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THE MYSTERY BOYS
AND THE
Secret of the Golden Sun
By VAN POWELL
_A_UTHOR _of_
“The Mystery Boys Series,” etc.
[Illustration: Mystery boys series logo]
THE
WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING CO.
Cleveland, Ohio New York City
Copyright, 1931
_by_
THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING CO.
_Printed in the United States of America_
[Illustration: WORLD]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Man Who Could Smell Money 5
II. The Mystery Boys Get News 17
III. Henry Morgan’s Story 25
IV. Tom Breaks the Trail 37
V. Storm and Stress 46
VI. Stranded! 57
VII. Turtles and Trouble 67
VIII. An Unpleasant Trip 76
IX. Magic and Madness 86
X. Henry Turns Savage 95
XI. A False Message 105
XII. The Facts! 112
XIII. Toosa’s Vengeance 120
XIV. The Porto Bello Puzzle 128
XV. Modern Magic 142
XVI. Part of the Secret 151
XVII. A Cold Reception 159
XVIII. The Jungle Opens Its Arms 174
XIX. Wasted Effort 185
XX. Trailed by a Jaguar 190
XXI. Where No White Men Go 201
XXII. In the Closed Circle 210
XXIII. Magic Against Magic 220
XXIV. A Tight Corner 229
XXV. Where Wits Count! 237
XXVI. Two Men Disappear 248
XXVII. Against Odds 258
XXVIII. Golden Bait 265
XXIX. The Rats Come 272
XXX. Sunset! 282
THE MYSTERY BOYS AND THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN SUN
CHAPTER I
THE MAN WHO COULD SMELL MONEY
“That fellow is watching us again!” whispered Tom Carroll to his
companions, Nicky and Cliff, as he adjusted a pack strap on the Mexican
burro behind which he sheltered his face as he spoke.
“If he keeps on, I’m going over and ask him what’s next!” Nicky said,
“I’ll find out what he means by it or know the reason why.”
Nicky was impulsive and quick: he preferred action to reasoning, and was
usually more willing to meet trouble than to avoid it. Tom, who was
generally as cool and as level headed as Cliff, the oldest of the trio,
seemed inclined to agree with the youngest chum; but Cliff, cinching up
his pony’s saddle, shook his head at Nicky.
“We came out here to try to learn something about Tom’s sister, not to
court trouble,” he urged. “I guess that chap is simply curious about us
and is watching to see that we saddle up properly.”
“Is it any of his business?” demanded Nicky. “He’s just one of the
miners having his lunch. What business is it of his what we do or how we
do it?”
“He looks pretty mean,” Cliff admitted.
Tom, having taken a moment to consider, as he generally did, came to a
conclusion. “I’m not so sure that he is mean,” he told his two friends.
“That scar across his face, and his bleary eyes, make him look pretty
fierce; but he may be perfectly innocent of any wrong thoughts. As long
as he only watches, he isn’t breaking any law or hurting us. Are you
fellows ready?”
“All set!” answered Cliff, patting his pony’s flank.
“Then, let’s not bother about a rough looking miner who has hardly taken
his eyes off us since we came here this morning. Nicky, run over to the
mine office building and tell Mr. Gray we’ve got everything ready to
start back.”
Nicky dropped his own pony’s rein over its head, while Tom, with his
lithe movements apparent in the ease with which he mounted his own
animal, caught the bridle of an extra mount and Cliff took the burro’s
leading rope. Nicky ambled across the flat ground toward a zinc sheathed
shack at a little distance.
Cliff and Tom sat on their ponies, watching covertly as the man they had
been discussing finished the remnants of his chili con carne, wiped his
mouth on a ragged coat sleeve, rose and strolled with a seemingly
aimless air toward the upper level on which stood the engine house, the
mouth of the mine and other timbered and metal covered buildings.
Nicky, on his return, looked around, saw that the man was gone and
voiced a proposal.
“Mr. Gray says he won’t be ready to go for more than an hour,” he
informed his chums. “The mine superintendent is telling him about some
old Aztec curios he owns, and you know how that will chain Cliff’s
father in his chair. What do you say if we take a little gallop down the
trail—a race, maybe?”
Tom vetoed the race: they had a good ride before them and he did not
want to start on winded ponies: however, he agreed to a short ride on a
trail that they had not explored and the trio rode off, tying their
burro to await their return.
The extra pony, also left standing, may have wondered why his own rider,
the older one, had not come; but he waited with the patience of a well
trained animal.
As the boys rode along, the trail became rapidly steeper and the small
plateau narrowed into a rough, rocky coulee.
“It certainly is too bad,” Nicky said, with a sidewise glance of rueful
sympathy toward Tom. “After we came all the way to Mexico City and then
rode out here to the old mine, it is too bad that we can’t get even a
trace of your missing sister.”
Tom nodded.
“Yes,” he agreed. “You’d think the authorities would know something,
after all these years, or that we could pick up some clues.”
“It would have been different in the United States,” said Nicky, with a
sense of pride in his native land. “Our detectives don’t let the grass
grow under their feet.”
“And yet,” broke in Cliff, “many girls, and men and women, too,
disappear in America and never are found.”
“There were no eye-witnesses, except the ones they found dead, after the
bandits made their raid—that’s why there were no clues,” Tom added.
“Well,” he finished, sadly, “I guess my own private mystery will never
be solved.”
“You can’t tell,” Nicky said, with his usual optimism. “You know, it
seemed as though Cliff’s father would never be heard from again, after
he went to Peru—but we got a letter, or Cliff did, and we went down
there with Mr. Whitley, our history instructor—and not only rescued Mr.
Gray from the hidden Inca city, but we saw a lot of adventure and got
some of the Inca treasure.”
“And your mystery seemed as though it would never be solved, Nicky,”
Cliff reminded his friend. “With only half of a cipher message left to
your family by Captain Kidd, it was possible for us to find the hidden
treasure in the Florida keys and have a lot of excitement in the
bargain.”
“And both adventures started out very tamely,” Nicky was trying hard to
brighten up his comrade; but Tom only shook his head.
“This is different,” he said.
Nicky and Cliff referred to two exciting escapades in which all three
had participated. Because each of them had had a mystery in his life the
three had drawn very close in the bonds of friendship, and had formed
themselves into a secret order which they called the Mystery Boys. They
had secret gestures by which they could communicate with one another in
the presence of others without divulging the fact that they did so:
also, they had initiation rites and binding oaths and strict codes which
held them together and bound them to help each other in every way to
solve their individual mysteries.
Cliff’s mystery, as Nicky said, had been cleared up in the summer past:
the following winter the trio, while in Jamaica, had run onto some
information which had begun the adventure through which the hidden
treasure mystery of Nicky’s family had been brought to a successful end.
While in Cliff’s case the reward had not been financially large, he had
found his father. In Nicky’s adventure no life had been involved in
danger, but a buried mass of gold bars had been recovered and
distributed fairly so that each of the three was, in a modest way,
provided for as far as riches went: they were not made millionaires,
because the treasure had to be shared with others involved in Captain
Kidd’s legacy, but they were “well fixed.”
But in Tom’s case, the mystery was of a different kind, and there was in
it not only the element of tragedy, but, as well, the element of
uncertainty.
Hardly more than five years ago Tom, confined to his bed by a bad attack
of measles, had been thus prevented from going with his father and his
sister, a year older than he, to Mexico. That saved his life, which is a
curious thing to think about—that sickness saved him from a worse fate.
Mr. Carrol, an engineer and mining expert, sent to inspect some mining
property, had left Tom under the care of an older cousin; but so eager
had eleven-year-old Margery been to see the strange country that Mr.
Carrol had taken her with him.
That farewell, looking out of a darkened room at the bright hair and
half-smiling, half-tearful face, had been Tom’s last sight of his
beloved sister; and that clasp of hands between father and son had been
the last they could ever exchange.
For, shortly after the arrival of the engineer and his daughter at a
remote mining property, bandits had descended from the mountains in a
raid, seemingly because they knew that gold to a high value had been
amassed and stored until time to load it on burros and with armed guards
take it to the railway shipping point.
In the news, meagre and disjointed, which Tom had received, it was
supposed that the bandits had come to the mine during the night, had
been seen and attacked by the engineer and several other Americans who
were in charge of the property. A fight must have ensued, but one
disastrous to the defenders, because the gold was gone and the mine was
deserted when the workmen came from their hovels far down the trail the
next day. According to what Tom heard, they had found his father and the
other Americans, all past any earthly aid.
But there had been no news of Margery!
With his heart torn by his bereavement and with terror gnawing at his
mind day and night, even at the tender age of ten, Tom had begged his
father’s cousin to use every effort to learn what had happened to his
sister. All that could be done, had been done.
But the family had little money and although the Government made
inquiries and State departments exchanged notes and the Mexican
authorities declared that soldiers had scoured the neighborhood of the
mine and the passes in the sierras—and some of the bandits had been
caught and punished!—there was no trace of the little girl.
No wonder that Tom suffered anguish every time he thought of her. Was
she wandering about in the mountains, alone, starved? Was she a captive
among the bandits? Those who had been caught declared by everything they
reverenced that they had not seen her at any time nor after the retreat
had they seen her in their camp among the cordilleras. Even the gold was
gone! A renegade white man—they had not known his nationality—had
incited the attack, seeming to guess that there was money to be had. But
he had disappeared during the fighting—and so, they averred, had the
gold bags and the burros.
Was the little, sunny-haired Margery his prisoner also? Tom never had
learned, for no trace of him—or of her—had ever been found.
Naturally, even after five years, the pain was deep and the scar still
burned; that is why he had been so anxious to see the summer vacation
arrive at Amadale Military Academy, where he and his chums were
students. Cliff was glad in one way, also, because the end of the term
saw his graduation. That meant that he could devote all of his time, for
the summer and as long as might be necessary, to his father, Mr. Gray, a
great scholar and student of old civilizations. Mr. Gray wrote books on
the subject of ancient history, and went to many strange places to get
his facts. Cliff looked forward to the experiences and the knowledge he
would gain; but mostly he was glad to be able to help his father whose
health was not of the best since his years of captivity among the hidden
Inca survivors in the Peruvian cordilleras.
Nicky, in the same class with Tom, and with a year yet to be passed in
study and training of an athletic and disciplinary sort, looked forward
to the vacation, because he knew that Mr. Gray was going to Mexico to
study the Aztec civilization of a time long past, and to collect Indian
relics and other material for a Museum in New York—and Cliff would go
with him to help him and to write for him when his eyes were tired, and
to superintend digging and so on; and Tom had been invited to accompany
them, because he could in that way see at first hand the district of
Mexico which had bred tragedy in its wild mountains for him. That meant
that the inseparables would feel that their ranks were incomplete
without the third member of the Mystery Boys, and so, of course, Nicky
was with the others.
They had hired ponies and a guide and had ridden out to the mine, with
the results which the boys had just discussed during their ride.
“I’ll bet this is the very trail those bandits used,” Nicky was saying
as Tom reined in his pony.
“Maybe,” he said listlessly, “but there won’t be any clues or signs on
it after five years. We’d better go back.”
“Well—I wish you’d look!” gasped Nicky, turning his head and spying
something down the trail. “There comes that fellow who was watching us
like a hawk—and he’s—yes, he is!—he’s riding Mr. Gray’s pony.”
“We’ll wait and see what he is after,” suggested Cliff at once. “We’re
three to one.”
“Yes,” cried Nicky hotly, “and if he ‘starts’ anything, I’ll start him
toward that chasm over yonder!”
The man riding toward them was quite tall, and rangey of build. He did
not show his full height for he rode, as he walked, stooped over. He
seemed to be in the last stages of physical slovenliness, and—even
ignoring the scar across his face from the base of his nose to his left
jawbone—his features looked sinister. Actually it was moral laxity, too
much drinking and careless living that had pulled down a frame which
must at one time have been erect and powerful, and broke a once daring
spirit till it looked out of bleary eyes with dull, apathetic boredom.
“Well, are you following us?” Nicky spoke up as soon as the man was
close enough to hear.
The man rode up closer still, reined in his pony, dropped the leather
onto the animal’s neck and smiled ingratiatingly.
“Yes,” he said, in a husky, whispering sort of way, “I’m follerin’ you.
’Cause why? That’s what you want to know. ’Cause why! Ain’t it so?”
“Certainly we want to know,” chimed in Cliff. “Why are you following
us?”
“He-he-he-he!” It was a shrill, cracked sort of laugh. “’Cause Henry
Morgan smells money—that’s why!”
“Henry Morgan!——” Nicky started. He read a great deal about pirates and
piracy because he had been interested in the cipher which Captain Kidd
had given to one of his ancestors, “Henry Morgan! Any relation to the
old pirate?” None of them were afraid; they were simply curious, and a
little bit annoyed.
“Henry Morgan—the pirate! He-he-he! Maybe. Who knows! Can pirates smell
money?”
“They must,” Nicky declared. “They were always crazy about getting it.”
“Well, then, I must be related to ’em. ’Cause why? ’Cause Hen Morgan can
smell money. And—’cause Hen Morgan is crazy for it. And——” he fixed them
with a bleared eye and rubbed his hands—and the chums drew their ponies
closer on the trail as he added:
“Oh, yes! Hen Morgan smells money—an’ he smells it on you, or around
you—and he wants some of it!”