“Mein Gott, vere iss id?” demanded the German breathlessly.

Heedless of the question, Mr. Wynne leaned forward on the table, and gazed with half-closed eyes into the faces before him.  Incredulity was the predominant expression, and coupled with that was amazement.  Mr. Harris, with quite another emotion displaying itself on his face, pushed back his chair as if to rise; a slight wrinkle in his brow was all the evidence of interest displayed by Mr. Czenki.

“I am not crazy, gentlemen,” Mr. Wynne went on after a moment, and the perfectly normal voice seemed to reassure Mr. Harris, for he sat still.  “The diamonds are now in existence, untold millions of dollars’ worth of them—­but there is the tedious work of cutting.  They’re in existence, packed away as you pack potatoes—­I thrust my two hands into a bag and bring them out full of stones as perfect as the ones I sent you.”

He straightened up again and the deep earnestness of his face relaxed a little.

“I believe you said, Mr. Wynne, that you could prove any assertion you might make, here and now?” suggested Mr. Latham coldly.  “It occurs to me that such extraordinary statements as these demand immediate proof.”

Mr. Wynne turned and smiled at him.

“You are quite right,” he agreed; and then, to all of them:  “It’s hardly necessary to dwell upon the value of colored diamonds—­the rarest and most precious of all—­the perfect rose-color, the perfect blue and the perfect green.”  He drew a small, glazed white box from his pocket and opened it.  “Please be good enough to look at this, Mr. Czenki.”

He spun a rosily glittering object some three-quarters of an inch in diameter, along the table toward Mr. Czenki.  It flamed and flashed as it rolled, with that deep iridescent blaze which left no doubt of what it was.  Every man at the table arose and crowded about Mr. Czenki, who held a flamelike sphere in his outstretched palm for their inspection.  There was a tense, breathless instant.

“It’s a diamond!” remarked Mr. Czenki, as if he himself had doubted it.  “A deep rose-color, cut as a perfect sphere.”

“It’s worth half a million dollars if it’s worth a cent!” exclaimed Mr. Solomon almost fiercely.

“And this, please.”

Mr. Wynne, from the other end of the table, spun another glittering sphere toward them—­this as brilliantly, softly green as the verdure of early spring, prismatic, gleaming, radiant.  Mr. Czenki’s beady eyes snapped as he caught it and held it out for the others to see, and some strange emotion within caused him to close his teeth savagely.

“And this!” said Mr. Wynne again.

And a third sphere rolled along the table.  This was blue—­elusively blue as a moonlit sky.  Its rounded sides caught the light from the windows and sparkled it back.

And now the three jewels lay side by side in Mr. Czenki’s open hand, the while the five greatest diamond merchants of the United States glutted their eyes upon them.  Mr. Latham’s face went deathly white from sheer excitement, the German’s violently red from the same emotion, and the others—­there was amazement, admiration, awe in them.  Mr. Czenki’s countenance was again impassive.