lling you dat dose diamonds are _made_--made like doughnuds, mitoud
der hole; manufactured, pud togedher. Don'd you ged id?"

He ran off into guttural German expletives; and slowly, slowly the
idea began to dawn upon Mr. Latham. The diamonds Mr. Wynne had
shown were not real, then; they were artificial! It was some sort of
a swindle! Of course! But the experts had agreed that they were
diamonds--real diamonds! Perhaps they had been deceived, or--by
George! Did these two men mean to say that they were real diamonds,
but that they were _manufactured?_ Mr. Latham's tidy little
imagination balked at that. Absurd! Whoever heard of a diamond as
big as the Koh-i-noor, or the Regent, or the Orloff being made? They
were crazy--the pair of them!

"Do I understand," he demanded in a tone of deliberate annoyance,
"that you, Czenki, and you, Schultze, expect me to believe that those
diamonds we saw were not natural, but _were_ real diamonds turned out
by machinery in a--in a diamond factory? Is that what you are
driving at?

"_Das iss!_" declared the German bluntly. "Id vas coming in dime,
Laadham, id vas coming, of course Und I haf always noticed dat
whatever iss coming does come."

"Made, made--made as you make marbles," Mr. Czenki repeated
monotonously. "Yes, it had to come, but--but imagine the insuperable
difficulties that one brain had to surmount!" He passed a thin hand
across his flushed brow, and was thoughtfully silent.

"I don't believe it," asserted Mr. Latham tartly. "It's impossible!
I don't believe it!" And sat down.

"Id don'd madder much whedher you belief id or nod," remarked the
German in a tone of resignation. "If id iss, id iss. Und all dose
diamonds in your place und mine are nod worth much more by der bushel
as potatoes."

Mr. Latham turned away from him, half angrily, and glared at the
expert, who was still regarding the floor.

"What do you know about this, anyway, Czenki?" he demanded. "How do
you _know_ he makes them? Have you _seen_ him make them?"

Thus directly addressed Mr. Czenki looked up, and the living flame of
wonder within his eyes flickered and died. In silence, for a minute
or more, he studied the unconcealed skepticism in his employer's
face, and then asked slowly:

"Do you know what diamonds are, Mr. Latham?"

"There is some theory that they are pure carbon, crystallized."

"They are that," declared the expert impatiently. "You know that
diamonds have b