"Certainly," said Mr. Abingdon, the magistrate. "This seems to be a somewhat peculiar case, and I will be glad if Mr. Isaacstein can throw any light upon it."
But Mr. Isaacstein could not do any such thing. He wound up a succinct account of Philip's visit and utterances by declaring that there was no collection of meteoric diamonds known to him from which such a remarkable set of stones could be stolen.
This emphatic statement impressed the magistrate.
The parcel was handed up to him, and he examined its contents with obvious interest.
"Are you quite sure of their meteoric origin, Mr. Isaacstein?" he asked.
"Can you form any estimate of their probable value?"
The reply startled the magistrate, and it sent a thrill through the court.
"Really! So much!" Mr. Abingdon was almost scared.
"If, after cutting, they turn out as well as I expect, that is a moderate estimate of their worth."
"I take it, from what you say, that meteoric diamonds are rare?"
Isaacstein closed his throat with a premonitory cough and bunched up his shoulders. A slight wobble was steadied by his stumpy hands on the rail of the witness box. He was really the greatest living authority on the subject, and he knew it.
"It is a common delusion among diamond miners that diamonds fall from the skies in meteoric showers," he said. "There is some sort of foundation for this mistaken view, as the stones are found in volcanic pipes or columns of diamantiferous material, and the crude idea is that gigantic meteors fell and plowed these deep holes, distributing diamonds in all directions as they passed. But the so-called pipes are really the vents of extinct volcanoes. Ignorant people do not realize that the chemical composition of the earth does not differ greatly from that of the bodies which surround it in space, so that the same process of manufacture under high temperature and at great pressure which creates a diamond in a meteor has equal powers here. In a word, what has happened in the outer universe has also happened at Kimberley. Iron acts as the solvent during the period of creation, so to speak. Then, in the lapse of ages, it oxidizes by the action of air or water, and the diamonds remain."
"There are particles of a mineral that looks like iron among these stones?" he said.