The girls were seated about the table at one end of the big comfortable kitchen and, it being Margaret’s turn to play waitress, she was passing a dish of frijolies when they heard a horse galloping under the windows. “Peyton has returned just in time,” Megsy announced, but, when the door opened, it was Trujillo who appeared. He seemed to be much excited, but what he said caused a great deal more excitement among his listeners, for in perfectly good English he inquired:
“Senoritas, have you seen an oddly shaped key? It is an antique and of great value to me, though to no one else. I left it in my bunk-house yesterday morning. I recall having seen your brother,” turning to address the astonished Barbara, “when he picked it up and examined it. Since then I have given the key no thought, but a moment ago, chancing to look for it, I could not find it. Believing that Senor Peyton, without thought had slipped it into his pocket, I came here in search of him.”
Barbara cast a helpless glance at the ever calm Virginia, who replied: “Trujillo, the key about which you speak, is, I am sure, the one that we found close to the house early this morning. We gave it to Peyton. He is spending the day at the valley pasture directing the mending of the fence around the grass lands.”
“I thank you, Senorita,” the tall dark lad said, sweeping his sombrero in a courtly manner.
When he was gone in search of his employer, the girls sank back in the chairs from which they had risen, and, one and all uttered some characteristic exclamation.
“Silver fishes in a shining sea,” Betsy Clossen said, and although the remark could mean nothing, it was evident that the speaker meant a great deal. “I surely am a wonderful detective,” she declared. “Every clue I thought I had has vanished.” Then turning to Babs, she added: “Didn’t you tell us that Trujillo could not speak English?”
That maiden looked puzzled. “I don’t seem to recall why I thought he couldn’t,” she confessed. “Probably because he never did in all the time he has been here.”
Virginia smiled: “We haven’t been here two days as yet,” she reminded them, “and we have made no effort to converse with Trujillo. We just took it for granted he wouldn’t understand us. Well, one thing is certain and that is that Trujillo did not peer in the window nor drop the key and I am glad that he didn’t. Everything Peyton has told us about him has been so fine and noble, I would be sorry to discover that he was a spy.”
“Hark! What was that?” Virginia had risen and was listening, intently. There was the sound of something heavy falling in the front room, then a hurrying of feet and the slamming of a door.
Virginia fearlessly entered the room which was flooded with sunlight, since the blinds had been removed. She went at once to the door opening upon the spiral stairway. It was unlocked early that morning. The other girls had cautiously followed and were searching for the something which had fallen. “There it is,” Margaret whispered, pointing.
The something that had fallen with a crash proved to be a rock which had been pried out of the wall of the fireplace.
“Oh, girls,” Betsy said, her eyes glowing. “We’re on the trail of whoever it was peered in last night. There is something in this room that he wants. Of course we have decided definitely that it wasn’t Trujillo, and—”
“I’m not so sure of that.” It was the quiet Margaret who spoke and the others turned toward her.
“Not sure? Why of course we’re sure. If he had dropped the key, he wouldn’t have to ask where it had been lost, would he?” Babs inquired.
“Oh, I know what Margaret means,” Betsy interrupted. “She thinks that in order to throw suspicion away from himself, he would pretend ignorance of the whereabouts of the key. Then, when we directed him to the valley pasture, what could be simpler than for him to pretend to go there, but in reality to wheel back when he was out of our sight and return to procure whatever it is that he seems to want.”
The girls had returned to the kitchen and were huddled as far from the front room as they could get and were whispering together excitedly.
“Well,” Betsy confessed. “I’ve always wanted a mystery to unravel, but I seem doomed to failure now that I really have one. It grows more mysterious every minute.”
Margaret had to laugh at her friend’s dismal expression. “Betsy,” she said to tease, “I’ll dare you to ride down to the cellar room in your elevator chair and see who is hiding there. Someone must be, for he just went down the spiral stairs and locked the door behind him.”
The would-be detective shook her head. “I told you this morning that the machinery is broken. That chair is doomed to remain in the cellar.”
To verify her statement, Betsy drew the reluctant Margaret toward the door, opened it cautiously and peered into the front room. Then she closed it with a bang, and turned a pale face toward the girls. “The chair—it’s in its right place. Someone has ridden up in it and must be hiding in the front room. How I wish Peyton would come. I for one have had enough mystery to last for a lifetime.”
“Here comes brother, and someone is riding at his side. I declare, it’s Trujillo, and so the intruder must be someone else. I do wish they would hurry. I’m expecting any minute that something is going to happen,” Babs declared.
Margaret, who had opened the door leading to the back porch, uttered an exclamation of astonishment, then, turning she beckoned as she said: “Come, quick! Something is happening right this minute.”
What the girls, crowding into the open doorway, saw was the figure of a peon crouching and creeping along behind a hedge of mesquite bushes. He kept watching the trail down which he saw Peyton and Trujillo descending, and, when they were close to him, he lay flat on the sand burrowing as deep as he could in his endeavor to escape detection.
The riders, deeply engrossed in their conversation, were not looking in that direction, and when Margaret saw that they were riding past the mesquite clump without seeing the hiding peon, she ran out on the porch and hallooed to them, making frantic motions. These might not have been understood by the two riders, but the ignorant and greatly frightened Mexican, believing that his hiding place was being revealed, took to his feet and raced for the sand hills. Peyton and Trujillo, seeing him, wheeled their horses and galloped in pursuit, and he was quickly overtaken.
“It is Pinez, whom we recently engaged.” Trujillo said in English, which the peon could not understand. “I have been watching him for several days. Last week I sent him to town for my mail and I was convinced that one of my letters was being withheld from me.” Then turning to the sullen peon, he asked: “Pinez, why were you hiding? Have you a letter that belongs to me?”
“Si, Senor,” was the reply, and from his pocket the Mexican drew an envelope, much soiled from frequent handling.
Trujillo’s face brightened. “It is for this that I have been waiting,” was his remark, which greatly mystified Peyton, but he made no comment.
Then the overseer addressed the peon in Spanish, saying: “Pinez, you are dismissed. Return to Sonora but say nothing of the content of this letter.”
The peon’s manner was deferential in the extreme. Turning, he walked toward the long bunk-house from which, half an hour later, the girls saw him ride away toward the South on the small, mottled horse on which he had so recently arrived.
All through lunch the two boys talked about the affairs of the ranch as though nothing mysterious or unusual had happened. After the noon meal was finished the overseer turned toward the little mistress of Three Cross saying with frank pleasantness: “Senorita, I have heard you speak of a front room that you call haunted. With your kind permission, I would like to visit that room in your company.”
Babs was too well bred to show the astonishment she certainly felt. “Come, let us all go in there,” she replied, rising.
Trujillo stepped aside with Peyton to permit Barbara and her girl friends to enter. Betsy regretted that she had to go ahead as she wished to watch the overseer’s every move, for she felt that now, if ever, she would prove that she was really a good detective. She believed that the moment for solving the mystery had come.
Trujillo walked about, gazing especially at the life-sized portraits upon the walls. Indeed he was so absorbed in one and another that he seemed to quite forget their presence.
He stood for a long time before the painting of a beautiful young Spanish mother with a dark-eyed little girl on her lap and a tall, handsome youth standing at her side.
Trujillo, directly beneath this painting, turned and smiled at the almost breathless girls. He was about to speak, but before he could utter a word, there was a glad cry from Betsy Clossen.
“I know now who you are,” she exclaimed glowingly. “You are the little boy in that painting, grown up!”
Trujillo bowed in his courtly way. “Si Senorita. I am Trujillo Carlos Spinoza. Now I will tell you why I am here.”