Kennedy smiled encouragingly.  “Hardly as my friend Walter here often paints me,” he returned.  “Still, now and then, we are able to use the vast knowledge of wise men the world over to help those in trouble.  Tell me—­everything,” he soothed, as though knowing that to talk would prove a safety-valve for her pent-up emotions.  “Perhaps I can help you.”

For a moment she did not know what to do.  Then, almost before she knew it, apparently, she began to talk to him, forgetting that we were in the room.

“Tell me how the thing happened, all that you know, how you found it out,” prompted Craig.

“Oh, it was midnight, last night; yes, late,” she returned wildly.  “I was sleeping when my maid, Juanita, wakened me and told me that Mr. Lockwood was in the living room and wanted to see me, must see me.  I dressed hurriedly, for it came to me that something must be the matter.  I think I must have come out sooner than they expected, for before they knew it I had run across the living room and looked through the door into the den, you call it, over there.”

She pointed at a heavy door, but did not, evidently could not, let her eyes rest on it.

“There was my father, huddled in a chair, and blood had run out from an ugly wound in his side.  I screamed and fell on my knees beside him.  But,” she shuddered, “it was too late.  He was cold.  He did not answer.”

Kennedy said nothing, but let her weep into her dainty lace handkerchief, though the impulse was strong to do anything to calm her grief.

“Mr. Lockwood had come in to visit him on business, had found the door into the hall open, and entered.  No one seemed to be about; but the lights were burning.  He went on into the den.  There was my father—­”

She stopped, and could not go on at all for several minutes.

“And Mr. Lockwood, who is he?” asked Craig gently.

“My father and I, we have been in this country only a short time,” she replied, trying to speak in good English in spite of her emotion, “with his partner in a—­a mining venture—­Mr. Lockwood.”

She paused again and hesitated, as though in this strange land of the north she had no idea of which way to turn for help.  But once started, now, she did not stop again.

“Oh,” she went on passionately, “I don’t know what it was that came over my father.  But lately he had been a changed man.  Sometimes I thought he was—­what you call—­mad.  I should have gone to see a doctor about him,” she added wildly, her feelings getting the better of her.  “But it is no longer a case for a doctor.  It is a case for a detective—­for some one who is more than a detective.  You cannot bring him back, but—­”

She could not go on.  Yet her broken sentence spoke volumes, in her pleading, soft, musical voice, which was far more pleasing to the ear than that of the usual Latin-American.

I had heard that the women of Lima were famed for their beauty and melodious voices.  Senorita Inez surely upheld their reputation.