With a sharp word to the trooper, Brandt unslung his rifle and spurred headlong after the fleeing horseman, now rapidly nearing the shelter of the dunes.
Meanwhile, the professor and Dick turned their attention to the dying man, whilst the others resumed the clamor of questions and recriminations which the arrival of the police had interrupted.
Gilderman, his self-confidence almost restored by the approaching death of one, and the flight of the other of his accusers, now tried to brazen matters out.
Thrusting himself before Dick, who was helping dress the wound, he bent down before Grosman and began loudly, so that all might hear. "Now then, Grosman, where are those diamonds? It is a most outrageous thing that you have done, to rob your employers in this manner. And that ridiculous lie of Junes' about salting! Come, man, tell me where the diamonds are, and tell these people that Junes made up that yarn as you know he did and I'll try to save you from the police. Come now own up where are the stones?"
"You cannot save him from death and the Maker who will judge him," said the professor sternly as he came from his tent with his medicine chest. "Man, think shame to pester the man so; men do not lie on their deathbed"; and as Gilderman did not move he swung him aside by the collar as though he had been a child.
Gilderman uttered a furious exclamation. "Absurd preposterous professor, surely you are not mad enough to believe the story this would-be thief has told?"
"Story?" queried the professor, "what story has he told? Junes, yes! but this man, so far, has accused you of nothing!"
Gilderman flushed with vexation at the false step he had made.
"But the diamonds?" he insisted, "he confessed they had planned to steal them. Make him tell you where they are?"
"Maybe the police will bring them back with Junes," said the professor, going on with his work of dressing the wound. "And if not, you ask? Well, Herr Gilderman, what does it matter, a thousand carats or so! The rich fields you found them on are still there; it took but a few hours to find the stones, surely we can return to those so rich fields and find again a thousand carats! Hein?"