w
the diamonds were made. Mr. Birnes doesn't know; _no_ one knows but
you and me and Mr. Wynne, and perhaps the girl! But, don't you see,
if you don't accept the proposition he made the diamond market of the
world is ruined? You are ruined!"

"But how do you know they are _made?_" insisted Mr. Latham doggedly.
"You've never seen them made, have you?"

"_Mein Gott_, Laadham, how do you know when you haf der boil on der
pack of your neck? You can'd zee him, ain'd id?" Mr. Schultze
turned to Mr. Czenki. "Der dhree of us vill go und zee Mr. Wynne. Id
iss der miracle! Vass iss, iss, und id don'd do any good to say id
ain'd."

CHAPTER XVII

THE GREAT CUBE

A cube of solid, polished steel, some twenty feet square, set on a
spreading base of concrete, and divided perpendicularly down the
middle into Titanic halves, these being snugly fitted one to the
other by a series of triangular corrugations, a variation of the
familiar tongue and groove. Interlacing the ponderous mass, from
corner to corner, were huge steel bolts, and the hulking heads of
more bolts, some forty on each of the four sides, showed that the
whole might be split into halves at will, and readily made whole
again, one enormous side sliding back and forth on a short track.

In the two undivided faces of the cube, relatively squaring the
center, were four borings somewhat smaller in diameter than an
ordinary pencil, and extending through; and directly in the center
was focused a network of insulated wires which dropped down out of
the gloom overhead. In the other two sides of the great cube, just
where the dividing lines of the halves came, were the funnel-like
mouths of a two-inch boring. This, too, extended straight through.

Directly opposite each of the two mouths, a dozen feet away, was
mounted a peculiarly-constructed heavy gun of the naval type. In a
general sort of way these were not unlike twelve-inch ordnance, but
the breech was much larger in proportion, the barrel longer, and the
bore only two instead of twelve inches. The mountings were high, and
the adjustment so delicate that, looking into the open breech of one
gun, the bore through the twenty-foot cube and through the barrel of
the gun on the other side seemed to be continuous.

"This is the diamond-making machine, gentlemen," said Mr. Wynne, and
he indicated to Mr. Latham, Mr. Schultze and Mr. Czenki the cube and
the two guns. "It is perfectly simple in construction, ha