MR. CZENKI EXPLAINS
Fairly drunk with excitement, his lean face, usually expressionless,
now flushed and working strangely, and his beady black eyes aglitter,
Mr. Czenki reeled into the study where Mr. Latham and Mr. Schultze
sat awaiting Mr. Birnes. He raised one hand, enjoining silence,
closed the door, locked it and placed the key in his pocket, after
which he turned upon Mr. Latham.
"He _makes_ them, man! He _makes them!_" he burst out between
gritting teeth. "Don't you understand? _He makes them!_"
Mr. Latham, astonished and a little startled, came to his feet; the
phlegmatic German sat still, staring at the expert without
comprehension. Mr. Czenki's thin fist was clenched under his
employer's nose, and the jeweler drew back a little, vaguely alarmed.
"I don't understand what--" he began.
"The diamonds!" Mr. Czenki interrupted, and the long pent-up
excitement within him burst into a flame of impatience. "The
diamonds! He makes them! Don't you see? Diamonds! He
_manufactures_ them!"
"_Gott in Himmel!_" exclaimed Mr. Schultze, and it was anything but
an irreverent ejaculation. He arose. "Der miracle has come to pass!
Ve might haf known! Ve might haf known!"
"Millions and millions of dollars' worth of them, even _billions_,
for all we know," the expert rushed on in incoherent violence. "A
sum greater than all the combined wealth of the world in the hands
of one man! Think of it!" Mr. Latham only gazed at him blankly,
and he turned instinctively to the one who understood--Mr. Schultze.
"Think of the mind that achieved it, man!"
He collapsed into a chair and sat looking at the floor, his fingers
writhing within one another, muttering to himself. Mr. Latham was a
cold, sane, unimaginative man of business. As yet the full import of
it all hadn't reached him. He stared dumbly, first at Mr. Czenki,
then at Mr. Schultze. There was not even incredulity in the look,
only faint amazement that two such well-balanced men should have gone
mad at once. At last the German importer turned upon him flatly.
"Why don'd you ged egzited aboud id, Laadham?" he demanded. "He iss
all righd, nod crazy," he added with whimsical assurance. "He iss
delling you dat dose diamonds are _made_--made like doughnuds, mitoud
der hole; manufactured, pud togedher. Don'd you ged id?"
He ran off into guttural German expletives; and slowly, slowly the
idea began to dawn upon Mr. Latham. The diamonds Mr. Wynne had
shown were not real, then; they were artificial! It was some sort of
a swindle! Of course! But the experts had agreed that they were
diamonds--real diamonds! Perhaps they had been deceived, or--by
George! Did these two men mean to say that they were real diamonds,
but that they were _manufactured?_ Mr. Latham's tidy little
imagination balked at that. Absurd! Whoever heard of a diamond as
big as the Koh-i-noor, or the Regent, or the Orloff being made? They
were crazy--the pair of them!
"Do I understand," he demanded in a tone of deliberate annoyance,
"that you, Czenki, and you, Schultze, expect me to believe that those
diamonds we saw were not natural, but _were_ real diamonds turned out
by machinery in a--in a diamond factory? Is that what you are
driving at?
"_Das iss!_" declared the German bluntly. "Id vas coming in dime,
Laadham, id vas coming, of course Und I haf always noticed dat
whatever iss coming does come."
"Made, made--made as you make marbles," Mr. Czenki repeated
monotonously. "Yes, it had to come, but--but imagine the insuperable
difficulties that one brain had to surmount!" He passed a thin hand
across his flushed brow, and was thoughtfully silent.
"I don't believe it," asserted Mr. Latham tartly. "It's impossible!
I don't believe it!" And sat down.
"Id don'd madder much whedher you belief id or nod," remarked the
German in a tone of resignation. "If id iss, id iss. Und all dose
diamonds in your place und mine are nod worth much more by der bushel
as potatoes."
Mr. Latham turned away from him, half angrily, and glared at the
expert, who was still regarding the floor.
"What do you know about this, anyway, Czenki?" he demanded. "How do
you _know_ he makes them? Have you _seen_ him make them?"
Thus directly addressed Mr. Czenki looked up, and the living flame of
wonder within his eyes flickered and died. In silence, for a minute
or more, he studied the unconcealed skepticism in his employer's
face, and then asked slowly:
"Do you know what diamonds are, Mr. Latham?"
"There is some theory that they are pure carbon, crystallized."
"They are that," declared the expert impatiently. "You know that
diamonds have been made?"
"Oh, I've read something about it, yes; but what I--"
"Every school-boy knows how to make a diamond, Mr. Latham. If pure
carbon is heated to approximately five thousand degrees Fahrenheit,
and simultaneously subjected to a pressure of approximately six
thousand tons to the square inch, it becomes a diamond. And there's
no theory about that--that's a fact! The difficulty has always been
to apply the knowledge we have in a commercially practicable way--in
other words, to isolate a carbon that is absolutely pure, and invent
a method of applying the heat and pressure simultaneously. It has
been done, Mr. Latham; _it has been done!_ Don't you understand what
it means to--"
With an effort he repressed the returning excitement which found vent
in a rising voice and quick, nervous gestures of the hands. After a
moment he went on:
"Half a score of scientists have made diamonds, minute particles no
larger than the point of a pin. Professor Henri Moissan, of Paris,
went further, and by use of an electric furnace produced diamonds as
large as a pinhead. You may remember that when I first met Mr. Wynne
he inquired if I had not done some special work for Professor
Moissan. I had; I tested the diamonds he made--_and they were
diamonds!_ I dare say the suggestion Mr. Wynne conveyed to me by
that question--that is, the suggestion of manufactured diamonds--had
been carefully planned, for he is a wonderful young man, Mr. Wynne--
a wonderful young man." He paused a moment. "We know that he has
millions and millions of dollars' worth of them--we know because we
saw them--and who can tell how many billions more there are? The one
man holds in his hand the power to overturn the money values of the
earth!"
"But how do you know he makes them?" demanded Mr. Latham, returning
to the main question.
"He suggested it by his question," Mr. Czenki went on. "That
suggestion lingered in my mind. When the detective, Mr. Birnes,
reported that Mr. Wynne was an importer of brown sugar I was on the
point of advancing a theory that the diamonds were manufactured,
because of all known substances burnt brown sugar is richest in
carbon. But you, Mr. Latham, had discredited a previous suggestion
of mine, and I--I--well, I didn't suggest it. Instead, that night I
personally began an investigation to see what disposition was made of
the sugar. I found that the ships discharged their cargoes in
Hoboken, that the sugar was there loaded on barges, and those barges
hauled up a small stream to the little town of Coaldale, all
consigned to a Mr. Hugo Kellner.
"It took Friday, all day Saturday, and a great part of to-day to
learn all this. This afternoon I went to see Mr. Kellner. I found
him murdered." He stated it merely as an inconvenient incident. "In
the room with the body were Mr. Birnes, Chief Arkwright of the New
York police, and another New York detective. I had glanced at the
story of Red Haney and the diamonds in the morning papers, and from
what I knew, and from Mr. Birnes' presence, I surmised something of
the truth. I was instantly placed under arrest for murder--the murder
of this man I had never seen--the _real_ diamond master, the man who
achieved it all."
He was silent for a moment, as if from infinite weariness.
" . . . Mr. Wynne came, and a Miss Kellner, granddaughter of the dead
man. . . . He saw me, and understood . . . between us we contrived
that I should be taken away as the murderer, and so prevent an
immediate search of the house. . . . I made no denial. . . . I
permitted myself to be taken . . . some mistake as to identity. . . .
I proved an alibi by the shipping men in Hoboken . . . the diamonds
are there, untold millions of dollars' worth of them . . . the
diamond master is dead!"
Mr. Latham had been listening, as if dazed, to the hurried, somewhat
disconnected, narrative; Mr. Schultze, keener to comprehend all that
the story meant, was silent for a moment.
"Den if all dose men know all he has told us, Laadham," he remarked
finally, "our diamonds are nod worth any more as potatoes _alretty_."
"But they _don't_ know," Mr. Czenki burst out fiercely. "Don't you
understand? Haney, or somebody, killed Mr. Kellner and stole some
uncut diamonds--you must have seen the newspaper account of it to-day.
The New York police traced Haney's course to Coaldale and to that
house. But all _they_ know is that sixty thousand dollars' worth of
uncut stones were stolen. There was not even a suggestion to them of
the millions and millions of dollars' worth that were manufactured.
Don't you understand? I permitted myself to be accused and arrested,
knowing I could establish an alibi, in order to lead them away from
there and gain time, at least, to give Mr. Wynne an opportunity of
hiding the other diamonds, if they were there. He understood what I
was trying to do, and fell in with the plan. He knew that _I_ knew
the diamonds were made. Mr. Birnes doesn't know; _no_ one knows but
you and me and Mr. Wynne, and perhaps the girl! But, don't you see,
if you don't accept the proposition he made the diamond market of the
world is ruined? You are ruined!"
"But how do you know they are _made?_" insisted Mr. Latham doggedly.
"You've never seen them made, have you?"
"_Mein Gott_, Laadham, how do you know when you haf der boil on der
pack of your neck? You can'd zee him, ain'd id?" Mr. Schultze
turned to Mr. Czenki. "Der dhree of us vill go und zee Mr. Wynne. Id
iss der miracle! Vass iss, iss, und id don'd do any good to say id
ain'd."