(This interesting story was commenced in No. 148 of NICK CARTER STORIES. Back numbers can always be obtained from your news dealer or the publishers.) CHAPTER IX. JACK O’ DIAMONDS. With a wide grin upon his beefy countenance, Mr. Jake Hines stepped into the real-estate office of Walter K. Sammis. “Hello, little one!” he said cheerily to the girl who sat at a typewriter in the outer office. “We’re lookin’ very charming to-day.” Dallas Worthington looked up from her work, and stared at him coldly. “I haven’t time to listen to compliments,” she said. “I’m very busy. And, besides, I told you the other day that I want you to keep out of here. You must be very thick-skinned, Mr. Hines, to persist in coming where you know you’re not wanted.” The young man smiled affably. “If I wasn’t thick-skinned, my dear young lady, I wouldn’t be a politician,” he remarked. “The way I figure it, love and politics are pretty much the same sort of game. In both cases a feller has got to keep pluggin’ ahead, refusin’ to take ‘no’ for an answer, in order to succeed. “When I want a thing very bad,” he went on, “I always manage to get it. I keep right on tryin’ until I do, and if anybody is foolish enough to get in my way they get crushed as flat as if a steam roller had gone over ’em. That’s the kind of a live wire Jake Hines is, my dear.” The girl laughed scornfully. “What a terrible fellow you must be!” she mocked. “If I thought you could be as unscrupulous in love as I understand you are in politics, Mr. Hines, I should feel very much afraid of you. But let me tell you that there is one great difference between love and politics: In love the best man generally wins; in politics, from what I have heard, the reverse is usually the case.” As she spoke, she glanced at a solitaire diamond ring which flashed from the third finger of her left hand. The young man looked at her admiringly. “Say, that’s pretty clever of you. It sounds like a couple of lines out of a book. You can take it from me, though, Miss Dallas, that the best man is goin’ to win in this case--and his name is Jake Hines.” His gaze suddenly fell upon the diamond ring. “Hello!” he exclaimed. “That’s something new, ain’t it? You wasn’t wearin’ that the last time I was here.” “Perhaps not,” replied the girl coldly; “but really I can’t see that it is----” “I don’t have to guess twice as to where you got it,” broke in Hines eagerly. “It was that crook, Sheridan, of course. So that’s where the money went to!” Dallas flushed angrily. “What do you mean by that?” she demanded, in astonishment. “What money? And how dare you refer to Owen Sheridan as a crook?”