“Oh, the lovely thing!” Jane seized the necklace. “To possess something like this! Isn’t it glorious, captain?”
“Let me see it.” Dennison inspected the necklace carefully. “It is genuine. Where did you get this?”
“Long ago, during the Boxer troubles, I bought it from a sailor.”
“Ah, probably loot from the Peking palace. How much is it worth?”
Murder blazed up in Ling Foo’s heart, but his face remained smilingly bland.
“What I can get for it. But if the lady wishes I will give it to her in exchange for the glass beads. I had no right to sell the beads,” Ling Foo went on with a deprecating gesture. “I thought the man who owned them would never claim them. But he came this noon. Something belonging to his ancestor—and he demands it.”
“Trade them? Good heavens, yes! Of all things! Here!” Jane unclasped the beads and thrust them toward Ling Foo’s eager claw.
But Dennison reached out an intervening hand.
“Just a moment, Miss Norman. What’s the game?” he asked of Ling Foo.