After half an hour of rapid walking the man disappeared over a gigantic dune that Dick had noticed in the distance the previous evening, and which he had heard marked the position of the next field to be examined.
More cautiously now, and keeping well away from the man's actual spoor, Dick crept up the slope, and peered over the crest down the farther side.
The moon at that moment shone out clearly, and there, not fifty yards away from him, Dick could see the figure of Grosman the prospector. He was walking slowly up and down, now and then throwing his arm out with the action of a sower, and the seeds he sowed sparkled like dewdrops in the moonlight.
For he was sowing diamonds—salting!
CHAPTER III
Salting! there was no doubt about it.
The prospector to whom the syndicate owning the fields had entrusted the important task of locating the most likely spots on which to demonstrate their richness, had with admirable forethought forestalled that notoriously fickle jade Fortune and brought the diamonds along himself, before the remainder of the "testing" party arrived. To-morrow the whole caboodle of unbiased individuals, representing both his own party and the enormously wealthy Jo'burg financiers who were negotiating for the fields with a view to a big flotation, would come along as per schedule, and would doubtless be greatly impressed by this fresh proof of the fields' richness!
Dick lay flat on his face on the warm and accommodating sand-dune, and watched Grosman for some time: he was prodigal with the diamonds, and this was undoubtedly destined to be an exceptionally rich field.
"The question is," reasoned Dick, "how many of these swabs are in this swindle. Let's see now, it's no good letting my angry passions run away with me, and jumping on this chap as I'd like to do. I must reason this out. The other prospector sleeps in the same tent sometimes disagrees with this chap as to the best place to test. In that case yes! they've always tried and found in both places. And they sleep in the same tent. They're both in it. Same with the experts, both in the same tent, and they keep the diamonds. That's what this swab went to them to-night for. And Zweiter and Spattboom, well, no one could be honest with faces like theirs. Blazes! They're all in it, and all this elaborate business is just to artistically fool the old professor—he's not part of the swindle, anyway."
That was it undoubtedly. The old professor, who, simple as a child in many things, had yet a name famous the world over; he it was that this precious crowd of scoundrels were deceiving so elaborately he it was whose word of the genuineness of the finds would carry weight with the financiers and when the time became ripe would rope in the guileless public.