The Fifth Ace Part 43

"Yes!" she responded softly. "In spite of my blindness and your pride, fate seems to have appointed you to the permanent job of knight-errant to the maiden in distress, hasn't it, Mr. Duenna?"

When the door had closed behind him, she stood quite still in the middle of the floor where he had left her. That letter, that portentous letter which Angie had spitefully put into her willing, credulous hands had referred to Tia Juana, not to herself. How plain it all was, now, and how ruthlessly, unjustly she had driven him from her! And he? He had repaid her flouting of him by tireless devotion and a measureless service! Ah, but she would make amends!

Then a whimsical, tender light flooded her face. Cinderella had come into her own again; the prince had found her and fitted on the slipper just when she had been most sure that he had gone from her forever! He was a very haughty and hurt and angry prince, to be sure, but there had been that in his eyes which told her that she might win him back despite the bitter misunderstanding. The old fairy tale was coming true, after all!

CHAPTER XXIV

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 antic.i.p.atory 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 confrere of mine, Mr.

Morrissey."

Honest Dan, late taxi'-driver and amateur detective, purpled with embarra.s.sment 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 G.o.d!"

"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 gla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sel 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 bl.u.s.tered. "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 ident.i.ty."

"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, Jose. 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 G.o.d----" Jim Baggott leaped to his feet, and Henry Bailey and Ben Hallock emitted a simultaneous roar of rage; but she silenced them.