The Diamond Master | Page 4

of the glazed boxes and carefully stowed it away in a cavernous pocket; Mr. Latham mechanically disposed of the other in the same manner.
"Whose are they?" he demanded at length. "Why are they sent to us like this, with no name, no letter of explanation? Until I saw the stone you have I believed this other had been sent to me by some careless fool for setting, perhaps, and that a letter would follow it. I merely brought it here on the chance that it was one of your importations and that you could identify it. But since you have received one under circumstances which seem to be identical, now--" He paused helplessly. "What does it mean?"
Mr. Schultze shrugged his huge shoulders and thoughtfully flicked the ashes from his cigar into the consomme.
"You know, Laadham," he said slowly, "dey don't pick up diamonds like dose on der streed gorners. I didn't believe dere vas a stone of so bigness in der Unided States whose owner I didn't know id vas. Dose dat are here I haf bring in myself, mostly--dose I did not I haf kept drack of. I don'd know, Laadham, I don'd know. Der longer I lif der more I don'd know."
The two men completed a scant luncheon in silence.
"Obviously," remarked Mr. Latham as he laid his napkin aside, "the diamonds were sent to us by the same person; obviously they were sent to us with a purpose; obviously we will, in time, hear from the person who sent them; obviously they were intended to be perfectly matched; so let's see if they are. Come to my office and let Czenki examine the one you have." He hesitated an instant. "Suppose you let me take it. We'll try a little experiment."
He carefully placed the jewel which the German handed to him, in an outside pocket, and together they went to his office. Mr. Czenki appeared, in answer to a summons, and Mr. Latham gave him the German's box.
"That's the diamond you examined for me this morning, isn't it?" he inquired.
Mr. Czenki turned it out into his hand and scrutinized it perfunctorily.
"Yes," he replied after a moment.
"Are you quite certain?" Mr. Latham insisted.
Something in the tone caused Mr. Czenki to raise his beady black eyes questioningly for an instant, after which he walked over to a window and adjusted his magnifying glass again. For a moment or more he stood there, then:
"It's the same stone," he announced positively.
"Id iss der miracle, Laadham, when Czenki make der mistake!" the German exploded suddenly. "Show him der odder von."
Mr. Czenki glanced from one to the other with quick, inquisitive glance; then, without a word, Mr. Latham produced the second box and opened it. The expert stared incredulously at the two perfect stones and finally, placing them side by side on a sheet of paper, returned to the window and sat down. Mr. Latham and Mr. Schultze stood beside him, looking on curiously as he turned and twisted the jewels under his powerful glass.
"As a matter of fact," asked Mr. Latham pointedly at last, "you would not venture to say which of those stones it was you examined this morning, would you?"
"No," replied Mr. Czenki curtly, "not without weighing them."
"And if the weight is identical?"
"No," said Mr. Czenki again. "If the weight is the same there is not the minutest fraction of a difference between them."
CHAPTER III
THURSDAY AT THREE
Mr. Latham ran through his afternoon mail with feverish haste and found--nothing; Mr. Schultze achieved the same result more ponderously. On the following morning the mail still brought nothing. About eleven o'clock Mr. Latham's desk telephone rang.
"Come to my offiz," requested Mr. Schultze, in gutteral excitement. "Mein Gott, Laadham, der--come to my offiz, Laadham, und bring der diamond!"
Mr. Latham went. Including himself, there were the heads of the five greatest jewel establishments in America, representing, perhaps, one-tenth of the diamond trade of the country, in Mr. Schultze's office. He found the other four gathered around a small table, and on this table--Mr. Latham gasped as he looked--lay four replicas of the mysterious diamond in his pocket.
"Pud id down here, Laadham," directed Mr. Schultze. "Dey're all dwins alike--Dweedeldums und Dweedledeeses."
Mr. Latham silently placed the fifth diamond on the table, and for a minute or more the five men stood still and gazed, first at the diamonds, then at one another, and then again at the diamonds. Mr. Solomon, the crisply spoken head of Solomon, Berger and Company, broke the silence.
"These all came yesterday morning by mail, one to each of us just as the one came to you," he informed Mr. Latham. "Mr. Harris here, of Harris and Blacklock, learned that I had received such a stone, and brought the one he had received for comparison. We made some inquiries together and found that a duplicate