“Yah, a million dollars ad leasd,” remarked Mr. Schultze grimly.

“Thank you,” and the detective smiled shrewdly.  “Your instructions were to find where he got them.  If there had been a theft of a million dollars’ worth of diamonds anywhere in this world, I would have known it; so I took steps to examine the Custom House records of this and other cities to see if there had been an unusual shipment to Mr. Wynne, or to any one else outside of the diamond dealers, thinking this might give me a clew.”

“And what was the result?” demanded Mr. Latham quickly.

“My agents have covered all the Atlantic ports and they did not come in through the Custom House,” replied Mr. Birnes.  “I have not heard from the western agents as yet, but my opinion is—­is that they were perhaps smuggled in.  Smuggling, after all, is simple with the thousands of miles of unguarded coasts of this country.  I don’t know this, of course; I advance it merely as a possibility.”

Mr. Latham turned to Mr. Schultze and Mr. Czenki with a triumphant smile.  Diamonds in meteors!  Tommyrot!

“Of course,” the detective resumed, “the whole investigation centers about this man Wynne.  He has been under the eyes of my agents as no other man ever was, and in spite of this has been able to keep in correspondence with his accomplices.  And, gentlemen, he has done it not through the mails, not over the telephone, not by telegraph, and yet he has done it.”

“By wireless, perhaps?” suggested Mr. Czenki.  It was the first time he had spoken, and the detective took occasion then and there to stare at him frankly.

“And not by wireless,” he said at last.  “He sends and receives messages from the roof of his house in Thirty-seventh Street by homing pigeons!”

“Some more fandastics, eh, Laadham?” Mr. Schultze taunted.  “Some more chimericals?”

“I demonstrate this much by the close watch I have kept of Mr. Wynne,” the detective went on, there being no response to his questioning look at Mr. Schultze.  “One of my agents, stationed on the roof of the house adjoining Mr. Wynne’s” (it was the maid-servant next door) “has, on at least one occasion, seen him remove a tissue-paper strip from a carrier pigeon’s leg and read what was written on it, after which he kissed it, gentlemen, kissed it; then he destroyed it.  What did it mean?  It means that that particular message was from the girl to whom he transferred the diamonds in the cab, and that he is madly in love with her.”

“Oh, dese wimmins!  I dell you!” commented Mr. Schultze.

There was a little pause, then Mr. Birnes continued impressively: