CHAPTER XVI

PART OF THE SECRET

“Men in tropical places don’t ask each other questions about their business any more than the cowmen do on the range,” Jack began. “That fellow, Mort, was like all of us. He didn’t say much when he was himself; but when he got——”

“Happy!” suggested Tom.

“Well,” Jack grinned, “I wouldn’t call it that. Instead of being happy, he got to weeping, and wailing and crying on my shoulder. It was thinking about that and what he said that made me remember.”

They settled themselves, under the hot afternoon sun, to listen.

“It was after two days and nights,” Jack went on, “Mort was weeping about having so much money and then not having any and getting so he had to work as a sailor, and get wrecked in this forsaken hole.”

“You remember it all clearly, at last!” commented Mr. Gray.

“Yes, I do,” Jack nodded. “Mort told me, then, he had been in Mexico and I recall that now. He said, between crying and looking for sympathy, what a shame it was that he had only took—let me see, how did he put it?——”

They waited, as patiently, as they could, although it was all that Nicky could do to keep still.

“Oh, yes! He said, ‘Ain’t it a shame I was scared to go back and get the rest? I only took one little sack of gold dust—and there was mules loaded with it and it was all safe for me to get, but I was too scared to go and get it.’ That’s what he said.”

“We can help build up what he meant,” suggested Bill. “We were told about the looting of the Dead Hope Mine by bandits and how Mort drove the mules away.” He was about to continue but a warning look from Mr. Gray caused him to let Jack resume his own story.

“He said he’d had a good time on the money but when it ran out—but you know about that!”

They nodded and waited while he reflected.

“Let me see,” he said finally. “Yes, this is the way of it—Mort said if he could find a little girl——”

“What did he call her?” broke in Tom, unable to restrain his eagerness.

“He didn’t call her any name,” answered Jack. “But he said ‘if I could find a little girl that—that the—er—Indians took——”

He broke off and concentrated his mind on what he wanted to recall.

Tom had his lips parted to prompt, and Nicky was fidgeting in his folding chair until it squeaked and almost folded up; but Cliff, with one finger at his ear, caressing it, made a sign that neither chum could ignore—the call of the Mystery Boys’ order for a council. They folded their arms in token of agreement and then Cliff communicated by a touch of one finger on his chin—“Keep quiet!” They nodded.

“How did the Indians get her—did he say?” asked Mr. Gray in a gentle, quiet tone.

“Yes, it seems as though he did—let me think! Yes. He said that he took her all through the mountains all right, and he thought he would get a reward for saving her when the bandits attacked the mine. I recollect that real plain. Then——”

He had to stop often to bring up the memories, but one thought led to the next and soon he was in the midst of his narrative.

“The bandits were hot on his trail, and that is why he didn’t have time to stop and claim a reward or to return the little girl. She had golden hair, and was right pretty, he said. But he had to take her to the coast, with what money he could bring in the sack of dust.”

“Gold dust!” commented Bill. “And the rest is still there, maybe!”

“Maybe!” agreed Jack. “Anyway, he said he and the little girl went at last to the coast and wanted to get a ship to take them to America, but there wasn’t any sailing right then, and the bandit chief was in the town, in disguise, and Mort was so scared he’d be shot that he took the little girl and went on a coasting boat bound for different ports. He dyed the little girl’s hair and made himself look different and kept her in the stateroom of the little ship he said.”

In that way, as Mort had related and as Jack recollected, bit by bit, the two had gone slowly down the coast. Always he was oppressed by terror, first of being discovered with the little girl, second, of being caught by the bandits he had fooled.

“One day he told me, the steward come to him, said the little girl was crying and said she wasn’t his little girl and she wanted to go home. That scared Mort so much that when the ship hove-to right near the San Blas country, which is all islands where the San Blas Indians live, he got a sailor to lower a boat in the night and set him and the little girl onto shore.”

“Toosa told us to seek him among the San Blas Indians,” said Tom, under his breath. Nicky and Cliff nodded and bent forward even more eagerly.

“Seems, from what I recall, he said they were landed on a right small island where some families of the Indians lived, and for a time they was all right, because the little girl was real smart and had a lot of pity for the sickly Indians and told them what to do to be better and they did, even young as she was to tell them how to behave, and they got better from washing more and living decenter, and anyhow, she got to be real well-liked; but Mort hated the idle place and no fun or anything to spend money on—you know what I mean?”

They nodded and he continued the little more he had to tell.

“That was like Margery,” Tom said, referring to his lost sister. “She used to play nurse to her dolls and say she was going to grow up to be a nurse and cure people, and she was always asking questions about how doctors made people well, and how people ought to do to keep well. My sister was the smartest girl of ten I ever saw, and awfully grown up for her age.”

“We’ll find her,” declared Nicky.

“Well,” Jack completed his story. “All I recall is that Mort said one morning he woke up to find the little girl was gone——”

“Gone!” chorused the chums.

“Made away with,” Jack nodded. “Mort didn’t know where. Seems maybe the other Indians heard about her curing folks and wanted to be doctored—or maybe they made her like a goddess or something!”

“The inland Indians must have heard of her and taken her,” Bill suggested. “I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Anyhow, as Mort said, between his weeping, it was hard on him, after he had took such good care of her and been so careful—because now he’d never be able to get hold of the Golden Sun mine—”

“The Golden Sun mine!” cried Tom. “Did she have papers or anything, did he say—was she the owner of the mine?—did my dad discover a mine and give her the papers?”

Jack shook his head.

“About that I can’t tell. Mort said by losing the little girl he lost the Golden Sun mine and so he went from there to Colon and rioted on what he had—and that’s all I remember!”

“That makes everything very plain to me,” declared Mr. Gray. “Henry Morgan said that all Mort could talk to him about was the Golden Sun, but Henry thought it might be the little girl, or a mine, he didn’t know what, when we discussed it.”

“So Mort ran away with the child,” Bill contributed. “And from what Jack, here, has told us, I think that Henry Morgan knew, from what Mort may have told him back in Mexico, that Tom’s father had discovered some mine or knew of one and either gave his daughter the title to it or else told her, and no one else, where it was located.”

Tom and Nicky nodded vigorous agreement.

“That’s why Henry Morgan, when he found out we were trying to trace my sister,” Tom said, “was so anxious to be one of the party. He wants to get the information before we find out anything about it.”

“I think he wants to get it all for himself,” Nicky declared. “I don’t think he intended that we should ever find out anything.”

“No,” Cliff said. “But why did he want us to go to Toosa first?”

“That’s so—if the little girl knew about the mine,” Nicky agreed.

“I think this may be it,” Bill suggested. “You know, Toosa was a great medicine man and witch-doctor, and he knew a lot about Henry Morgan and Mort Beecher when they were in his country earlier.”

“I see,” Tom said. “He thought Toosa would know how to locate Mort better than anybody else.”

“And when he found out that Mort might be in Porto Bello, he deserted us,” stated Cliff. “The mean, contemptible——”

“Names won’t help,” Bill suggested. “What we want is——”

“Action!” cried Nicky, leaping to his feet, upsetting his camp chair.

“Action is the word!” Bill conceded. “Henry Morgan got here while you folks on the cruiser came up-river to rescue us. Now he’s been here, probably convinced Mort that they could do more together than alone—and——”

“Went to the San Blas Indians!” cried Tom. “We’ve got to hurry and get there, too, before he can locate my sister.”

“Wait,” suggested Mr. Gray. “How do we know that he and Mort Beecher have not gone back to Mexico to secure the hidden money?”

“Even so, we’d not care about that; we must get to the San Blas islands,” Tom cried. “We must find out about Margery.”

To that they agreed, and with Jack as a passenger, the cruiser wasted no time in clearing the port and turning her nose toward the archipelago.