ast.
I cannot explain now, but you will learn the whole truth very soon.
Starr Wiley and his partner are still in New York?"

"No. They have both gone down to Limasito, to inspect developments on
the well. In the society column of a belated newspaper which reached
me yesterday, I read that two of the principal stock-holders, Mason
North and your cousin, Ripley Halstead, together with their families,
had gone also in a private car to Mexico. You will return to New York
now, will you not?"

Willa's eyes sparkled dangerously and she clenched her little hands.

"I--I have some arrangements to make here; I must provide for Klondike
Kate's future, and obtain her deposition. She was my mother's friend,
who recognized me. Then, Mr. Thode, I shall leave, but not for New
York. I, too, am going to Mexico! I want to see the Lost Souls well
and learn from Tia Juana's own lips the story of its transfer."

"I shall be down there myself," Thode announced, rising. "If you
recall our conversation when we met again in New York you will remember
that I told you of my own ambition to find Tia Juana and try to obtain
possession of the Lost Souls lease. You know how the map was stolen
from me in the beginning, but I am not sure yet that I have been
beaten?"

"What do you mean?" Willa asked. "And why do you think that your news
about the sale of the well concerns me closely?"

"I have only one answer to both questions," rejoined Thode. "Knowing
Starr Wiley, I believe that trickery and fraud are at the bottom of his
acquisition of the well, and it concerns you because your cousin,
Ripley Halstead, has invested a large part of your inheritance in it.
If fraud is connected with the transaction by which Wiley gained
possession of it, I mean to expose him on this count as well as his
conspiracy against you. I had set my heart on the Lost Souls venture,
like an over-confident young fool! I even wrote to my employer after
you had gone and I discovered that Tia Juana was Juana Reyes, the owner
of the Pool, that I had only to find her to win her consent----"

"You wrote----what?" Willa rose slowly to her feet, her rich color
ebbing.

"I wrote that except for Trevino, the Mexican who sold her the lease,
no one there knew her real name, and it wouldn't matter to them if they
did.--They wouldn't have connected old Tia Juana, of that tumble-down
shack in the zapote grove, with the Juana Reyes who could afford to buy
the Trevino haci