"Up to this moment, gentlemen, the De Beers Syndicate has controlled
the diamond market," Mr. Wynne announced, "but now, from this moment,
I control it. I hold it there, in the palm of my hand, with the
unlimited supply back of me. I am offering you an opportunity to
prevent the annihilation of the market. It rests with you. If I
turn loose a billion dollars' worth of diamonds within the year you
are ruined--all of you. You _know_ that--it's hardly necessary to
tell you. And, gentlemen, I don't care to do it."

"What is your proposition?" queried Mr. Latham quietly. His face was
ghastly white; haggard lines, limned by amazement and realization,
were marked clearly on it. "What is your proposition?" he repeated.

"Wait a minute," interposed Mr. Solomon protestingly, and he turned
to the young man. "The Syndicate controls the market by force of a
reserve stock of ten or fifteen million dollars. Do we understand
that you have more than these ready for market now?"

Mr. Wynne stooped and lifted the small sole-leather grip which had
been unheeded on the floor. He unfastened the catch and turned the
bag upside down upon the table. When he raised it again the
assembled jewelers gazed upon a spectacle unknown and undreamed of
in the history of the world--a great, glittering heap of diamonds,
flashing, colorful, prismatic, radiant, bedazzling. They rattled
like pebbles upon the mahogany table as they slipped and slid one
against another, and then, at rest, resolved themselves into a
steady, multi-colored blaze which was almost blinding.

"Now, gentlemen, on the table before you there are about thirty
million dollars' worth of diamonds," Mr. Wynne announced calmly.