the priest, drew back in startled surprise.
“Go away,” he said. “Depart, restless old man. You are a spirit. Thy body lies drowned and horrible in the heart of the mountain. You are an appearance, a ghost. Go away, nothing corporeal resides in this illusion of you, else would I strike you. You are a ghost. Depart at once. I should not like to strike a ghost.”
But the ghost seized his hands and clung to them with such beseeching corporality as to unconvince him.
“Money,” the ancient one babbled. “Let me have money. Lend me money. I will repay——I who know the secrets of the Maya treasure. My son is lost in the mountain with the treasure. The Gringos also are lost in the mountain. Help me to rescue my son. With him alone will I be satisfied, while the treasure shall all be yours. But we must take men, and much of the white man’s wonderful powder and tear a hole out of the mountain so that the water will run away. He is not drowned. He is a prisoner of the water in the room where stand the jewel-eyed Chia and Hzatzl. Their eyes of green and red alone will pay for all the wonderful powder in the world. So let me have the money with which to buy the wonderful powder.”