"He iss delling you dat dose diamonds are _made_--made like doughnuds, mitoud der hole; manufactured, pud togedher.

Don'd you ged id ?" He ran off into guttural German expletives; and slowly, slowly the idea began to dawn upon Mr.Latham.

The diamonds Mr.Wynne had shown were not real, then; they were artificial! It was some sort of a swindle! Of course! But the experts had agreed that they were diamonds--real diamonds! Perhaps they had been deceived, or--by George! Did these two men mean to say that they were real diamonds, but that they were _manufactured ?_ Mr.Latham's tidy little imagination balked at that.

Absurd! Whoever heard of a diamond as big as the Koh-i-noor, or the Regent, or the Orloff being made?
They were crazy--the pair of them! "Do I understand," he demanded in a tone of deliberate annoyance, "that you, Czenki, and you, Schultze, expect me to believe that those diamonds we saw were not natural, but _were_ real diamonds turned out by machinery in a--in a diamond factory?
Is that what you are driving at?
"_Das iss!_" declared the German bluntly.

"Id vas coming in dime, Laadham, id vas coming, of course Und I haf always noticed dat whatever iss coming does come." "Made, made--made as you make marbles," Mr.Czenki repeated monotonously.