Willa rose slowly to her feet, staring at him as if she could not believe the evidence of her own ears.
"You—you cannot mean it!" she gasped. "It cannot be true; there is a mistake somewhere! Please, say that again, Mr. Thode!"
He told her all that he had learned in New York, and she listened breathlessly, her varying color concentrated in two vivid burning spots upon her cheeks. A steady light deepened, too, in her eyes, and when he had finished his story he looked at her in unconcealed amazement. Far from being down-cast and distressed, she seemed to his half-incredulous gaze to be triumphant, but she only remarked quietly:
"This is news indeed, Mr. Thode, but it simplifies everything. The stakes I have played for since I left Limasito are in my hands at last. 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——"