“On the third of March,” Meyer began, “a man came to me and asked whether I wished to buy some diamonds. I told him, of course, that I should have to examine them first, whereupon he promptly pulled out of his pocket an oblong package wrapped in white tissue paper. Imagine my astonishment when I unrolled it and found within, twenty perfect stones ranging from one to five carats in weight. They were flawless and of that exquisite blue-white color which, as you both know, is so sought after and so rare. I have sold no better stones than those for five hundred dollars a carat.”
“And the man?” Herman Spreckles asked quickly. “Where did he say they came from?”
“He would not say,” Meyer answered. “He would tell me nothing. He said that if I did not care to buy them he would go elsewhere. I finally paid him three hundred and fifty dollars a carat—a great bargain. As soon as he had gone, I sent for a detective and had inquiries made. The fellow was one Johnson, a native of Denver, who had been in a variety of enterprises, none of which were very successful. For the past year he had apparently done nothing at all, though the report had it that he lived very well, in a comfortable place on the outskirts of the city, where he kept an expensive motor car, among other luxuries. His only intimate was an eccentric fellow named Randolph, who came here from the East some seven years ago, built an extraordinary fortified dwelling in the mountains, and has lived there a recluse ever since, supposedly dabbling in chemical experiments of some sort.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Spreckles. “You had this fellow Randolph looked up?”
“Not at once,” returned Meyer. “At the time it seemed to me that he could have no connection with the diamonds. It was much more probable that Johnson had stolen or smuggled them; but as the weeks passed no stones of that description were reported missing, and inquiry at Washington revealed the fact that there had been no suspicious purchasing abroad. The day after I received that letter, Johnson appeared with another packet, which, on opening, I found to be in every way identical with the first. There were twenty stones of the same blue-white color, and they weighed, to a fraction of a carat, exactly what the first had weighed.
“I was dumfounded. It seemed incredible that such stones as those could have been brought into the country without my knowing it. I was positive they had not been stolen. Johnson persisted in his absolute silence regarding the source from which they came, he was even loath to let them remain in my hands for three days while my experts made an exhaustive examination of them. It was then that I wrote to you. I had already paid out nearly twenty-five thousand dollars for the first lot, and dared not sink any more money without your sanction.”
“Quite so,” nodded Spreckles. “You sent on one of the stones, and I wired you to purchase as many of them as you could, and to find out their source.”
“Exactly,” returned Marcus Meyer. “I paid the man and at once set the detectives on the trail of Randolph, for the thing was becoming too serious to neglect any clue, however slight. The report they turned in was singularly complete in some respects, and disappointingly lacking in others. Scott Randolph is a man of about thirty-two or three. He comes from a good New England family, and, while he was still in college, his father died and left him about seventy-five thousand dollars. He appears not to have any near relatives and but few friends. He graduated from Yale, and then spent three years at the Sheffield school of science, where he paid particular attention to chemistry and mechanics. After leaving New Haven he came directly to Denver, bought a tract in the mountains and built there a stone house which is absolutely impregnable. The windows are guarded with iron bars and steel shutters, the door is of steel like a safe, and, so far as I could discover, no human being but this Johnson has ever been inside. His provisions are brought to the door and left there; apparently he does his own cooking, for there are no servants around.”
Herman Spreckles lifted a thin, wrinkled hand.
“Wait,” he said quickly. “What about the men who built the house?”