Next came Kilgore, and they easily found him. He lay stretched upon the ground, dead and scorched almost beyond recognition, at the base of the metallic rod through which he had met his fate.
"Lend a hand here," said Nick. "We'll place him with his confederate until we can have them properly removed."
"So be it," said Chick, gravely. "It's about the last we can do for them, and this nearly ends our work on this job."
"You've got the others?"
"Every man of them."
"Well done!" nodded Nick, as they raised the lifeless form between them. "Behold the way of the transgressor."
"Hark!" exclaimed Patsy. "There goes the fire alarm. In three minutes there'll be a mob about here."
"Much good the firemen will do," rejoined Nick. "That house is doomed, and all that's in it."
He was right. With the passing of the tempest, and the first sign of a star in the eastern sky, all that remained of the house above the diamond plant was a heap of red, smoldering embers, filling the cellar and the secret chamber—and blotting out, though perhaps not forever, the secret art of that misguided genius, Jean Pylotte, dead with a bullet in his brain, on the floor of Rufus Venner's hall.
There remains but little to complete the record of this strange and stirring case.