tones
which we held would go up once more, and we might very well sell out for
double or treble the sum that we invested. Don't you see the sequence
of events?"

"There seems to me to be rather too much of the 'suppose' in it,"
remarked Ezra. "How do we know that such rumours will get about; and if
they do, how do we know that they will prove to be unfounded?"

"How are we to know?" the merchant cried, wriggling his long lank body
with amusement. "Why, my lad, if we spread the rumours ourselves we
shall have pretty good reason to believe that they are unfounded.
Eh, Ezra? Ha! ha! You see there are some brains in the old man yet."

Ezra looked at his father in considerable surprise and some admiration.
"Why, damn it!" he exclaimed, "it's dishonest. I'm not sure that it's
not actionable."

"Dishonest! Pooh!" The merchant snapped his fingers. "It's finesse, my
boy, commercial finesse. Who's to trace it, I should like to know.
I haven't worked out all the details--I want your co-operation over
that--but here's a rough sketch of my plan. We send a man we can depend
upon to some distant part of the world--Chimborazo, for example, or the
Ural Mountains. It doesn't matter where, as long as it is out of the
way. On arriving at this place our agent starts a report that he has
discovered a diamond mine. We should even go the length, if he
considers it necessary, of hiding a few rough stones in the earth, which
he can dig up to give colour to his story. Of course the local press
would be full of this. He might present one of the diamonds to the
editor of the nearest paper. In course of time a pretty coloured
description of the new diamond fields would find its way to London and
thence to the Cape. I'll answer for it that the immediate effect is a
great drop in the price of stones. We should have a second agent at the
Cape diamond fields, and he would lay our money out by buying in all
that he could while the panic lasted. Then, the original scare having
proved to be all a mistake, the prices naturally go up once more, and we
get a long figure for all that we hold. That's what I mean by making 'a
corner in diamonds.' There is no room in it for any miscalculation. It
is as certain as a proposition of Euclid, and as easily worked out."

"It sounds very nice," his son remarked thoughtfully. "I'm not so sure
about its working, though."

"It must work well. As far as human calculation can go there is no
pos