"The place is spoken of as the Pool of the Lost Souls," Thode went on. "Surely you have heard of it? The people to whom you were so kind, old Tia Juana and her grandson, knew more than anyone else about it. Did they not mention it to you?"
"Tia Juana?" Willa glanced up quickly, but she could not meet his eyes. "She is very secretive, you know, and jealous of the old legends which to her form the sacred history of her beloved country. Suppose you tell me the legend yourself."
Briefly he recounted it to her and, she listened until the end in a dismayed chaos of mind which culminated in a staggering blow.
"I have found it." There was no jubilation in his tone, but paradoxically a note of defeat.
"You!" she stammered breathlessly.
"Yes. You seem surprised?" he added with a quick glance at her. "I know these old legends are mostly regarded as bunk, but now and then one proves to be a straight tip. Generations have searched vainly for the Pool, as I thought you must have heard, but they did not know where to look."
"Then how did you, a newcomer, discover it?" Willa scarcely recognized her own voice.
"By the simple expedient of following someone else who had stolen a march on me in a despicable fashion." His jaw set in the old characteristic way she remembered. "I don't mind admitting that I would have taken almost any means to locate it; that was my main objective in Mexico and I was acting under instructions from my chief. But I would scarcely have stooped to the method employed by the man of whom I speak."
"Starr Wiley?" The question was wrung from Willa's lips.
He stared at her.