“Yes,” said Mr. Gray. “An old, widowed lady, and she will be very glad of the money for she is poor.”
The boys were glad for her, and unselfishly voted to add a little from their plenty to help the lady. Later she refused to take more than a fair part, for that, she said, would keep her in easy circumstances for the rest of her life.
While the boys were adding details of their adventure and discussing what they might do with some of the gold, and Mr. Neale and Mr. Gray were comparing notes on the gold figures and silver placques of a looted Inca city which had been secured later from the treasure key, a knock came at the door and Ma’am Sib, the old voodoo woman, came in with a goggle-eyed boy of dark skin and about ten years old.
“Who sen for Ma’am Sib?” she demanded in her high, querulous tones. “Did you, white sirs?”
“We did,” Nicky stated. “We, the three members of a secret order as powerful as any in the world.”
She looked at him sharply to see if he was joking or trying to make her feel ridiculous. Oddly enough, Nicky was really serious.
“This won’t be a lecture, Ma’am Sib,” Cliff added. “But we want to show you something about voodoo that even you won’t guess about. If you can tell us how it’s done, we’ll be glad.”
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.
“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.
“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.”