Chapter XII: Getting in Deeper

"You see, Mees Kenway," sputtered the swarthy man eagerly, "I catch the paper, here." He rapped the _Post_ again with his finger. "I read the Engleesh--yes. I see the notice you, the honest Kenway, have put in the paper--"

"Let me tell you, sir," said Agnes, starting up, "_all_ the Kenways are honest. I am not the only honest person in our family I should hope!"

Agnes was much annoyed. The excitable little foreigner spread abroad his hands again and bowed low before her.

"Please! Excuse!" he said. "I admire all your family, oh, so very much! But it is to you who put in the paper the words here, about the very ancient silver bracelet." Again that woodpecker rapping on the Lost and Found column in the _Post_. "No?"

"Yes. I put the advertisement in the paper," acknowledged Agnes, but wishing very much that she had not, or that Neale O'Neil was present at this exciting moment to help her handle the situation.

"So! I have come for it," cried the swarthy man, as though the matter were quite settled.

But Agnes' mind began to function pretty well again. She determined not to be "rushed." This strange foreigner might be perfectly honest. But there was not a thing to prove that the bracelet given to Tess and Dot by the Gypsy women belonged to him.

"How do you know," she asked, "that the bracelet we have in our possession is the one you have lost?"

"I? Oh, no, lady! I did not lose the ancient heirloom. Oh, no."

"But you say--"

"I am only its rightful owner," he explained. "Had Queen Alma's bracelet been in my possession it never would have been lost and so found by the so--gracious Kenway. Indeed, no!"

"Then, what have you come here for?" cried Agnes, in some desperation. "I cannot give the bracelet to anybody but the one who lost it--"

"You say here the owner!" cried the man, beginning again the woodpecker tapping on the paper.

"But how do I know you own it?" she gasped.

"Show it me. In one moment's time can I tell--at the one glance," was the answer of assurance. "Oh, yes, yes, yes!"

These "yeses" were accompanied by the emphatic tapping on the paper. Agnes wondered that the _Post_ at that spot was not quite worn through.

Perhaps it was fortunate that at this moment Neale O'Neil came in. That he came direct from the garage and apparently from a struggle with oily machinery, both his hands and face betrayed.

"Hey!" he exploded. "If we are going to take Mr. Pinkney out on a cross-country chase after that missing pirate this afternoon, we've got to get a hustle on. You going to be ready, Aggie? Mr. Pinkney gets home at a quarter to one."

"Oh, Neale!" cried Agnes, turning eagerly to greet the boy. "Talk to this man--do! I don't know what to say to him."

The boy's countenance broadened in a smile.

"'Say "Hullo!" and "How-de-do!"
"How's the world a-using you?"'"

quoted Neale, and chuckled outright. "What's his name? What does he want?"

"Costello--that me," interposed the strange junkman. He gazed curiously at Neale with his snapping black eyes. "_You_ are not Kenway--here in the pape'?"

Again the finger tapped upon the Lost and Found column in the _Post_. Neale shook his head. He glanced out of the open door and spied the wagon and its informative sign.

"You are a junkman, are you, Mr. Costello?"

"Yes, yes, yes! I buy the pape', buy the rag and bot'--buy anytheeng I get cheap. But not to buy do I come this time to Mees Kenway. No, no! I come because of this in the paper."

His tapping finger called attention again to the advertisement of the bracelet. Neale expelled a surprised whistle.

"Oh, Aggie!" he said, "is he after the Gypsy bracelet?"

The swarthy man's face was all eagerness again.

"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.

"We don't know that," said Neale, somewhat bruskly. "You must prove it."

"Prove it?"

"Yes. In the first place, describe the bracelet. Tell us just how it is engraved, or ornamented, or whatever it is. How wide and thick is it? What kind of a bracelet is it, aside from its being made of silver?"

"Ah! Queen Alma's bracelet is so well known to the Costello--how shall I say? Yes, yes, yes!" cried the man, with rather graceful gestures. "And when Beeg Jeem tell me she is lost--"

"All right. Describe it," put in Neale.

Agnes suddenly tugged at Neale's sleeve. Her pretty face was aflame with excitement.

"Oh, Neale!" she interposed in a whisper. "Even if he can describe it exactly we do not know that he is the real owner."

"Shucks! That's right," agreed the boy.

He turned to Costello again demanding:

"How can you prove that this bracelet--if it is the one you think it is--belongs to you?"

"She belong to the Costello family. It is an heirloom. I tell it you."

"That's all right. But you've got to prove it. Even if you describe the thing that only proves that you have seen it, or heard it described yourself. It might be so, you know, Mr. Costello. You must give us some evidence of ownership."

"Queen Alma's bracelet--" began Costello.

The junkman made a despairing gesture with wide-spread arms.

"Me? How can I tell you, sir, and the honest Kenway? It has always belong to the Costello. Yes, yes, yes! That so-ancient bracelet, Beeg Jeem have no right to it."

"But he was the one who lost it!" exclaimed Neale, being quite confident now of the identity of "Beeg Jeem."

"Yes, yes, yes! So he say. I no believe. Then I see the reading here in the pape', of the honest Kenway"--tap, tap, tapping once more of the forefinger--"and I see it must be so. I--"

"Hold on!" exclaimed Neale. "You did not lose the bracelet. This other fellow did. You bring him here and let him prove ownership."

"No, no!" raved Costello, shaking both clenched hands above his head. "He shall not have it. It is mine. I am _the_ Costello. Queen Alma, she give it to the great, great, great gran'mudder of _my_ great, great, great--"

"Shucks!" ejaculated Neale. "Now you are going too deep into the family records for me. I can't follow you. It looks to me like a case for the courts to settle."

"Oh, Neale!" gasped Agnes.

"Why, Aggie, we'd get into hot water if we let this fellow, or any of those other Gypsies, have the bracelet offhand. If this chap wants it, he will have to see Mr. Howbridge."

"Oh, yes!" murmured the girl with sudden relief in her voice. "We can tell Mr. Howbridge."

"Guess we'll have to," agreed Neale. "We certainly have bit off more than we can chew, Aggie. I'll say we have. I guess maybe we'd have been wiser if we had told your guardian about the old bracelet before advertising it. And Ruth has nothing on us, at that! She did not tell him.

"We're likely," concluded Neale, with a side glance at the swarthy man, "to have a dozen worse than this one come here to bother us. We surely did start something when we had that ad. printed, Aggie."