CHAPTER XVI
MR. CZENKI EXPLAINS
Fairly drunk with excitement, his lean face, usually expressionless, now flushed and working strangely, and his beady black eyes aglitter, Mr. Czenki reeled into the study where Mr. Latham and Mr. Schultze sat awaiting Mr. Birnes. He raised one hand, enjoining silence, closed the door, locked it and placed the key in his pocket, after which he turned upon Mr. Latham.
"He makes them, man! He makes them!" he burst out between gritting teeth. "Don't you understand? He makes them!"
Mr. Latham, astonished and a little startled, came to his feet; the phlegmatic German sat still, staring at the expert without comprehension. Mr. Czenki's thin fist was clenched under his employer's nose, and the jeweler drew back a little, vaguely alarmed.
"I don't understand what—" he began.
"The diamonds!" Mr. Czenki interrupted, and the long pent-up excitement within him burst into a flame of impatience. "The diamonds! He makes them! Don't you see? Diamonds! He manufactures them!"
"Gott in Himmel!" exclaimed Mr. Schultze, and it was anything but an irreverent ejaculation. He arose. "Der miracle has come to pass! Ve might haf known! Ve might haf known!"
"Millions and millions of dollars' worth of them, even billions, for all we know," the expert rushed on in incoherent violence. "A sum greater than all the combined wealth of the world in the hands of one man! Think of it!" Mr. Latham only gazed at him blankly, and he turned instinctively to the one who understood—Mr. Schultze. "Think of the mind that achieved it, man!"
He collapsed into a chair and sat looking at the floor, his fingers writhing within one another, muttering to himself. Mr. Latham was a cold, sane, unimaginative man of business. As yet the full import of it all hadn't reached him. He stared dumbly, first at Mr. Czenki, then at Mr. Schultze. There was not even incredulity in the look, only faint amazement that two such well-balanced men should have gone mad at once. At last the German importer turned upon him flatly.