in a piece of newspaper and
tucked under the corner of the hall linoleum. Find out first if
the General has a daughter who intends to go on the stage. If not,
you can go ahead with the story. Run cuts of the Kohinoor and J. P.
Morgan's collection, and work in pictures of the Kimberley mines and
Barney Barnato. Fill in with a tabulated comparison of the values of
diamonds, radium, and veal cutlets since the meat strike; and let it
run to a half page."

On the following day the reporter turned in his story. The Sunday
editor let his eye sprint along its lines. "H'm!" he said again. This
time the copy went into the waste-basket with scarcely a flutter.

The reporter stiffened a little around the lips; but he was whistling
softly and contentedly between his teeth when I went over to talk with
him about it an hour later.

"I don't blame the 'old man'," said he, magnanimously, "for cutting it
out. It did sound like funny business; but it happened exactly as I
wrote it. Say, why don't you fish that story out of the w.-b. and use
it? Seems to me it's as good as the tommyrot you write."

I accepted the tip, and if you read further you will learn the facts
about the diamond of the goddess Kali as vouched for by one of the
most reliable reporters on the staff.

Gen. Marcellus B. Ludlow lives in one of those decaying but
venerated old red-brick mansions in the West Twenties. The General
is a member of an old New York family that does not advertise. He is
a globe-trotter by birth, a gentleman by predilection, a millionaire
by the mercy of Heaven, and a connoisseur of precious stones by
occupation.

The reporter was admitted promptly when he made himself known at the
General's residence at about eight thirty on the evening that he
received the assignment. In the magnificent library he was greeted by
the distinguished traveller and connoisseur, a tall, erect gentleman
in the early fifties, with a nearly white moustache, and a bearing so
soldierly that one perceived in him scarcely a trace of the National
Guardsman. His weather-beaten countenance lit up with a charming smile
of interest when the reporter made known his errand.

"Ah, you have heard of my latest find. I shall be glad to show you
what I conceive to be one of the six most valuable blue diamonds in
existence."

The General opened a small safe in a corner of the library and brought
forth a plush-covered box. Opening this, he exposed to the reporter's
bewildered ga