He arose as if to go.  Mr. Schultze brought a heavy hand down on the slim shoulder of the expert, and turned to Mr. Latham.

“Laadham, you are listening to der man who knows more as all of us pud in a crowd,” he declared. “Mein Gott, I do believe he’s right!”

Mr. Latham was a cold, unimaginative man of business; he hadn’t even believed in fairies when he was a boy.  This was child-talk; he permitted himself to express his opinion by a jerk of his head, and was silent.  Diamonds like those out of meteors!  Bosh!

CHAPTER IX

AND MORE DIAMONDS!

There was a rap on the door, and a clerk thrust his head in.

“Mr. Birnes to see you, sir,” he announced.

“Show him in,” directed Mr. Latham.  “Sit down, both of you, and let’s see what he has to say.”

There was an odd expression of hope deferred on the detective’s face when he entered.  He glanced inquiringly at Mr. Schultze and Mr. Czenki, whereupon Mr. Latham introduced them.

“You may talk freely,” he added.  “We are all interested alike.”

The detective crossed his legs and balanced his hat carefully on a knee, the while he favored Mr. Czenki with a sharp scrutiny.  There was that in the thin, scarred face and in the beady black eyes which inevitably drew the attention of a stranger, and half a dozen times as he talked Mr. Birnes glanced at the expert.

He retold the story of the cab ride up Fifth Avenue, and the car trip back downtown—­omitting embarrassing details such as the finding of two notes addressed to himself—­dwelt a moment upon the empty gripsack which Mr. Wynne carried on the car, and then: 

“When you told me, Mr. Latham, that the gripsack had contained diamonds when Mr. Wynne left here I knew instantly how he got rid of them.  He transferred them to some person in the cab, in accordance with a carefully prearranged plan.  That person was a woman!”

“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?”