cutting and color. Please accept this as a gift from me, and be good enough to convey my compliments to the other four gentlemen, and assure them that theirs, too, were gifts.

Believe me, I had no intention of making a mystery of this. It was necessary definitely to attract your attention, and I could conceive of no more certain way than in this manner. In return for the value of the jewels I shall ask that you and the four others concerned give me an audience in your office on Thursday afternoon next at three o'clock; that you make known this request to the others; and that three experts whose judgment you will all accept shall meet with us.

I believe you will appreciate the necessity of secrecy in this matter, for the present at least. Respectfully,

E. VAN CORTLANDT WYNNE

They were on hand promptly, all of them—Mr. Latham, Mr. Schultze, Mr. Solomon, Mr. Stoddard and Mr. Harris. The experts agreed upon were the unemotional Mr. Czenki, Mr. Cawthorne, an Englishman in the employ of Solomon, Berger and Company, and Mr. Schultze, who gravely admitted that he was the first expert in the land, after Mr. Czenki, and whose opinion of himself was unanimously accepted by the others. The meeting place was the directors' room of the H. Latham Company.

At one minute of three o'clock a clerk entered with a card, and handed it to Mr. Latham.

"'Mr. E. van Cortlandt Wynne,'" Mr. Latham read aloud, and every man in the room moved a little in his chair. Then: "Show him in here, please."

"Now, gendlemens," observed Mr. Schultze sententiously, "ve shall zee vat ve shall zee."

The clerk went out and a moment later Mr. Wynne appeared. He was tall and rather slender, alert of eyes, graceful of person; perfectly self-possessed and sure of himself, yet without one trace of egotism in manner or appearance—a fair type of the brisk, courteous young business man of New York. He wore a tweed suit, and in his left hand carried a small sole-leather grip. For an instant he stood, framed by the doorway, meeting the sharp scrutiny of the assembled jewelers with a frank smile. For a little time no one spoke—merely gazed—and finally:

"Mr. Latham?" queried Mr. Wynne, looking from one to the other.

Mr. Latham came to his feet with a sudden realization of his responsibilities as a temporary host, and introductions followed. Mr. Wynne passed along on one side of the table, shaking hands with each man in turn until he came to Mr. Czenki. Mr. Latham introduced them.

"Mr. Czenki," repeated Mr. Wynne, and he allowed his eyes to rest frankly upon the expert for a moment. "Your name has been repeated to me so often that I almost feel as if I knew you."

Mr. Czenki bowed without speaking.

"I am assuming that this is the Mr. Czenki who was associated with
Mr. Barnato and Mr. Zeidt?" the young man went on.

"That is correct, yes," replied the expert.

"And I believe, too, that you once did some special work for Professor
Henri Moissan in Paris?"

Mr. Czenki's black eyes seemed to be searching the other's face for an instant, and then he nodded affirmatively.

"I made some tests for him, yes," he volunteered.

Mr. Wynne passed on along the other side of the long table, and stopped at the end. Mr. Latham was at his right, Mr. Schultze at his left, and Mr. Czenki sat at the far end, facing him. The small sole-leather grip was on the floor at Mr. Wynne's feet. For a moment he permitted himself to enjoy the varying expressions of interest on the faces around the table.

"Gentlemen," he began, then, "you all, probably, have seen my letter to Mr. Latham, or at least you are aware of its contents, so you understand that the diamonds which were mailed to you are your property. I am not a eleemosynary institution for the relief of diamond merchants," and he smiled a little, "for the gifts are preliminary to a plain business proposition—a method of concentrating your attention, and, in themselves, part payment, if I may say it, for any worry or inconvenience which followed upon their appearance. There are only five of them in the world, they are precisely alike, and they are yours. I beg of you to accept them with my compliments."

Mr. Schultze tilted his chair back a little, the better to study the young man's countenance.

"I am going to make some remarkable statements," the young man continued, "but each of those statements is capable of demonstration here and now. Don't hesitate to interrupt if there is a question in your mind, because everything I shall say is vital to each of you as bearing on the utter destruction of the world's traffic in diamonds. It is coming, gentlemen, it is coming, just as inevitably as that night follows day, unless you stop it. You can stop it by concerted action, in a manner which I shall explain later."

He paused and glanced along the table. Only the face of Mr. Czenki was impassive.

"Since the opening of the fields in South Africa," Mr. Wynne resumed quietly, "something like five hundred million dollars' worth of diamonds have been found there; and we'll say arbitrarily that all the other diamond fields of the world, including Brazil and Australia, have produced another five hundred million dollars' worth —in other words, since about 1868 a billion dollars' worth of diamonds has been placed upon the market. Gentlemen, that represents millions and millions of carats—forty, fifty, sixty million carats in the rough, say. Please bear those figures in mind a moment.

"Now, suddenly, and as yet secretly, the diamond output of the world has been increased fiftyfold—that is, gentlemen, within the year I can place another billion dollars' worth of diamonds, at the prices that hold now, in the open market; and within still another year I can place still another billion in the market; and on and on indefinitely. To put it differently, I have found the unlimited supply."

"Mein Gott, vere iss id?" demanded the German breathlessly.

Heedless of the question, Mr. Wynne leaned forward on the table, and gazed with half-closed eyes into the faces before him. Incredulity was the predominant expression, and coupled with that was amazement. Mr. Harris, with quite another emotion displaying itself on his face, pushed back his chair as if to rise; a slight wrinkle in his brow was all the evidence of interest displayed by Mr. Czenki.

"I am not crazy, gentlemen," Mr. Wynne went on after a moment, and the perfectly normal voice seemed to reassure Mr. Harris, for he sat still. "The diamonds are now in existence, untold millions of dollars' worth of them—but there is the tedious work of cutting. They're in existence, packed away as you pack potatoes—I thrust my two hands into a bag and bring them out full of stones as perfect as the ones I sent you."

He straightened up again and the deep earnestness of his face relaxed a little.

"I believe you said, Mr. Wynne, that you could prove any assertion you might make, here and now?" suggested Mr. Latham coldly. "It occurs to me that such extraordinary statements as these demand immediate proof."

Mr. Wynne turned and smiled at him.

"You are quite right," he agreed; and then, to all of them: "It's hardly necessary to dwell upon the value of colored diamonds—the rarest and most precious of all—the perfect rose-color, the perfect blue and the perfect green." He drew a small, glazed white box