"A woman!" Mr. Latham repeated, as if startled.
"Dere iss alvays wimmins in id," remarked Mr. Schultze philosophically. "Go on."
Mr. Birnes was not at all backward about detailing the persistence and skill it had required on his part to establish this fact; and he went on at length to acquaint them with the search that had been made by a dozen of his men to find a trace of the woman from the time she climbed the elevated stairs at Fifty-eighth Street. He admitted that the quest for her had thus far been fruitless, assuring them at the same time that it would go steadily on, for the present at least.
"And now, Mr. Latham," he went on, and inadvertently he glanced at Mr. Czenki, "I have been hampered, of course, by the fact that you have not taken me completely into your confidence in this matter. I mean," he added hastily, "that beyond a mere hint of their value I know nothing whatever about the diamonds which Mr. Wynne had in the gripsack. I gathered, however, that they were worth a large sum of money—perhaps, even a million dollars?"
"Yah, a million dollars ad leasd," remarked Mr. Schultze grimly.
"Thank you," and the detective smiled shrewdly. "Your instructions were to find where he got them. If there had been a theft of a million dollars' worth of diamonds anywhere in this world, I would have known it; so I took steps to examine the Custom House records of this and other cities to see if there had been an unusual shipment to Mr. Wynne, or to any one else outside of the diamond dealers, thinking this might give me a clew."
"And what was the result?" demanded Mr. Latham quickly.
"My agents have covered all the Atlantic ports and they did not come in through the Custom House," replied Mr. Birnes. "I have not heard from the western agents as yet, but my opinion is—is that they were perhaps smuggled in. Smuggling, after all, is simple with the thousands of miles of unguarded coasts of this country. I don't know this, of course; I advance it merely as a possibility."
Mr. Latham turned to Mr. Schultze and Mr. Czenki with a triumphant smile. Diamonds in meteors! Tommyrot!
"Of course," the detective resumed, "the whole investigation centers about this man Wynne. He has been under the eyes of my agents as no other man ever was, and in spite of this has been able to keep in correspondence with his accomplices. And, gentlemen, he has done it not through the mails, not over the telephone, not by telegraph, and yet he has done it."