life safer."

He spoke to the men in Russian and they withdrew.

Then he advanced to a divan beside a teakwood table on which stood a
large copper samovar. Dropping down, he motioned for them to take
seats beside him.

"You will have tea, my friends? Or perhaps you would prefer whiskey
and soda?"

They chose the latter, since their recent exertions seemed to have
warranted it, and their host tinkled a silver bell, bringing a Chinese
boy beaming and salaaming.

A few words to him and the samovar was lit; then he hurried off on
padding feet, to return with miraculous speed, bearing not only the
whiskey and soda but a platter heaped with exotic cakes, cubed
sandwiches of caviar and spiced fish, together with a profusion of
other delicacies--doubly welcome to men who had toiled all day on a
mountain peak, with nothing but chocolate to sustain them.

And while they drank and ate, Prince Krassnov told his story--a story
whose very first words were an admission that he was the head of the
great diamond-smuggling plot Stoddard had set out to trace down.

* * * * *

It was a story as dramatic and romantic as it was unscrupulous.

Finding himself and the crew of the rocket marooned on the upper
slopes of this mighty mountain, in the midst of an incalculable
wealth, he had set about at once to capitalize their astounding
discovery.

First he had made certain adjustments in the mechanism of his
apparatus--which fortunately had not been injured by its forced
landing--and then he had taken off with specimens of the treasure,
bringing the craft down this time with precision in the midst of his
ancestral estates near Baku, in the foothills of the Caucasus
Mountains.

This vast property the Bolsheviks had not confiscated, partly because
of its remoteness, no doubt, and partly because of the prince's
services to the Soviet Republic. At any rate, it was here he had
developed in secret the details of his amazing plot--a plot that had
as its aim not only his own enrichment but the rehabilitation of all
the Russian nobles.

Once they had heard his story of the Diamond Thunderbolt and seen the
specimens he showed them, many had eagerly joined the plot, with the
result that an international ring had been formed for disposal of the
gems.

His plans perfected, Prince Krassnov had then returned to Kinchinjunga
with his rocket, since when the mysterious flood of those perfect
diamonds into the jewe