"Mystery seems to have been following mystery!" he exclaimed. "The Obeah woman has helped you, and me, in a most remarkable way. I am not particularly credulous, and that talk of yours about the smoke pictures, coming from any one else but you, would be hard to swallow. Most remarkable--in fact, astounding! By some arts of her own she seems to have thrown into the screen of smoke events that were to happen, as well as to give you a view of my situation, many miles away--a view that was complete in every particular.
"All that is strange and incomprehensible, but it is hardly a marker to the rest that happened. The head of an idol in that iron chest! I wonder if it had anything to do with the unbalancing of Jurgens, Bangs and Carl? Furthermore, I wonder how it happened that Bangs was on the levee to spring that cock-and-bull story on you when you arrived? These are all inexplicable things to me."
Townsend fell silent, apparently musing in the blank gloom.
"You are probably anxious to hear how I lost the chest a second time," he presently went on. "It happened principally because I was ignorant of the fact that our old enemies, Jurgens and Whistler, were in New Orleans. I had not heard a thing about them since they vanished so mysteriously from that little island in the Bahamas.
"As soon as the _Grampus_ reached this port, I immediately laid my plans to have the iron chest removed to a place of safety. It was night, and I hired a man with a wheelbarrow to take it into town. I went with the man, but, before I left the _Grampus_, I arranged with Cassidy to send you a telegram on the following day. It was not my intention to return to the _Grampus_ that night, and I expected to be busy locating the lady for whom the Man from Cape Town had asked me to look.
"While we were crossing the levee, and were in a dark and obscure place on the water front, I and the man with the wheelbarrow were set upon by a gang of roughs. The man who was wheeling the chest was knocked down and left unconscious, and I was bound, put in a closed carriage and brought here. Since that time my mind and body have both been shrouded in total darkness. Twice a day a negro has come and given me food, but I have seen nothing of either Whistler or Jurgens.