s, and, going down
upon his hands and knees, patiently set himself to the task of
endeavouring to discover his young master's among them. But before he
had had time to achieve any result in this direction one of the palace
officials appeared and, angrily demanding to know what he was doing
there, ordered him back into the palace to attend to his duty;
explaining, by way of reply to Arima's agitated representations, that
the Inca had left the palace during the early hours of the morning, with
a party of companions, to hunt the vicuna. The Indian at once knew this
to be a falsehood, for the hunting grounds lay many miles down the
valley, and hunting parties never dreamed of proceeding thither
otherwise than on horseback, and Arima was prepared to swear that none
of the party had been mounted. Moreover he was convinced that his
master would never have dreamed of leaving his favourite servant behind
had he been bound upon a hunting expedition. The official, however, was
curt and peremptory in his manner, and Arima soon understood that he
must obey his orders or suffer arrest. He therefore returned to the
Inca's rooms and proceeded to put them in order, as was his duty. But
the very curtness and peremptoriness of the official's manner to him, as
well as the improbable story which he had told, only had the effect of
strengthening and confirming the suspicions in the faithful fellow's
mind; for the attachment of the young Inca to this man was well known,
and even the highest officials of the palace had thus far not disdained
to be extremely civil to him.

But the question in Arima's mind now was: what precisely was it that had
happened to his young master, and whither and why had he gone? For even
thus far no glimmering of the hideous truth had reached the Indian's
mind. His suspicions and apprehensions were all as yet chaotic and
formless, and he was very far from fearing that Escombe's life was in
danger. But as he proceeded with his business, seeking from time to
time to get some relief from his splitting headache and the other
extremely disagreeable symptoms from which he was still suffering
acutely, it gradually began to dawn upon him, as his mental faculties
slowly shook off their stupor, that every one of those symptoms were
synonymous with those following upon the administration of an overdose
of a decoction made from a certain poisonous plant growing here and
there in the valley, and which was sometimes used