a quarter of a million! Well,
why not? In more than one quarter diamonds were ranked as the soundest
kind of an investment. Furthermore, through personal acquaintance with
the "high contracting parties," who were in his own set, he knew it to
be true.

He shrugged his shoulders. The papers, too, had thrown the limelight on
Max Diestricht, who, though for quite a time the fashion in the social
world, had, up to the present, been comparatively unknown to the average
New Yorker. His own knowledge of Max Diestricht went deeper than the
superficial biography furnished by the newspapers--the old Hollander
had done more than one piece of exquisite jewelry work for him. The old
fellow was a character that beggared description, eccentric to the point
of extravagance, and deaf as a post; but, in craftmanship, a modern
Cellini. He employed no workmen, lived alone over his shop on one of
the lower streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues near Washington
Square--and possessed a splendid contempt for such protective
contrivances as safes and vaults. If his prospective patrons
expostulated on this score before intrusting him with their valuables,
they were at liberty to take their work elsewhere. It was Max Diestricht
who honoured you by accepting the commission; not you who honoured Max
Diestricht by intrusting him with it. "Of what use is it to me, a safe!"
he would exclaim. "It hides nothing; it only says, 'I am inside; do
not look farther; come and get me!' Yes? It is to explode with the
nitro-glycerin--POUF!--and I am deaf and I hear nothing. It is a
foolishness, that"--he had a habit of prodding at one with a levelled
fore-finger--"every night somewhere they are robbed, and have I been
robbed? HEIN, tell me that; have I been robbed?"

It was true. In ten years, though at times having stones and precious
metal aggregating large amounts deposited with him by his customers, Max
Diestricht had never lost so much as the gold filings. There was a
queer smile on Jimmie Dale's lips now. The knot in the tenth board
was significant! Max Diestricht was scrupulously honest, a genius in
originality and conception of design, a master in the perfection and
delicacy of his finished work--he had been commissioned to design and
set the Ross-Logan necklace.

The brain works quickly. All this and more had flashed almost
instantaneously through Jimmie Dale's mind. His eyes fell to the letter
again, and he read on. Halfway through, a sudden whitene