The Door in the Wall, and Other Stories Read online

  THE DIAMOND MAKER

  Some business had detained me in Chancery Lane nine in theevening, and thereafter, having some inkling of a headache, I wasdisinclined either for entertainment or further work. So much ofthe sky as the high cliffs of that narrow canon of traffic leftvisible spoke of a serene night, and I determined to make my waydown to the Embankment, and rest my eyes and cool my head bywatching the variegated lights upon the river. Beyond comparisonthe night is the best time for this place; a merciful darknesshides the dirt of the waters, and the lights of this transitionalage, red glaring orange, gas-yellow, and electric white, are set inshadowy outlines of every possible shade between grey and deeppurple. Through the arches of Waterloo Bridge a hundred points oflight mark the sweep of the Embankment, and above its parapet risethe towers of Westminster, warm grey against the starlight. Theblack river goes by with only a rare ripple breaking its silence,and disturbing the reflections of the lights that swim upon itssurface.

  "A warm night," said a voice at my side.

  I turned my head, and saw the profile of a man who was leaningover the parapet beside me. It was a refined face, not unhandsome,though pinched and pale enough, and the coat collar turned up andpinned round the throat marked his status in life as sharply as auniform. I felt I was committed to the price of a bed andbreakfast if I answered him.

  I looked at him curiously. Would he have anything to tell meworth the money, or was he the common incapable--incapable even oftelling his own story? There was a quality of intelligence in hisforehead and eyes, and a certain tremulousness in his nether lipthat decided me.

  "Very warm," said I; "but not too warm for us here."

  "No," he said, still looking across the water, "it is pleasantenough here . . . . just now."

  "It is good," he continued after a pause, "to find anything sorestful as this in London. After one has been fretting aboutbusiness all day, about getting on, meeting obligations, andparrying dangers, I do not know what one would do if it were notfor such pacific corners." He spoke with long pauses between thesentences. "You must know a little of the irksome labour of theworld, or you would not be here. But I doubt if you can be sobrain-weary and footsore as I am . . . . Bah! Sometimes I doubt ifthe game is worth the candle. I feel inclined to throw the wholething over--name, wealth and position--and take to some modesttrade. But I know if I abandoned my ambition--hardly as she usesme--I should have nothing but remorse left for the rest of mydays."

  He became silent. I looked at him in astonishment. If everI saw a man hopelessly hard-up it was the man in front of me. Hewas ragged and he was dirty, unshaven and unkempt; he looked asthough he had been left in a dust-bin for a week. And he wastalking to _me_ of the irksome worries of a large business.I almost laughed outright. Either he was mad or playing a sorryjest on his own poverty.

  "If high aims and high positions," said I, "have theirdrawbacks of hard work and anxiety, they have their compensations.Influence, the power of doing good, of assisting those weaker andpoorer than ourselves; and there is even a certain gratification indisplay . . . . . "

  My banter under the circumstances was in very vile taste. Ispoke on the spur of the contrast of his appearance and speech. Iwas sorry even while I was speaking.

  He turned a haggard but very composed face upon me. Said he:"I forgot myself. Of course you would not understand."

  He measured me for a moment. "No doubt it is very absurd.You will not believe me even when I tell you, so that it is fairlysafe to tell you. And it will be a comfort to tell someone. Ireally have a big business in hand, a very big business. But thereare troubles just now. The fact is . . . . I make diamonds."

  "I suppose," said I, "you are out of work just at present?"

  "I am sick of being disbelieved," he said impatiently, andsuddenly unbuttoning his wretched coat he pulled out a littlecanvas bag that was hanging by a cord round his neck. From this heproduced a brown pebble. "I wonder if you know enough to know whatthat is?" He handed it to me.

  Now, a year or so ago, I had occupied my leisure in taking aLondon science degree, so that I have a smattering of physics andmineralogy. The thing was not unlike an uncut diamond of thedarker sort, though far too large, being almost as big as the topof my thumb. I took it, and saw it had the form of a regularoctahedron, with the curved faces peculiar to the most precious ofminerals. I took out my penknife and tried to scratch it--vainly.Leaning forward towards the gas-lamp, I tried the thing on mywatch-glass, and scored a white line across that with the greatestease.

  I looked at my interlocutor with rising curiosity. "Itcertainly is rather like a diamond. But, if so, it is a Behemothof diamonds. Where did you get it?"

  "I tell you I made it," he said. "Give it back to me."

  He replaced it hastily and buttoned his jacket. "I will sellit you for one hundred pounds," he suddenly whispered eagerly.With that my suspicions returned. The thing might, after all, bemerely a lump of that almost equally hard substance, corundum, withan accidental resemblance in shape to the diamond. Or if it was adiamond, how came he by it, and why should he offer it at a hundredpounds?

  We looked into one another's eyes. He seemed eager, buthonestly eager. At that moment I believed it was a diamond he wastrying to sell. Yet I am a poor man, a hundred pounds would leavea visible gap in my fortunes and no sane man would buy a diamond bygaslight from a ragged tramp on his personal warranty only. Still,a diamond that size conjured up a vision of many thousands ofpounds. Then, thought I, such a stone could scarcely exist withoutbeing mentioned in every book on gems, and again I called to mindthe stories of contraband and light-fingered Kaffirs at the Cape.I put the question of purchase on one side.

  "How did you get it?" said I.

  "I made it."

  I had heard something of Moissan, but I knew his artificialdiamonds were very small. I shook my head.

  "You seem to know something of this kind of thing. I willtell you a little about myself. Perhaps then you may think betterof the purchase." He turned round with his back to the river, andput his hands in his pockets. He sighed. "I know you will notbelieve me."

  "Diamonds," he began--and as he spoke his voice lost its faintflavour of the tramp and assumed something of the easy tone of aneducated man--are to be made by throwing carbon out of combinationin a suitable flux and under a suitable pressure; the carboncrystallises out, not as black-lead or charcoal-powder, but assmall diamonds. So much has been known to chemists for years, butno one yet had hit upon exactly the right flux in which to melt upthe carbon, or exactly the right pressure for the best results.Consequently the diamonds made by chemists are small and dark,and worthless as jewels. Now I, you know, have given up my life tothis problem--given my life to it.

  "I began to work at the conditions of diamond making when Iwas seventeen, and now I am thirty-two. It seemed to me that itmight take all the thought and energies of a man for ten years, ortwenty years, but, even if it did, the game was still worth thecandle. Suppose one to have at last just hit the right trickbefore the secret got out and diamonds became as common as coal,one might realize millions. Millions!"

  He paused and looked for my sympathy. His eyes shonehungrily. "To think," said he, "that I am on the verge of it all,and here!

  "I had," he proceeded, "about a thousand pounds when I wastwenty-one, and this, I thought, eked out by a little teaching,would keep my researches going. A year or two was spent in study,at Berlin chiefly, and then I continued on my own account. Thetrouble was the secrecy. You see, if once I had let out what I wasdoing, other men might have been spurred on by my belief in thepracticability of the idea; and I do not pretend to be such agenius as to have been sure of coming in first, in the case of arace for the discovery. And you see it was important that if Ireally meant to make a pile, people should not know it was anartificial process and capable of turning out diamonds by the ton.So I had to work all alone. At first I had a little laboratory,but as my resources began to run out I
had to conduct myexperiments in a wretched unfurnished room in Kentish Town, whereI slept at last on a straw mattress on the floor among all myapparatus. The money simply flowed away. I grudged myselfeverything except scientific appliances. I tried to keep thingsgoing by a little teaching, but I am not a very good teacher, andI have no university degree, nor very much education except inchemistry, and I found I had to give a lot of time and labour forprecious little money. But I got nearer and nearer the thing.Three years ago I settled the problem of the composition of theflux, and got near the pressure by putting this flux of mine and acertain carbon composition into a closed-up gun-barrel, filling upwith water, sealing tightly, and heating."

  He paused.

  "Rather risky," said I.

  "Yes. It burst, and smashed all my windows and a lot of myapparatus; but I got a kind of diamond powder nevertheless.Following out the problem of getting a big pressure upon the moltenmixture from which the things were to crystallise, I hit upon someresearches of Daubree's at the Paris _Laboratorie des Poudres etSalpetres_. He exploded dynamite in a tightly screwed steelcylinder, too strong to burst, and I found he could crush rocksinto a muck not unlike the South African bed in which diamonds arefound. It was a tremendous strain on my resources, but I got asteel cylinder made for my purpose after his pattern. I put in allmy stuff and my explosives, built up a fire in my furnace, put thewhole concern in, and--went out for a walk."

  I could not help laughing at his matter-of-fact manner. "Didyou not think it would blow up the house? Were there other peoplein the place?"

  "It was in the interest of science," he said, ultimately. "Therewas a costermonger family on the floor below, a begging-letterwriter in the room behind mine, and two flower-women wereupstairs. Perhaps it was a bit thoughtless. But possiblysome of them were out.

  "When I came back the thing was just where I left it, amongthe white-hot coals. The explosive hadn't burst the case. Andthen I had a problem to face. You know time is an importantelement in crystallisation. If you hurry the process the crystalsare small--it is only by prolonged standing that they grow to anysize. I resolved to let this apparatus cool for two years, lettingthe temperature go down slowly during the time. And I was nowquite out of money; and with a big fire and the rent of my room, aswell as my hunger to satisfy, I had scarcely a penny in the world.

  "I can hardly tell you all the shifts I was put to while I wasmaking the diamonds. I have sold newspapers, held horses, openedcab-doors. For many weeks I addressed envelopes. I had a place asassistant to a man who owned a barrow, and used to call down oneside of the road while he called down the other.

  "Once for a week I had absolutely nothing to do, and I begged.What a week that was! One day the fire was going out and I hadeaten nothing all day, and a little chap taking his girl out, gaveme sixpence--to show off. Thank heaven for vanity! How thefish-shops smelt! But I went and spent it all on coals, and hadthe furnace bright red again, and then--Well, hunger makes a foolof a man.

  "At last, three weeks ago, I let the fire out. I took mycylinder and unscrewed it while it was still so hot that itpunished my hands, and I scraped out the crumbling lava-like masswith a chisel, and hammered it into a powder upon an iron plate.And I found three big diamonds and five small ones. As I sat onthe floor hammering, my door opened, and my neighbour, thebegging-letter writer came in. He was drunk--as he usually is."'Nerchist,' said he. 'You're drunk,' said I. ''Structivescoundrel,' said he. 'Go to your father,' said I, meaning theFather of Lies. 'Never you mind,' said he, and gave me a cunningwink, and hiccuped, and leaning up against the door, with his othereye against the door-post, began to babble of how he had beenprying in my room, and how he had gone to the police that morning,and how they had taken down everything he had to say--''siffiwasa ge'm,' said he. Then I suddenly realised I was in a hole.Either I should have to tell these police my little secret, and getthe whole thing blown upon, or be lagged as an Anarchist. So Iwent up to my neighbour and took him by the collar, and rolled himabout a bit, and then I gathered up my diamonds and cleared out.The evening newspapers called my den the Kentish Town Bomb Factory.And now I cannot part with the things for love or money.

  "If I go in to respectable jewellers they ask me to wait, andgo and whisper to a clerk to fetch a policeman, and then I say Icannot wait. And I found out a receiver of stolen goods, and hesimply stuck to the one I gave him and told me to prosecute if Iwanted it back. I am going about now with several hundred thousandpounds-worth of diamonds round my neck, and without either food orshelter. You are the first person I have taken into my confidence.But I like your face and I am hard-driven."

  He looked into my eyes.

  "It would be madness," said I, "for me to buy a diamond underthe circumstances. Besides, I do not carry hundreds of poundsabout in my pocket. Yet I more than half believe your story. Iwill, if you like, do this: come to my office to-morrow . . . ."

  "You think I am a thief!" said he keenly. "You will tell thepolice. I am not coming into a trap."

  "Somehow I am assured you are no thief. Here is my card.Take that, anyhow. You need not come to any appointment. Comewhen you will."

  He took the card, and an earnest of my good-will.

  "Think better of it and come," said I.

  He shook his head doubtfully. "I will pay back yourhalf-crown with interest some day--such interest as will amazeyou," said he. "Anyhow, you will keep the secret? . . . . Don'tfollow me."

  He crossed the road and went into the darkness towards thelittle steps under the archway leading into Essex Street, and I lethim go. And that was the last I ever saw of him.

  Afterwards I had two letters from him asking me to sendbank-notes--not cheques--to certain addresses. I weighed thematter over and took what I conceived to be the wisest course.Once he called upon me when I was out. My urchin described him asa very thin, dirty, and ragged man, with a dreadful cough. He leftno message. That was the finish of him so far as my story goes.I wonder sometimes what has become of him. Was he an ingeniousmonomaniac, or a fraudulent dealer in pebbles, or has he reallymade diamonds as he asserted? The latter is just sufficientlycredible to make me think at times that I have missed the mostbrilliant opportunity of my life. He may of course be dead, andhis diamonds carelessly thrown aside--one, I repeat, was almost asbig as my thumb. Or he may be still wandering about trying to sellthe things. It is just possible he may yet emerge upon society,and, passing athwart my heavens in the serene altitude sacred tothe wealthy and the well-advertised, reproach me silently for mywant of enterprise. I sometimes think I might at least have riskedfive pounds.