“Yes, yes, yes!” he sputtered. “I am Gypsy. Spanish Gypsy. Of the tribe of Costello. I am—what you say?—direct descendent of Queen Alma who live three hunder’—maybe more—year ago, and she own that bracelet the honest Kenway find!”
“She—she’s dead, then? This Queen Alma?” stammered Neale.
“Si, si! Yes, yes! But the so-antique bracelet descend by right to our family. That Beeg Jeem—”
He burst again into the language he had used before which was quite unintelligible to either of his listeners; but Neale thought by the man’s expression of countenance that his opinion of “Beeg Jeem” was scarcely to be told in polite English.
“Wait!” Neale broke in. “Let’s get this straight. We—we find a bracelet which we advertise. You say the bracelet is yours. Where and how did you lose it?”
“I already tell the honest Kenway, I do not lose it.”
“It was stolen from you, then?”
“Yes, yes, yes! It was stole. A long ago it was stole. And now Beeg Jeem say he lose it. You find—yes?”
“This seems to be complicated,” Neale declared, shaking his head and gazing wonderingly at Agnes. “If you did not lose it yourself, Mr. Costello—”
“But it is mine!” cried the man.