THE LOST SOULS' TREASURE
On a certain bright February morning Ben Hallock puffed up the Calle
Rivera and across the plaza of Limasito as fast as his battered jitney
could carry him and rushed into Baggott's hotel with an anticipatory
gleam in his heavy eyes.
"Hey, Jim! I got your message and I come a-hummin'!" he announced.
"What is it? Vigilance Committee?"
"Sort of!" Jim Baggott fairly pranced from behind the bar, his round
face shining with excitement. "Here's a gentleman from New York, old
friend of yours."
Ben Hallock turned to find himself facing an elderly personage with an
impressively pointed gray beard and keen eyes behind gold-rimmed
pince-nez.
"Jumping Jehosaphet! If it ain't Perry Larkin!" Ben pumped the
stranger's hand energetically. "Mighty glad to see you, Sir! Your
engineer, Kearn Thode, called on me last fall; fine young feller he is,
too! You heard about what he did when El Negrito came?"
"Yes, Hallock, but I'm even more proud of him to-day!" The keen eyes
sparkled. "I want you to meet a--er--a confrère of mine, Mr.
Morrissey."
Honest Dan, late taxi'-driver and amateur detective, purpled with
embarrassment as he rose and shook hands, but his eyes, too, were
dancing.
Ben nodded to Henry Bailey, his ranch neighbor and the only other
occupant of the bar, and then turned again to Jim Baggott.
"Now perhaps you'll tell me what in thunder the racket is about! I'd
have come to meet Mr. Larkin without you hinting at a lynchin' party!"
"Just you say what you'll have and hold your horses!" Jim chuckled.
"I'm acting under instructions, the same that brought Mr. Larkin and
this-here young man down from New York, and Hen Bailey in from his
hacienda; the orders of Gentleman Geoff's Billie, by God!"
"Billie! She ain't--you don't mean she's comin' back?" Ben cried
joyfully. "I told you she wasn't the kind to forget her old friends in
spite of the grand life she's walked into! I knew she'd come back to
see us----"
"It is business which brings her now, Hallock, and grim business, too,"
Mr. Larkin interposed. "She wanted you and Henry here as her friends
and witnesses, and there's apt to be a rather ugly scene."
"Do you mean she's coming right now, that she's here?" Ben Hallock
touched his hip significantly. "I've come heeled for any kind of a
little party that's liable to be sprung, but I little thought Billie'd
be mixed up in it. What's the matter? Anybody been tryin' to stack
the cards on her?"
"The dirtiest, crookedest game that was ever pulled!" Jim smote the
bar a blow which made the glasses tinkle. "But she'll beat 'em to it
yet, or she wouldn't be Gentleman Geoff's girl! She ain't here now,
but we expect her any minute and when she comes the fun'll start."
As if in answer the hum and whirr of two high-powered motors chugging
in unison stole upon the air and rapidly increased in volume. Ben
craned his neck from the window and then turned disappointedly.
"It's only that Lost Souls crowd!" he grunted. "Jim, if anything in
the line of a fracas starts here, you'll lose that passel of swell
boarders of yours! Can you see them women when the shootin' commences?"
"They're in on it, too!" Jim grinned. "Not the women-folk, but the
men, and more especially our fine young friend, Starr Wiley."
"Something to do with the Lost Souls----"
"Shut up, quick!" Jim advanced from behind the bar with an almost
comic air of ceremony as the motor party trooped in at the door and
headed for the stairs. Perry Larkin squared his pince-nez and
recognized Mrs. Ripley Halstead and her daughter, Angelica, while
behind them appeared seven men; Halstead himself, his son, Vernon,
Starr Wiley, Harrington Chase, Mason North and his son, Winthrop, and a
stranger whom a second glance revealed as Cranmore, the Mexican
representative of the Chase-Wiley interests.
"Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but we've been waiting for you!" Jim
Baggott began in the voice of a showman. "I'll have to ask you
gentlemen to step this way, all of you. It's a real-pressing little
matter of business you're all concerned in, and the ladies can come,
too, if they feel like it. There'll be more ladies present shortly."
Wondering, the whole party crowded into the room, and, recognizing
Perry Larkin, greeted him with varying degrees of cordiality. Jim
bustled about, setting chairs for them, and in the general confusion
none noted that a little group of men in uniform had issued from a door
behind the bar and taken up their stations at the windows and entrance.
The last comers were in two divisions; the ornate ones, stocky and
swarthy for the most part, the soberly attired, taller and stalwart
with the paler hue of the North.
Starr Wiley was the first to observe their presence, and he uttered a
stifled oath.
"These are just extra witnesses," Jim explained blandly. "They're here
to represent the United States Federal Government and also Mexico. You
see, this-here little matter has what you might call an international
aspect.--Did you speak, Mr. Wiley?"
"I should like to, when you've finished shooting off fireworks!" that
gentleman blustered. "What's the meaning of this, anyway? What sort
of trumped-up game are you----?"
"Steady, Starr." Ripley Halstead interposed quietly, and turned to the
proprietor. "Will you state the nature of this meeting to which you
have called us, Mr. Baggott? We are waiting to learn."
"I'm waiting, too!" confessed Jim. "I've got my orders--gosh almighty!
Here she comes!"
Unheard, a single touring-car had slipped across the plaza and halted
before the entrance. A slim, girlish, heavily-veiled figure alighted,
and at sight of the men who accompanied her, Starr Wiley emitted a
second oath.
They paused in the doorway and with a sudden movement the girl tore off
her veil. There was a moment of electrified silence, broken by a
little cry from Angie.
"It's Willa!--That impostor, I mean----"
"No!" Kearn Thode, the second of the newcomers, advanced to Mason
North. "You were appointed the guardian of Willa Murdaugh, were you
not, Mr. North? I have brought her back to you, with proof of her
absolute identity."
"Bless my soul!" The rotund little man advanced with shining eyes, and
seized the girl's hands. "I am overwhelmed, my dear girl, delighted!
And you have proof, you say? What an amazingly fortunate turn of
affairs!"
No one echoed him for a moment. The Halsteads sat stunned, and
Harrington Chase, his face a greenish gray, had slumped in his chair.
Only Starr Wiley, his eyes glittering and a sinister sneer curling his
thin lips, looked on imperturbably. Winthrop North gasped. Then he
hurried forward.
"Good work, Kearn! Oh, Willa!" His voice broke as he took her hands
from his father's and wrung them hard. "Our trails have crossed again,
and it has been 'good luck' indeed!"
Ripley Halstead had risen, and his wife made a tentative movement to
follow his example. Vernon, too, recovered himself and advanced
eagerly, but Willa waved them back and took her place before the bar.
"This is quite a reunion, isn't it?" She smiled, but there was a grim
menace behind it. "I'm glad you're all here, for I've got a story to
tell you that I shouldn't care to tell twice. It goes back to before a
lot of you ever knew me, but you'll find it interesting enough, for it
concerns you all as well as me; you, and the Pool of the Lost Souls."
She leaned back with one elbow resting upon the bar and her other hand
in the pocket of her traveling-coat and surveyed them one by one, her
expression unchanging. No one stirred and after a moment she went on:
"I have asked my old friends, my real friends, to meet me here that
they, too, may learn the truth. Most of you have heard the legend of
the Lost Souls' Pool; Mr. Larkin heard it from Ben Hallock and sent
Kearn Thode down here to find it, if he could. Mr. Chase also learned
it, and his partner came on the same errand, but I had the story from
the lineal descendant of the first Spanish owner, and the one person in
the world who knew where it was located, Juana Reyes. In her youth she
married a cousin of the same name, and her only relative living now is
her crippled grandson, José. My foster father scoffed at the truth of
the legend, but I had faith in Tia Juana's knowledge.
"When El Negrito, the butcher, came down from the hills on his
murderous raid and killed Dad among the rest, I learned that his visit
had been prearranged and paid for by a white man. He had been hired to
burn and rape and slay in order to evoke United States intervention, by
a man in this room!"
"By God----" Jim Baggott leaped to his feet, and Henry Bailey and Ben
Hallock emitted a simultaneous roar of rage; but she silenced them.
"The government men are here as much to protect him as to see that he
does not escape, and hard as it is we must let the law take its
course." She spoke with frank regret, but her steady, significant
smile never wavered. "In Dad's name I dedicated my life to getting
that man. I had a witness to prove his conspiracy, but I wanted to
play a lone hand. Nothing else mattered, nothing else has ever
mattered!
"When the Blue Chip was sold and Jim Baggott handed over the money to
me I knew it wouldn't be enough; if I was to beat the man at his own
game I must be able to match finances as well as wits. I thought then
of the Pool of the Lost Souls and the fabulous profits to be made from
it.
"Three days before Mr. North came to Limasito I took Tia Juana away,
and she guided me to the Pool. It had been passed over by the
searchers for generations, but she possessed an old map of its true
location. I bought the Pool with the money from the sale of the Blue
Chip, recorded it in her name with the Notary at Victoria and gave her
a half interest. All she cared about, anyway, was the home of her
ancestors.
"Then Mr. North brought the news of my inheritance. I didn't want it
at first, as he can tell you. The name and the money meant little to
me until I realized that they would be useful to my plan. They mean
less to me now that my purpose has been achieved, but since they are
mine and have been wrested from me by fraud I claim them--if only to
trample them under my feet, if I choose.
"I realized that the name would carry me into the very inner circle of
the man I was after, the man who had murdered Dad, and the money would
help when I could exercise unlimited control of it. That was the only
reason I consented to go to New York, and my ultimate purpose never
wavered.
"I had no detailed plan, but I meant to keep Tia Juana and the fact
that I possessed the Lost Souls' Pool under cover until I had come into
my full inheritance, when I would return and fight the man to the
finish. Mr. North never knew that Tia Juana and José accompanied us to
New York, although he did complain of my frequent disappearances en
route, I remember."
Mason North sputtered.
"So do I! But why did you not tell me all, my dear? I might have
helped you----"
"And taken the whole thing out of my hands?" Willa shook her head,
still smiling. "The man was my meat, Mr. North! Vengeance may be the
Lord's, but it was sweet to me, too, and I meant to taste it to the
last morsel!
"The man was one of those who were still searching for the Lost Souls'
Pool. After our departure he possessed himself by violence of the map
which Tia Juana had only partly destroyed, located the Pool, learned of
its new owner and started out to find her. He knew that I was her one
friend, and suspected that I was back of the purchase. Before
following me to New York, therefore, he made a journey West, of which
I'll tell you more later, or rather Mr. Thode will.
"When he did finally appear in New York, he tried by every means in his
power to force me to a confession of my knowledge of Tia Juana's
whereabouts; he spied upon me and I removed her to new quarters just in
time. He flattered and cajoled me, and, when that failed, resorted to
vague threats.
"Then Tia Juana disappeared. She vanished from the home I had found
for her, leaving no trace, and I feared that the man had abducted her,
to coerce her into making the Pool over to him, until I met him outside
the house from which she had gone. He accused me of having spirited
her away to keep her out of his reach and demanded that I produce her
in three days, or he would strip me of my position and name and
inheritance, seeing me driven forth as an impostor! That man is Starr
Wiley, and you know how he carried out his threat!"
Wiley made a sudden convulsive leap for the window, but paused
transfixed at her significant gesture. The government officials had
closed in about him, but he saw only the girl before the bar and the
pointed bulge in her cloak, beneath her hidden hand.
"Better not try it, Starr Wiley, although I almost wish you would!"
Her voice rang out in the suddenly stayed tumult. "I've had you
covered from the first, and I'll drop you with a shot through my pocket
if you make another move! The rest of you know only what he has done
to me, but you shall hear how he has served you, too!
"I left the Halstead house, and then by a miracle Tia Juana was
restored to me. After her disappearance little José remembered her
interest in a conversation between her landlady and a friend concerning
some Spanish gypsies who had settled in squatters' cabins north of the
city, and conceiving the idea that she had joined them, he slipped away
to find her. He succeeded, although how she ever reached her
destination we cannot know, for she was bewildered and lost her mind,
temporarily enfeebled. José, as a vender of tomales, established
himself near the garage where I kept my car, hoping to attract the
attention of my chauffeur, Dan Morrissey here, who had helped me all
through that trying time and whom José knew he could trust.
"Once he was frightened away, but the second time he succeeded and Dan
brought him to me. I took Tia Juana away to another city, but she was
ill for a long time. When I could leave her, I placed her and José in
the care of Dan's sister whom I summoned from New York, and went West
myself to disprove Starr Wiley's story if I could.
"I found a witness who can swear to my identity as the daughter of
Ralph and Violet Murdaugh and prove it by a scar I bear from the fire
which cost my mother her life, but Mr. Thode, unknown to me, had gone
West also in my interest and his efforts were even more successful than
mine.--Will you show them, please, what you obtained in Arizona?"
She turned to Kearn Thode, who drew forth a folded paper which he
handed to Mason North.
"It is a confession, signed and witnessed, from the forger Starr Wiley
employed to manufacture that false article of adoption," he announced.
"The child who died in the trapper's cabin was his own daughter and it
was Willa Murdaugh who went on with Gentleman Geoff. I did not know
until this morning the whole story of the Lost Souls' Pool transaction,
but I suspected it. Starr Wiley had a strong motive for getting Miss
Murdaugh out of the way if she did not prove amenable to his schemes,
and he provided himself with a strong weapon, but he overlooked one
salient point. I happened to know Gentleman Geoff's last name, I
learned it from his own lips as he lay dying, and it was not
Abercrombie."
"After I left New York," Willa took up the story, "Starr Wiley came
down here, registered a deed of sale, signed by Tia Juana, giving him
possession of the Lost Souls' Pool and proceeded with his partner to
develop it and float it on the market. I believe Mr. Thode tried to
warn Mr. North through his son not to go into it, but unfortunately for
him, Mr. North would not heed, and he and Mr. Halstead invested
heavily. I say 'unfortunately,' for the money is lost! Gentlemen,
Juana Reyes and I still own that property. Starr Wiley--and in this
his partner, Harrington Chase, is equally guilty with him--had induced
a poor ignorant old Mexican woman, Rosa Mendez, to sign the name of
Juana Reyes to the bill of sale, copying it from the original signature
in the registry. He thought the trick which had served him so well in
Arizona could be safely repeated, but I have Rosa Mendez upstairs at
this moment, together with the real Juana Reyes and José. Shall I call
them?"
"No, no!" shrieked Starr Wiley. "I will not face that old hag! What's
the use? You've got the goods on me! It's all true, all of it except
that I instigated El Negrito's raid! That I never----"
"It was Tia Juana herself who witnessed your secret negotiations with
Juan de Soria, El Negrito's agent!" Willa interposed swiftly. "It's
been a fair fight, Starr Wiley, for I warned you once, but you have
played directly into my hands. I've paid my debt to Dad, but you have
yet to meet the penalty. For your crime against me, and those you have
victimized in the Lost Souls venture you will not live to make
restitution; you know what awaits you for summoning El Negrito down
from the hills!"
For an instant Wiley cowered, shuddering. Then with a supreme effort
he straightened and turned to his guards.
"Take me out of this!" he demanded hoarsely, through white lips. "I'm
through! Take me away!"
With a scream Angie flung herself forward, but he put her aside as if
in a dream and marched out with his guards on either side and his eyes
fixed straight ahead over the abyss of the future. Muttering and
cursing, Harrington Chase was led after him from the room, and for a
space there was silence.
Ripley Halstead sat as though turned to stone, his wife had collapsed
in her chair and Mason North's head was buried in his hands. Winthrop
with his arm across his father's shoulders met Vernon's dazed eyes and
with one accord they turned to Willa.
Her quiet, set, terrible smile was unchanged, but her face had blanched
and with an effort she motioned to Jim Baggott.
"Jim, do you remember what happened in Manzanillo away over on the West
Coast ten years ago when you were pay clerk for the Colima-Zamora
Company and a man stuck you up in broad daylight?"
"I sure do!" Jim returned. "I shot him in the head!"
"Not in but across," observed Willa. "You left your mark on him from
brow to ear, only you didn't recognize it while he was here under your
own roof."
"What!" Jim's eyes were fairly starting from his head. "That feller
was a swindling promoter down on his luck; he broke jail afterward, I
heard. His name was Harry Carter."
"It used to be, but now it is Harrington Chase."
The smile faded at last, and Willa swayed suddenly, catching at the bar
for support. Jim Baggott sprang for her, but Thode reached her side
first, and for a moment she clung to him. Then she raised herself
indomitably upright once more.
"It is not easy to hate, after all!" she murmured. "If it were not for
the memory of Dad I could find it in my heart to forgive."