The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents Read online

  THE DIAMOND MAKER

  Some business had detained me in Chancery Lane until nine in theevening, and thereafter, having some inkling of a headache, I wasdisinclined either for entertainment or further work. So much of thesky as the high cliffs of that narrow canon of traffic left visiblespoke of a serene night, and I determined to make my way down tothe Embankment, and rest my eyes and cool my head by watching thevariegated lights upon the river. Beyond comparison the night is thebest time for this place; a merciful darkness hides the dirt of thewaters, and the lights of this transition age, red, glaring orange,gas-yellow, and electric white, are set in shadowy outlines of everypossible shade between grey and deep purple. Through the arches ofWaterloo Bridge a hundred points of light mark the sweep of theEmbankment, and above its parapet rise the towers of Westminster, warmgrey against the starlight. The black river goes by with only a rareripple breaking its silence, and disturbing the reflections of thelights that swim upon its surface.

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

  I turned my head, and saw the profile of a man who was leaning overthe parapet beside me. It was a refined face, not unhandsome, thoughpinched and pale enough, and the coat collar turned up and pinnedround the throat marked his status in life as sharply as a uniform. Ifelt I was committed to the price of a bed and breakfast if I answeredhim.

  I looked at him curiously. Would he have anything to tell me worth themoney, or was he the common incapable--incapable even of telling hisown story? There was a quality of intelligence in his forehead andeyes, and a certain tremulousness in his nether lip that decided me.

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

  "No," he said, still looking across the water, "it is pleasant enoughhere ... just now."

  "It is good," he continued after a pause, "to find anything so restfulas this in London. After one has been fretting about business all day,about getting on, meeting obligations, and parrying dangers, I do notknow what one would do if it were not for such pacific corners." Hespoke with long pauses between the sentences. "You must know a littleof the irksome labour of the world, or you would not be here. ButI doubt if you can be so brain-weary and footsore as I am ... Bah!Sometimes I doubt if the game is worth the candle. I feel inclined tothrow the whole thing over--name, wealth, and position--and take tosome modest trade. But I know if I abandoned my ambition--hardly asshe uses me--I should have nothing but remorse left for the rest of mydays."

  He became silent. I looked at him in astonishment. If ever I saw a manhopelessly hard-up it was the man in front of me. He was ragged and hewas dirty, unshaven and unkempt; he looked as though he had been leftin a dust-bin for a week. And he was talking to _me_ of the irksomeworries of a large business. I almost laughed outright. Either he wasmad or playing a sorry jest on his own poverty.

  "If high aims and high positions," said I, "have their drawbacks ofhard work and anxiety, they have their compensations. Influence,the power of doing good, of assisting those weaker and poorer thanourselves; and there is even a certain gratification in display...."

  My banter under the circumstances was in very vile taste. I spoke onthe spur of the contrast of his appearance and speech. I was sorryeven while I was speaking.

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

  He measured me for a moment. "No doubt it is very absurd. You will notbelieve me even when I tell you, so that it is fairly safe to tellyou. And it will be a comfort to tell someone. I really have a bigbusiness in hand, a very big business. But there are troubles justnow. 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, and suddenlyunbuttoning his wretched coat he pulled out a little canvas bag thatwas hanging by a cord round his neck. From this he produced a brownpebble. "I wonder if you know enough to know what that is?" He handedit to me.

  Now, a year or so ago, I had occupied my leisure in taking a Londonscience degree, so that I have a smattering of physics and mineralogy.The thing was not unlike an uncut diamond of the darker sort, thoughfar too large, being almost as big as the top of my thumb. I took it,and saw it had the form of a regular octahedron, with the curved facespeculiar to the most precious of minerals. I took out my penknife andtried to scratch it--vainly. Leaning forward towards the gas-lamp, Itried the thing on my watch-glass, and scored a white line across thatwith the greatest ease.

  I looked at my interlocutor with rising curiosity. "It certainly israther like a diamond. But, if so, it is a Behemoth of diamonds. Wheredid 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 sell it youfor one hundred pounds," he suddenly whispered eagerly. With that mysuspicions returned. The thing might, after all, be merely a lumpof that almost equally hard substance, corundum, with an accidentalresemblance in shape to the diamond. Or if it was a diamond, how camehe by it, and why should he offer it at a hundred pounds?

  We looked into one another's eyes. He seemed eager, but honestlyeager. At that moment I believed it was a diamond he was trying tosell. Yet I am a poor man, a hundred pounds would leave a visible gapin my fortunes and no sane man would buy a diamond by gaslight from aragged tramp on his personal warranty only. Still, a diamond that sizeconjured up a vision of many thousands of pounds. Then, thought I,such a stone could scarcely exist without being mentioned in everybook on gems, and again I called to mind the stories of contraband andlight-fingered Kaffirs at the Cape. I put the question of purchase onone side.

  "How did you get it?" said I.

  "I made it."

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

  "You seem to know something of this kind of thing. I will tell youa little about myself. Perhaps then you may think better of thepurchase." He turned round with his back to the river, and put hishands in his pockets. He sighed. "I know you will not believe me."

  "Diamonds," he began--and as he spoke his voice lost its faint flavourof the tramp and assumed something of the easy tone of an educatedman--"are to be made by throwing carbon out of combination in asuitable flux and under a suitable pressure; the carbon crystallisesout, not as black-lead or charcoal-powder, but as small diamonds. Somuch has been known to chemists for years, but no one yet has hit uponexactly the right flux in which to melt up the carbon, or exactly theright pressure for the best results. Consequently the diamonds made bychemists are small and dark, and worthless as jewels. Now I, you know,have given up my life to this problem--given my life to it.

  "I began to work at the conditions of diamond making when I wasseventeen, and now I am thirty-two. It seemed to me that it might takeall the thought and energies of a man for ten years, or twenty years,but, even if it did, the game was still worth the candle. Suppose oneto have at last just hit the right trick, before the secret got outand diamonds became as common as coal, one might realise millions.Millions!"

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

  "I had," he proceeded, "about a thousand pounds when I was twenty-one,and this, I thought, eked out by a little teaching, would keep myresearches going. A year or two was spent in study, at Berlin chiefly,and then I continued on my own account. The trouble was the secrecy.You see, if once I had let out what I was doing, other men might havebeen spurred on by my belief in the practicability of the idea; and Ido not pretend to be such a genius as to have been sure of coming infirst, in the case of a race for the discovery. And you see it wasimportant that if I really meant to make a pile, people should notknow it was an artificial process and capable of turning out diamondsby the ton. So I had to work all alone. At first I had a littlelaboratory, but as my resources began to run out I had to conduct myexperiments in a wretched unfurnished room in K
entish Town, where Islept at last on a straw mattress on the floor among all my apparatus.The money simply flowed away. I grudged myself everything exceptscientific appliances. I tried to keep things going by a littleteaching, but I am not a very good teacher, and I have no universitydegree, nor very much education except in chemistry, and I found I hadto give a lot of time and labour for precious little money. But I gotnearer and nearer the thing. Three years ago I settled the problem ofthe composition of the flux, and got near the pressure by puttingthis flux of mine and a certain carbon composition into a closed-upgun-barrel, filling up with water, sealing tightly, and heating."

  He paused.

  "Rather risky," said I.

  "Yes. It burst, and smashed all my windows and a lot of my apparatus;but I got a kind of diamond powder nevertheless. Following out theproblem of getting a big pressure upon the molten mixture fromwhich the things were to crystallise, I hit upon some researches ofDaubree's at the Paris _Laboratorie des Poudres et Salpetres_. Heexploded dynamite in a tightly screwed steel cylinder, too strong toburst, and I found he could crush rocks into a muck not unlike theSouth African bed in which diamonds are found. It was a tremendousstrain on my resources, but I got a steel cylinder made for my purposeafter his pattern. I put in all my stuff and my explosives, built upa fire in my furnace, put the whole concern in, and--went out for awalk."

  I could not help laughing at his matter-of-fact manner. "Did you notthink it would blow up the house? Were there other people in theplace?"

  "It was in the interest of science," he said, ultimately. "There was acostermonger family on the floor below, a begging-letter writer in theroom behind mine, and two flower-women were upstairs. Perhaps it was abit thoughtless. But possibly some of them were out.

  "When I came back the thing was just where I left it, among thewhite-hot coals. The explosive hadn't burst the case. And then I hada problem to face. You know time is an important element incrystallisation. If you hurry the process the crystals are small--itis only by prolonged standing that they grow to any size. I resolvedto let this apparatus cool for two years, letting the temperature godown slowly during that time. And I was now quite out of money; andwith a big fire and the rent of my room, as well as my hunger tosatisfy, I had scarcely a penny in the world.

  "I can hardly tell you all the shifts I was put to while I was makingthe diamonds. I have sold newspapers, held horses, opened cab-doors.For many weeks I addressed envelopes. I had a place as assistant toa man who owned a barrow, and used to call down one side of the roadwhile he called down the other. Once for a week I had absolutelynothing to do, and I begged. What a week that was! One day the firewas going out and I had eaten nothing all day, and a little chaptaking his girl out, gave me sixpence--to show-off. Thank heaven forvanity! How the fish-shops smelt! But I went and spent it all oncoals, and had the furnace bright red again, and then--Well, hungermakes a fool of a man.

  "At last, three weeks ago, I let the fire out. I took my cylinder andunscrewed it while it was still so hot that it punished my hands, andI scraped out the crumbling lava-like mass with a chisel, and hammeredit into a powder upon an iron plate. And I found three big diamondsand five small ones. As I sat on the floor hammering, my door opened,and my neighbour, the begging-letter writer, came in. He wasdrunk--as he usually is. ''Nerchist,' said he. 'You're drunk,' said I.''Structive scoundrel,' said he. 'Go to your father,' said I, meaningthe Father 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 been pryingin my room, and how he had gone to the police that morning, and howthey had taken down everything he had to say--''siffiwas a ge'm,' saidhe. Then I suddenly realised I was in a hole. Either I should haveto tell these police my little secret, and get the whole thing blownupon, or be lagged as an Anarchist. So I went up to my neighbourand took him by the collar, and rolled him about a bit, and then Igathered up my diamonds and cleared out. The evening newspapers calledmy den the Kentish-Town Bomb Factory. And now I cannot part with thethings for love or money.

  "If I go in to respectable jewellers they ask me to wait, and go andwhisper to a clerk to fetch a policeman, and then I say I cannot wait.And I found out a receiver of stolen goods, and he simply stuck tothe one I gave him and told me to prosecute if I wanted it back. I amgoing about now with several hundred thousand pounds-worth of diamondsround my neck, and without either food or shelter. You are the firstperson I have taken into my confidence. But I like your face and I amhard-driven."

  He looked into my eyes.

  "It would be madness," said I, "for me to buy a diamond under thecircumstances. Besides, I do not carry hundreds of pounds about in mypocket. Yet I more than half believe your story. I will, if you like,do this: come to my office to-morrow...."

  "You think I am a thief!" said he keenly. "You will tell the police. Iam 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. Come when 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 your half-crown withinterest some day--such interest as will amaze you," said he. "Anyhow,you will keep the secret?... Don't follow me."

  He crossed the road and went into the darkness towards the littlesteps under the archway leading into Essex Street, and I let him 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 the matterover, and took what I conceived to be the wisest course. Once hecalled upon me when I was out. My urchin described him as a very thin,dirty, and ragged man, with a dreadful cough. He left no message. Thatwas the finish of him so far as my story goes. I wonder sometimes whathas become of him. Was he an ingenious monomaniac, or a fraudulentdealer in pebbles, or has he really made diamonds as he asserted? Thelatter is just sufficiently credible to make me think at times thatI have missed the most brilliant opportunity of my life. He may ofcourse be dead, and his diamonds carelessly thrown aside--one, Irepeat, was almost as big as my thumb. Or he may be still wanderingabout trying to sell the things. It is just possible he may yet emergeupon society, and, passing athwart my heavens in the serene altitudesacred to the wealthy and the well-advertised, reproach me silentlyfor my want of enterprise. I sometimes think I might at least haverisked five pounds.