"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 my disappearance than he chose to tell." "Why did you leave him?" "I left Bogota the day after I came out of the trance. My distrust of Raoul and the horror that I felt for everything connected with my mysterious experience, made my stay there more than I could stand. But we parted friends, and I've sent him money to go on with the excavations. How he's getting on I can't tell you. I've lost my interest in El Dorado. I won't visit Bogota again." For some minutes Leighton paced up and down the shadowy room. Then he stopped, 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 other hopelessly. "David, you've missed the obvious thing," was the emphatic reply. "We must go to Bogota." "Go to Bogota!" "You and I will face Arthur together. If he knows anything more about this matter, he's bound to tell us. If he doesn't know--if your suspicions are groundless--we'll solve the mystery of those three months some other way. And perhaps we'll stumble upon your Gilded Man at the same time," he added with a chuckle. "And Una----?" "She has a way of deciding things for herself. For all I know she may want 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 land of El Dorado--and this time we'll run it out to the end." "Without a psychometer, I hope," said David. VI EMBOLADORES ON THE MARCH There is in Bogota a street, the Calle de Las Montanas, that meanders down from the treeless foothills of the gray mountain ridge overlooking the city, and broadens out into a respectable thoroughfare before losing itself in the plaza upon which, facing each other diagonally, stand the venerable Catedral de Santa Fe and the National Capitol. This street, resembling the bed of a mountain stream, in the first half mile of its course runs through a huddle of lowly houses whose thatched roofs and white adobe walls seldom reach more than one story in height. The inhabitants of this district are called, in playful irony, by their more prosperous neighbors, "paisanos," fellow-citizens; or else, scornful of compliment, "peons," day-laborers. Here dwell the teamsters of the city, the washerwomen, the tinkers, the runners, the street-sweepers, the beggars, the proprietors of small tiendas, the bootblacks, the vendors of sweets--a mixed army of workers and idlers, who gain a livelihood, as chance favors, by their hands or their wits.