Alexander Key
The Golden Lady
Short story
    Men faced bloodshed-madness-for-nothing!

Men fought – died – and she didn’t know it!

    There were four men fighting, and three of them had knives. The little fellow had only a stick, but you would have thought he was a regiment. He danced about on the mud bar with his back to the water, facing the dark jungle that crowds Gatun Lake. I saw him duck a machete blow, knock the weapon out of a big Negro’s hand, and send him sprawling. The other two rushed him at the same instant. He snatched up the machete, and using the stick to hold off one man, nearly decapitated the second.
    There hadn’t been a sound, and I saw the whole thing in a flash of movement when I thrust the dugout across an inlet. I yelled, sent a shot over their heads, and paddled toward them. But before I could reach the mud bar the little fellow was left alone – alone, that is, except for a dead black buck stretched at his feet.
    I grounded the dugout and stepped out, gun ready. The little fellow whirled around, full of fight. For the first time I realized he was a white man.
    He was bare-footed; his clothes were in rags, and there was a thick growth of wiry black beard on his jaw. His hands were knotty; the hairs on them stood out like shingle nails. He had a broken nose, and what I could see of his face above the beard looked as if it had been chipped from flint by somebody who didn’t give a damn how rough a job he made of it. All in all, he was the toughest, hardest-looking hombre I’ve ever clamped eyes on – and he couldn’t have weighed an ounce over a hundred and thirty pounds.
    “Nice scrap,” I said. “What the hell’s going on?”
    He looked me over carefully, evidently not liking what he saw. When he spoke, I got the surprise of my life.
    “To whom,” he asked, in a mild, cultured English voice, “do I owe the pleasure of this intrusion?”
    “I’m Captain O’Reilly of the canal police,” I growled back, trying to size him up, but failing.
    “And your credentials, my dear fellow?”
    I realized I had talked too much. I was on a special case for the colonel, and I wasn’t in uniform. “Listen,” I said, “if I hadn’t come along when I did you’d have been fish bait. I don’t give a hoot who you are, but as long as I’m here I’ll have to ask a few questions.”
    “I was in need of no assistance. You saw all that happened. Are explanations necessary?”
    “They’re going to be necessary. You’re in the limits of the Canal Zone. I’ll have to report this.”
    He eyed my army automatic, and glanced impatiently at the jungle. “Get on with your questions,” he said irritably. “I have important work to do.”
    “There’s no rush, wise guy. First, this is a queer place for a lone white man to have a run-in with three stray Negroes. Second, a bird by the name of Willowby Dawson disappeared near here last night, hopped off the steamer Pomeroy. There are several people rather anxious to talk to Dawson.”
    “May I inquire what you want with him?”
    “He’s Lord Hawley’s secretary. And Lord Hawley,” I lied, “is tearing his hair out to locate Dawson.”
    “And suppose,” answered the little roughneck with his mild, college professor’s voice, “I told you my name was Dawson?”
    I hadn’t even hoped this could be true. I tell you, it gave me a jolt. He didn’t look like a secretary to a British diplomat; he didn’t look like a secretary to anybody. In spite of his voice, he was the kind of an egg you’d want to lock up merely on suspicion.
    Suddenly I jammed the automatic against his belt. “You’re wanted all right – but it’s for murder. Lord Hawley was found in his stateroom this morning with a knife in his ribs.” I pulled a pair of bracelets out of my pocket. “About face!” I ordered.
    He gaped at me. “Hawley – dead? Impossible! Gonzales must have—” His mouth clicked shut.
    “Get a move on!” I barked. “You can do your talking at headquarters.”
    He moved, and I saw what was coming. But I wasn’t quick enough. That knotty, hairy fist caught me on the jaw, and it felt like a ton of dynamite was behind it. I was out before I hit the mud.
    * * *
    It was a crab scuttling along my arm that woke me. I did some fancy cursing, started to rise, and found I had been handcuffed with my own bracelets.
    My pistol was gone, and so was the dugout. I picked up a machete that one of the blacks had dropped, broke through the edge of the jungle, and started north along a game trail. I was about two miles from my lookout station and a telephone, and slightly less than that from the shack of Pedro Managua, who occasionally guided a hunting party when he wasn’t drunk.
    There were several men on duty at my place, but I didn’t want to be seen in my present condition. The story would be all over the canal before night. But I had a thing or two on Pedro, and I knew he would keep his mouth shut.
    All the way to Pedro’s place I kept cursing that little devil Dawson. I’ve been hit a few times, and by men who knew how. I’m pretty good as a middle-weight. But it was the first time in my life I’d ever been knocked cold. The secretary line, then, was probably just a stall. Dawson had really been Hawley’s bodyguard.
    Not that Lord Hawley hadn’t been fully able to take care of himself. The man was a queer duck, his name almost a legend from Cartagena to Mexico City. He was a sort of diplomat at large, if you get the idea. Besides that, he owned mines, ran a good part of Honduras, and had a passion for archaeology.
    For months at a time he would disappear into the jungles, alone, and suddenly appear one day with a gold vase under one arm and his pockets bulging with notes on lost cities and buried temples. Wealth meant nothing to him, and he’d turn over his findings to the local governments or some museum, so they could go ahead with the research.
    Outside of that, nobody knew anything about him personally. Everybody had heard of Lord Hawley; no one could claim a speaking acquaintance with the man. It began to look, though, as if Dawson hadn’t done the killing.
    It was almost evening before I got to old Pedro’s place. I found him down by his landing, unusually sober. His dugout was packed for a trip; he was nervous and seemed to be waiting for some one. He started forward when he saw me, then stopped, evidently disappointed.
    “Take these damn things off,” I snarled, holding out my hands.
    It was not the first time Pedro had seen a pair of cuffs; he took them off easily. “Mira!” he said, giving me an evil wink. “I suppose the good captain put these on himself in his sleep.”
    “Naw,” I growled, “they crawled out of my pocket and bit me when I wasn’t looking. You know a bozo around here named Gonzales?”
    “There are many of that name, my captain. But there is only one who is important. You had best forget him.”
    * * *
    I glanced at his loaded dugout. “Where are you going?”
    “I have been engaged for a hunting trip. A gentleman from Balboa.”
    “You’d better find somebody else for him. You’re going with me.”
    “No, no! I cannot, captain. Last week the gentleman sent a messenger and paid me in advance. I – I cannot disappoint him.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “I do not know. I—”
    “To hell you don’t know! You’re lying!” I caught him by the shoulder and shook him. “You weren’t paid in advance or you’d be drunk. It’s somebody you know, and know damn well. What’s his name? Gonzales? No? Maybe it was a Señor Dawson?”
    He started at the name. I shook him again. “Come on, out with it! Four times, Pedro, I’ve saved you from the calaboose. You know I’m your friend; now you’ve got to help me when I need it. Who’s the guy?”
    “It was the Señor Dawson, captain. But he hired me for another. Many times I have taken this other great señor on trips. Nor do I need to tell you who he is. I would cut my throat before I would tell it to any one but you.”
    “Great Heavens! You mean Lord Hawley was to meet you here?”
    “Si, señor. And if he could not be here by sundown to-day, I was to paddle to a certain spot, and I would find him there.”
    “Listen,” I said. “Lord Hawley’s dead. Some one stuck a knife in his ribs last night, on board the Pomeroy. They think it was this guy Dawson. My colonel phoned me this morning from Gatun and gave me the dope.”
    Old Pedro took it hard. Before I was half through, the tears were running down his brown cheeks. “I cannot believe it,” he muttered. “The good señor – dead! I will cut out the heart of the pig Dawson!”
    He shook his fist over the water, and clutched my hand. “Come! I know where the great señor was going, and what he was after. Amigo, we should find the pig Dawson there.”
    He darted to the dugout and snatched at the mooring rope. There was a roar of sound. Pedro stiffened suddenly, clawed at his chest, and fell.
    * * *
    From the shadows beyond his thatched hut came a second shot. Something stung my cheek.
    I got over my surprise in a hurry, jerked Pedro’s carbine out of the dug-out, and flattened behind a tree. A banana plant near the hut trembled slightly, and I pumped a shot at it. Some one cursed in Spanish. Abruptly, a fusillade of shots kicked bark in my face. An old-fashioned six-shooter this time. That made two men I had to look out for.
    I saw Pedro move, start painfully toward me. Blood was streaming from his left breast. Why he wasn’t dead yet was a wonder. He reached the edge of the tree, lay still a moment, and managed to raise his head.
    “Amigo,” he whispered, “the man who shot first – I recognized his voice. He is Gonzales. There is a creek – near the boundary – and there is a golden woman named—” Pedro tried to finish, but a convulsion shook his body.
    I dropped the carbine and shook him. “Pedro, for Heaven’s sake, tell me!” But Pedro was dead.
    I was reaching for the carbine again when a harsh order stopped me.
    “Do not move, señor, or it will be ver’ bad for you.”
    A heavy, swarthy man stepped from a tree. He wore boots and dirty linen; under his flat nose was a thick gray mustache that crawled half around his square jaws. He had me covered with an automatic. One look at him, and I remembered a picture of a revolutionary leader in the colonel’s office. The fellow had been giving the government of Panama considerable worry, but he’d been quiet lately for lack of funds.
    I eyed the automatic. “So you are Gonzales, eh? I don’t know where the hell you come in on this business, but you’re making a mistake.”
    Gonzales gave me a nasty smile. “I am sorry, my friend, ver’ sorry. It is you who have made the mistake. You have stepped into something which is much too big for you. So the great Señor Hawley is dead, eh? We expected to find him here; but since he is already dead, it will save us much trouble. And you – I am sorry. Maximo,” he barked, “come here!”
    A short, thin, pock-marked peon appeared from beyond the hut. “Shall I kill this one?” asked Maximo, holding a six-shooter near my head.
    Gonzales smiled again. “Not that way, Maximo.” He touched his arm and I saw there was blood on it. “He had the insolence to shoot me. A small matter, but he must be given time to regret it. Take the little bracelets from his pocket and attach him to the limb that hangs out over the water.”
    For a minute I didn’t understand; then I found myself up to my waist in water, with my arms held securely around a thick limb with the handcuffs.
    Gonzales laughed. “It is thus, my friend, that I teach Americanos who meddle in my affairs. It will soon be night. In a little while el cayman – the alligator – will call his brothers to the feast. Adiós, señor!”
    * * *
    Gonzales and Maximo vanished in the jungle shadows. I listened, wondering which way they went; in a few minutes came the sputter of an outboard motor farther down the shore.
    It was almost dark now. I was afraid to kick or make too much commotion in the water. The ’gators are thick here, and it doesn’t take much to attract them. I tried raising up my feet in an attempt to hook them over the limb, but it was no use.
    Finally the black dark came. I was standing there cursing, my scalp crawling with every movement around me, when a light flashed in my face.
    “Well, Captain O’Reilly,” said a mild voice, “we meet a second time under strange circumstances. I apologize for my harsh treatment of you this afternoon, but perhaps this will be adequate compensation.” There was a click and the handcuffs were released.
    “Dawson!” I gasped, crawling out of the water. “This damned, infernal monkey business is driving me nuts! What the hell are you—”
    “Quiet!” ordered the little Englishman. “There may be more trouble.” He flashed his light briefly over the ground, stooped to examine Pedro, then turned to me. “What happened here?”
    I told him. “Now,” I finished, “suppose you do some explaining. By rights you ought to be under arrest for murder, but I’ll let that charge ride a bit.”
    “You’ll have to,” he snapped. “Quick, into the dugout; I’ll need your help. This is no time for explanations. Tomorrow, if your sense of duty is still uppermost, I’ll go with you to Gatun to call on your colonel.”
    “I have your word for that?”
    “The word of a gentleman,” he said simply. And, strangely, I believed him, probably because I couldn’t see his villainous face in the dark.
    He followed me into Pedro’s dugout, and pushed off into the night. So far, the whole thing was becoming a little more insane every minute.
    The eccentric Lord Hawley and his secretary had boarded the coastal steamer Pomeroy at Balboa. When the ship reached Gatun in the morning, Hawley was dead in his bunk, and Dawson was missing.
    A deck hand reported hearing a splash in the night about the time the Pomeroy left the canal proper to enter the lake. A medical examination affirmed that Hawley had died about midnight, which checked with the deck hand’s story of the splash.
    All this Colonel Randall had phoned to me at my lookout station. I had spent most of the day paddling around this section of the lake trying to pick up Dawson’s trail. But why, when I found him, should Dawson be battling with a gang of Negroes? And what was it he knew about Gonzales? Furthermore, what could have brought him here to Pedro’s place?
    Gonzales’ part was almost as difficult to figure out. For some obscure reason he, too, had planned to kill Hawley. Pedro had died, presumably, because he knew too much. But what was Gonzales after? Was Dawson after the same thing? And the golden woman – I gave it up.
    “Paddle!” gasped Dawson behind me. “Paddle with utmost diligence! He’s gone to meet the others; but he’ll be back the minute he finds I’ve escaped.”
    “Who?” I asked.
    “Gonzales, you fool. He’s behind all this. His men did that job on the Pomeroy. Those were his scoundrelly Negroes who were out to eliminate me on the mud bar this afternoon. After I committed piracy with your dugout, the black devils took after me again, and I had to swim.”
    * * *
    The little fellow was plenty sore; but I had to laugh. Except for the memory of his hard face and agility with a machete, I would have thought it was an indignant college professor speaking. Then I forgot about him, and leaned on the paddle. From somewhere on the right came the approaching hum of an outboard motor.
    A searchlight cut the dark, swept our beam, and immediately afterward came a shot. Water sprayed my face.
    Dawson swung the craft to one side; we skimmed through rushes at the lake’s edge. Aerial roots and low limbs raked my shoulders. The motor boat went past, turned, and came back, the searchlight flickering slowly through the shore shadows. I held the carbine ready.
    The light came closer. I took careful aim and fired. The light went out. Shots whipped over my head, and then Dawson was paddling in a frenzy.
    How he found his way in the dark, sliding through narrow water lanes, twisting in and out along the swampy shore line, was past understanding.
    A quarter hour of this, and he sent the dugout into a black tunnel of foliage. “Crouch down,” he whispered. “We’re entering a stream.”
    I leaned over as vines scraped the gunwales. “Where are we?” I asked.
    “A little creek,” came the reply, “close to the boundary.”
    Almost the same words, I remembered, that Pedro had whispered before he died.
    Then I remembered the other thing Pedro had tried to tell me. “Say, Dawson, Pedro mentioned something about a woman. Who is she? Where does she come in on this business? I’ve spent a good many years along the canal, but J’ve never heard anything of a woman living over in this direction.”
    “Quiet,” he muttered. “They’re coming again.”
    He thrust the dugout to one side and we slid close under the bank of a tangle of ferns and jungle growth. Out on the lake I heard the sputter of a motor again, receding in the distance. There was silence for a while. Finally I caught the faint, cautious dip of approaching paddles.
    Minutes passed. At last something moved by us in the creek, so close that I could hear the low breathing of the men as they pushed their craft along.
    * * *
    It was some time before Dawson spoke. “A trick,” he whispered. “That was Gonzales went upstream, and I expect it was in your dugout they took from me. He had his Negroes, to draw an olfactory conclusion. He sent the motor boat away – a red herring to make us think he could not find the creek in the dark, not realizing we had already found it ourselves.”
    “As clear as bilge water on a black night,” I muttered. “What’s the idea?”
    “A scheme, my friend, to give his Negroes an opportunity to eliminate us when we reach our destination.”
    “And that?”
    “The hiding place of a very charming lady whom I have never seen, but whom I have sought for many years.”
    “Eh?”
    “Exactly,” replied the unpredictable little Englishman. “A lady whose very name has become a legend – but who, I assure you, is entirely real.”
    “Who is she?”
    Dawson’s soft voice became reverent. “She is known as La Diosa de la Madera. Does that mean anything to you?”
    I turned around to stare at him in the dark. “You mean the Goddess of the Forest? The mythical golden goddess of the Panama jungles? Hokum! This country is full of such nonsense.”
    Dawson’s voice hardened. “No nonsense about this. La Diosa de la Madera is quite real. Furthermore, she is in grave danger. We must reach her before Gonzales does.”
    “All right,” I said. “If there’s a woman, and she needs help, Paddy O’Reilly’s the guy to give it. But no monkey business now. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do about this Hawley affair.”
    “My dear fellow, do not be surprised when I tell you this, but Lord Hawley is not dead. Perhaps, officially, a knife was found in his ribs, but his lordship has several times risen from the dead. Perhaps, to-morrow, I will let you speak to Lord Hawley in person, the gods of life and death permitting.”
    I said nothing, but a cold chill went up my back. There was no denying the truth now. It was suddenly, horribly evident. I was alone in the black night with a madman.
    Had it not been for Gonzales, and an overpowering curiosity to find out what lay ahead, I think I would have swung on Dawson with a paddle, put the cuffs on him, and hurried back to phone headquarters.
    * * *
    We waited several minutes longer to let Gonzales’ Negroes get safely out of hearing distance, and then pushed upstream again. The night was suffocatingly hot, and no breath of air stirred through the crowded growth around us. Sweat ran down my arms and dripped in a steady stream from my face, but I had no feeling of warmth.
    The moon rose, illuminating the creek with tiny patches of silver. It helped little, for it lent a deceptive quality to whatever it touched, and made the shadows blacker by comparison. Dawson seemed to paddle by instinct, feeling for the thrust of the current to keep us in midstream.
    “The worst lies ahead,” he whispered once. “I was counting on Pedro’s help. He was part Indian; he knew this section thoroughly, could have found anything in it blindfolded. I may have trouble locating the hill.”
    “What hill?”
    “La Diosa lives on a hill. Do you not remember the legend? La Diosa de la Madera watches the jungles from a high place. But it was old Pedro who told me where she lives. Her home is in a great Ceiba tree.”
    “I suppose,” I s aid, humoring him, “that she’s a good-looking dame.”
    “At the moment her beauty fails to interest me – except that it may be considerably marred if that scoundrel Gonzales gets to her first. But quiet, we’d better go ashore here.”
    The dugout slid against the bank. We moored it cautiously under the overhanging ferns, and with a machete in one hand and Pedro’s carbine in the other, I followed Dawson into the obscurity of the jungle.
    If you’ve ever been through the canal, you probably think you know what these jungles are like. But you don’t. Looking high and green and black, with crimson flowers festooning the edge, is one thing. But a casual walk into them, even in the daytime, is something else. At night—
    It’s a black hell – a crawling, slimy, impenetrable pit, where every leaf and frond and vine you touch seems a clammy live thing reaching out to trip you, claw you, or sting and choke the life out of you.
    The dark shakes and crawls before your eyes. You move slowly, a few inches at a time, feeling your way and shaking spiders off your hands, stumbling over high fan roots and lianas, sinking to your hips in ooze, and turning a hundred times to locate an opening in a tight wall of growth.
    The moon didn’t help now. The place was too thick. I don’t know how Dawson knew which way he was going, but I was lost three minutes after leaving this dugout.
    * * *
    I heard nothing at first, only the dark hammering silently against my head. When I did hear it, it wasn’t a sound – only a feeling, a conviction, rather, that we were being followed.
    It was hardly a minute afterward that I lost Dawson. I stopped, waited, and, missing his footsteps, whispered his name. There was no answer. Finally I groped in my pockets for matches, but they were sodden and useless.
    The truth hit me like a flash. I’d been a fool to trust myself to a madman like Dawson. It probably delighted his insane fancy to take me out here in the night and then leave me.
    Suddenly I cursed, and, swinging the machete in front of me, plunged off in what I judged was the direction of the creek. Abruptly air fanned my face.
    I dropped flat and flung myself sideways. Again came the swish of air – and the distinct thwack of a heavy knife blade as it cut into green wood not a foot from where my head had been!
    I must have gone a little berserk then. I don’t mind fighting something I can see or understand, but this thing was nightmarish. There had been the feeling of death drawing closer like an invisible hand, and now death had materialized in the black dark – silent, formless, yet horribly real.
    Yes, I think I acted like a crazed animal. I know I yelled, kicked, and flung my machete at the spot where my assailant must have stood. The carbine caught on a vine when I tried to heave it. Something slammed against my back and I went down; I was up on the instant, kicking and lunging about, swinging my fists. A twig snapped and I dived toward it. I whirled and dived at a second sound, and crashed head-on into a tree. My knees buckled, and at the same moment, powerful, clammy hands clamped about my throat.
    I have little memory of what went on then, except that we both went down in the slime beneath the rank growth. The man I fought wasn’t big, and I knew suddenly it must be Dawson.
    Those hands about my throat were like steel. I couldn’t get them loose. The dark spun around me, a mad, black whirlpool. I clawed once again—
    * * *
    A wild roaring awoke me. I stumbled drunkenly to my feet, mechanically swinging my fists. Then I realized I was alone, and that day was breaking. A bevy of howling monkeys high up in a giant fig tree was causing the racket.
    I found I was on the edge of a small game trail twisting through the jungle. The ground for several yards around was torn up; there was blood everywhere, and a lot of it was on me. In my hand was a knife – the small hunting knife that I generally carry at my belt. During the struggle I must have reached for it unconsciously and used it.
    I found my machete and saw a second one embedded deep in a tree. The fellow who had swung it probably couldn’t jerk it loose in time – a fact that undoubtedly saved my life.
    Was it Dawson who had tried to kill me? I followed the trail of blood down to the edge of a muddy pool. There was a spot where some one had lain, but no sign of the man himself – only a series of deep claw marks in the mud. A ’gator had taken care of the evidence.
    I searched for the carbine, but couldn’t find it. I hated to be without a gun. I was wondering where the creek lay, when the distant crack of a rifle snapped my mind awake. It came from far up the trail.
    Then I remembered Gonzales – and La Diosa de la Madera. The shot seemed to have come from a high place, a hill.
    Beyond, up that shadowy trail, lay the answer to the whole insane business. I knew it; I felt it, and nothing in the world could have held me back at that moment. I forgot I was thirsty, that my tongue was a thick, dry thing in my mouth; I forgot the ache in my throat and the heavy, leaden feeling in my feet. I started running upward along the trail.
    The shot must have been fired a mile or more away. I believe I traveled twice that distance through the jungle before some instinct told me I was nearing the spot.
    The trail had been leading gradually upward. Now it swung around the base of a steep hill. I left the trail, and as carefully as if I was stalking a tapir, started crawling upward through the matted growth. After fifty yards I stopped, listening, wondering if I could have made a mistake. At night I can get lost by merely turning around once, but I’ve never had any trouble finding my way about by day.
    A small monkey chattered near by, and a green parrot flashed in the shadows. Then, distinctly, came the ringing of an ax high up on the hill.
    I started upward again, slowly, carefully keeping under the cover of the ferns. On the damp leaf mold my progress was soundless. I halted again. The ax had stopped; now I could hear the faint murmur of voices.
    * * *
    A few minutes later I gently pressed a fern aside and peered into an open glade about a huge Ceiba tree. The tree trunk was nearly hidden in the smothering embrace of a Ficus plant that had grown around it in a network of immense tentacles.
    And not ten feet away, looking directly at me with black beard bristling and mud caked on his flinty face, was Willowby Dawson! He was sitting on the ground, hands tied in front of him. Beside the tree, leaning on an ax, was a Negro. Standing in front of him, twirling an automatic on his finger, was Gonzales.
    Dawson turned his eyes away; if he had seen me he did not show it. I flattened down, listening to Gonzales talk.
    “Puerco!” snarled Gonzales. “So you stick your big toe on the rifle trigger and call your dumb Americano, eh? For that I should cut off the toe!” He spat in Dawson’s face.
    “But the Americano will not come. Little Maximo has the eyes of a cat. If he missed you, it is because you are quick. The Americano is not so quick.”
    “And where,” said Dawson mildly, “is Maximo now?”
    “Fool! He is gone to bring Miguel in the big boat. Do you think that we alone could get La Diosa down to the water? La Diosa must weigh a ton!”
    Dawson smiled. “She may weigh more than a ton. Solid gold is extremely heavy. I doubt if a dozen ordinary men could lift her – and you have but a few.
    “But, my friend,” Dawson went on, “I am an unusual man. That is why Lord Hawley paid handsomely for my services. I, probably, am the only man in the world who can lift a ton of dead weight. You do not need the others to help. I will carry La Diosa down to the water by myself.”
    Gonzales stared at the little man. Suddenly his laugh rumbled forth. “You are full of clever tricks, señor. You wish me to untie your hands, eh? I will not fall for your nonsense; you are too nimble with your hands.”
    “I am trying to bargain with you,” Dawson persisted. “It is no trick – -and you need not untie my hands. You have not men enough to carry La Diosa. Grant me freedom afterward, and I will carry La Diosa for you.”
    “And if you should fail, señor?”
    “Then,” Dawson spat out, “you may cut off my hands! Is it a bargain?”
    “Caramba! It is a bargain!” Gonzales said thickly. “You are either a devil or a fool. But we shall see. On with the cutting!” he barked at the Negro. “Make the opening larger!”
    * * *
    The negro went to work on the tree. Dawson stretched his feet, and his glance flicked toward me for an instant. He closed one eye and looked away. It was the sanest wink I’ve ever seen.
    I got it suddenly. He had seen me, and he was playing for time. He must have guessed I didn’t have the carbine, for I would have used it before this.
    The Negro was clearing the Ficus growth from one side of the tree. In the opening exposed I caught a gleam of gold. I almost cried out at the sight of it, and then I stared, hardly believing what I saw.
    There was a woman in the tree. A golden woman. A statue!
    I began to get a glimmering of the truth. La Diosa de la Madera – the golden Goddess of the Forest – was an idol, and a rare piece of Indian craftsmanship from the looks of it; probably hidden during the days of Morgan, or even during the Conquest. Hawley and Dawson had been on the trail of it, and Gonzales had found out what they were after. It had been a race to see who could reach it first.
    The Indians didn’t skimp material in those days; that meant the thing was solid – solid gold.
    The Negro dropped the ax. He blinked into the hollow he had uncovered, jaws hanging agape. Gonzales peered at La Diosa and grinned in triumph. He stepped back and waved his automatic at Dawson.
    “Now, my friend, let us see if you can get her out!”
    Dawson got to his feet. He stretched forth his bound hands and flexed the muscles in his arms. “I must limber up a bit first,” he announced, beginning to go through a series of gymnastic contortions. “My sinews are stiff from lack of use.”
    What happened next was too quick for the eye to follow. There was a flash and a whirling movement as Dawson’s hands swept the ground, and he was springing with a machete. One flick, and the gun was knocked from Gonzales’ grasp.
    “O’Reilly!” shrieked the little Englishman. “Hurry!”
    I came out of those ferns like Nurmi on the home stretch, and made for the Negro.
    The fellow jumped for a rifle, missed it, and tugged at the machete in his belt. Before I could reach him he had the big knife out and was crouched and ready.
    I slammed at him with my machete, but he rolled his head and the point of his blade laid open my forearm. With his thick lips drawn back in a snarl, he came at me.
    He must have been a Costa Rica banana worker, for he could handle his machete in a way that made my scalp crawl. There was no time for me to see how Dawson was making out. There was no time for anything.
    That big knife was everywhere at once. He nicked my jaw, slit the skin across my stomach, and forced me backward. I’d always thought I was pretty good with a blade, but I was unable to touch him.
    Then I tripped over a root. I knew it was all over now. I was falling, and I could see the Negro uncoiling himself for a final swing.
    * * *
    Something hissed past my ear. The black fellow spun around and fell threshing in the underbrush. A machete blade was sticking through his neck. Dawson had thrown it.
    When I got up, Dawson was leaning against the tree, mopping his hard face with a grimy handkerchief. Beyond him lay what was left of Gonzales. It was not a pleasant sight.
    “Forgive the theatricals,” he said. “All I needed was a chance to do some setting-up exercises so I could pick up my machete and swing it. Sorry about last night. In my anxiety to reach La Diosa, I forgot about Maximo’s peculiar ability to see in the dark.
    “As near as I can understand it, he clipped me with his revolver butt and then went after you. I was hors de combat for some time, and was unable to find either of you when I regained my senses. So I hurried on to the hill here – and Gonzales was waiting. What happened to Maximo?”
    “Dessert for the ’gators,” I said, staring at his hands. “How did you get your mitts free?”
    “My dear captain, I am really remarkably strong. I could have snapped the cords at any moment, only Gonzales had his gun on me.”
    He turned and reached into the hollow tree. One jerk, and he had the statue out upon the ground. He stooped, grunted, and my jaw gaped open. He raised the statue over his head!
    Setting it gently upon the ground again, he motioned for me to lift it.
    * * *
    When I tried it, I got another shock. La Diosa was certainly heavy, but I had no trouble picking her up.
    “Wood,” announced Dawson, “covered with a thin layer of gold. Unique in Indian art, and one of the greatest archaeological finds in Central America. Actually, her name should be translated the ‘Wooden Goddess’ instead of the Goddess of the Forest. But in time legends become twisted; there are many stories of golden statues in the country, and it is no wonder Gonzales was fooled. He wanted to raise money for another revolution, I think.
    “You see, he knew I had been looking for her. He’d been searching for her himself. He’s kept his men after me for weeks, watching every move I made. I don’t believe he learned La Diosa’s exact location until I was on the Pomeroy, starting through the canal. I recognized Maximo’s brother on the boat, and that evening my stateroom was searched, most of my notes stolen. The fellow must have tossed the notes to some one going by in a launch, for he remained aboard.
    “But the theft necessitated immediate action, for I knew if Gonzales found La Diosa first, he would probably mutilate or destroy her when he found her gold was only skin deep. Therefore, as soon as I judged I was passing near Pedro’s place, I crawled through the cabin port and swam ashore. Only, in the dark, I miscalculated things somewhat, and by morning Gonzales was organized to stop me in case I left the boat alive.”
    He halted, looking at my arm. “My dear fellow, I’d better bandage that. You are bleeding profusely.”
    He used my shirt sleeve and did an expert job. Meanwhile I digested his tale – and came to a startling conclusion.
    “Good grief!” I exploded suddenly. “You must be Lord Hawley!”
    “You are remarkably astute,” he said dryly, “though a trifle slow. I am Lord Hawley, but I have long ago found it was the best policy to change identities with my man Dawson while traveling. Too many people are interested in profiting by my activities. Fortunately, Dawson and myself were about the same size, and few people knew me by sight, not even Gonzales. I grew a beard, and the rest was easy.
    “Poor Dawson! He must have been killed shortly after I left the boat. Maximo’s brother, of course. I’d warned him to be careful. Gonzales was out for my blood – not only because of La Diosa, but also for political reasons. I’d stopped one of his revolutionary schemes in Panama, and I was ready to stop another one. Only, naturally, my murder had to wait until the location of La Diosa was known. Now, if you’ll help me carry her—”
    “I’ll carry her to Balboa and back if you’ll explain things to the colonel. If it came from me, he’d say I was a damned liar. You’ll also have to identify Maximo’s brother.”
    “Gladly,” said the little Englishman.
    “But,” I went on, “just one thing. If you tell about knocking me out and putting my own bracelets on me, I’m going to start a private war with the British.”
    “I assure you,” said he, grinning, and getting a good hook around La Diosa’s golden neck, “that I will do nothing to arouse international complications.”

    1936
    (Top-Notch, vol. XCIX (99), #4, October, pp.33-44)

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