She looked at him curiously.
Nicky, very serious, nodded to Tom who rose and walked slowly over to the window.
“It’s just a roundabout way to do her a favor,” Mr. Neale whispered to the mystified father Cliff was winking at. “There’s no harm.”
Tom was unostentatiously moving aside the curtain on a small chest of shelves in which various relics were stored.
Cliff came close to Ma’am Sib.
“Ever see anything like this before?” he asked. He laid on the table before the shriveled old crone a small, rude figure, cut out of stone, very much discolored, with its legs broken off, and having a hideous face and arms that stuck down without any hands to finish them off.
The old woman stared.
“Why—why—let me see! I know that—I seem to remember——”
“Oh, no,” laughed Nicky. “Don’t strain your memory, Ma’am Sib. That is one of the ancient Gods of an old Central American tribe. We got hold of it—well, never mind,” he did not wish to say they had found it in the despatch box with treasure, recovered later from the locker of the burned Libertad, and that they supposed the Spanish Inquisitors had taken it from the Indians. “It’s a powerful god.”
“I—I seem to see—” began the crone, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.