“Golden Sun—he used to talk about it a lot,” said Mr. Gray.
“Golden Sun—was it, maybe—I don’t just—let me think—I was too fuddled to notice when he used to brag and boast,” Jack said.
“I suppose he bragged how he had found some money that he had hidden,” Bill broke in, referring to his supposition that Mort had hidden the loot from the mine, gone back to get it, taken it to Colon and wasted it in riotous living.
“He did brag—I recall that well,” Jack acknowledged. “Seems to me——”
“Just let it come to you—it will! You may have been ‘under the weather’ but you heard it all—it made an impression on you. You do remember it. It will all come back!” Mr. Gray was making suggestions almost in the way a hypnotist does when he is putting someone to sleep, only he was using the principle rightly, to awaken a man’s memories.
“Oh—yes! There was a Golden Sun,” Jack declared. “It was a—wasn’t it a mine——”
“No!” cried Nicky incautiously. “Remember, Bill, Toosa said it wasn’t—” He stopped, feeling the glare of Tom’s and Cliff’s warning eyes. He subsided, crimson with disgust at his carelessness, for Jack turned with a blank face.
“Wasn’t it?” he asked. “You see; I don’t re—I can’t be sure——”
Mr. Gray did not change his expression.
“Well, let’s not worry about it,” he said. “He must have told you it was the Golden Sun mine—and that might be true. Nicky referred to something an old Indian said—the Indian thought the Golden Sun might be a girl, a name applied to a girl.”