"Ah, my poor rocket!" he sighed. "But it is fate, I suppose; Kismet, as the Turkish say. Still, I deserved a better fate than to be captured by a pair of American professors, when the secret service of the world was on my trail."
"Then cheer up!" said Stoddard, gritting his teeth to keep back the pain of his throbbing shoulder. "For I have the honor to represent Washington in this case."
At that, the prince scowled darkly for a moment. Then he brightened.
"Kismet again! I might have acted differently, had I known that, but—well, I drink to your success, Doctor Stoddard!"
Whereupon, before they could restrain him, he lifted a vial from a shelf over one of the cabinets and downed its contents.
"A diamond-dust cocktail!" he smiled, replacing the vial. "The most expensive, even in your country of costly drinks—and the most deadly!"
But Stoddard knew, as the doomed nobleman stood there facing them in stoic triumph, that diamond dust in the human system was as slow as it was deadly, and that the desperate gesture had been futile, so far as justice was concerned.
There would be ample time, in the weeks Prince Krassnov of Imperial Russia still lived, to round up his international allies and stamp out the remnants of their amazing ring of diamond smugglers.
While as for Professor Prescott, he was thinking with what amazement the members of his expedition back on Kinchinjunga would receive the cablegram he would dispatch that night, informing them that Stoddard and himself were safe in El Paso, Texas.