The name came snapping from his thin, straight lips like the shot of a pistol, and the young man sprang up from where he had been sitting at the far end of the table and came forward.
“Yes, sir.”
“Is such a thing possible—manufacturing diamonds, I mean.”
James Pickering hesitated an instant.
“It has been done,” he said slowly. “Both Edouard Fournier, of Paris, and Professor Hedwig, of Berlin University, have produced pure diamonds; but the process was so costly and the resulting stones so small, that their methods were not commercially practicable.”
Again silence fell. Spreckles was thinking, while Philander Morgan sat aghast, with pendulous cheeks and popping eyes. His expression of dismay would have been ludicrous had the situation not been so serious.
Marcus Meyer passed a crumpled handkerchief over his moist forehead; then he began again.
“I can think of no other explanation,” he said in a low, strained voice. “The man never leaves his house. His only known accomplice never leaves Denver. Yet, a few days after these regular periods of retirement, twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of exquisite diamonds are brought to me with the precision of clockwork. They are all of the same perfect quality and the carat weight of each package is identical. I could make out my check beforehand and it would be correct.”
“You have the stones?” Spreckles asked quickly.
Meyer nodded.