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Updated: June 7, 2025
Pylotte once more expressed his thanks, bowing and smiling as he descended the steps, and Nick closed the door and returned to the library. "Well, Chick, the bag is open and the cat out," he cried, as he entered. "Right you are, Nick." "And a monstrous cat it is!" "Never a larger one," declared Chick, with a laugh. "By Jove!
"Indeed it does!" exclaimed Pylotte, throwing up both hands. "Enormous! Enormous! Millions could be made by so unparalleled a fraud!" "It opens the way, in fact, to the most colossal swindle on record?" "Undoubtedly." Nick glanced significantly at Chick, then abruptly rose to his feet. That he had struck the big game which from the first he had suspected, he now had not a doubt.
"Not much not badly, I think," gasped Pylotte, trembling violently. "But it's lucky you came. They'd surely have killed me." Nick noticed that he spoke with a slight foreign accent, and was a man of considerable physical prowess. "There's blood on your face," said he. "It came from one of them, I think," said Pylotte, drawing his sleeve across his cheek to remove the stain.
"Diamonds may be made from coal," said he. "The fact that I should have got hold of a piece in the road here, while tracking that diamond swindler in search of his house, strikes me as being rather odd." "So it was," said Nick, a bit dryly, thinking of Venner's house in the near distance. Then he added, decisively: "Put up your gun, Mr. Pylotte. I want you to go with me.
Pylotte, we will bid you good-morning, and get to work at once upon the case." Pylotte bowed very agreeably, taking his artificial diamonds from the table and replacing them in his pocket; and Nick then conducted him to the door, again assuring him that no efforts in his behalf should be spared.
He rather suspected, in fact, that Pylotte had shadowed the swindler, whom Nick felt sure was Kilgore, with a view to learning just how the diamonds had been manufactured, and possibly with a design to turn the discovery to his own advantage. This was, indeed, the most natural deduction for Nick to arrive at, after considering all the circumstances.
With the passing of the tempest, and the first sign of a star in the eastern sky, all that remained of the house above the diamond plant was a heap of red, smoldering embers, filling the cellar and the secret chamber and blotting out, though perhaps not forever, the secret art of that misguided genius, Jean Pylotte, dead with a bullet in his brain, on the floor of Rufus Venner's hall.
Then, amid the tumult of the breaking tempest outside, there began a fusillade the thunder of which rivaled that of the night, and which, though comparatively brief, was as fast and furious as any man there had ever experienced. Pylotte went down at the first shot from Chick, however, with a bullet in his brain. Then shot followed shot with lightning rapidity.
"Now, then," continued Pylotte, with an unconscious display of enthusiasm; "while diamonds certainly have been made by artificial means, the great difficulty has been that of producing them at a low cost. Moissan, in my country, produced diamonds by heating charcoal and iron to a high degree, and letting the mixture cool under enormous pressure.
Before they could come near enough to use a weapon, however, the three ruffians scattered like frightened cats, leaping the wall near an adjoining woodland, into the gloom of which they speedily vanished. It was obvious to Nick that pursuit would be vain, so he hastened to the side of the fallen man, who had been left prostrate in the road, and helped him to his feet. The man was Jean Pylotte.
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