The Silent Bullet Part 19

The black gla.s.sy substance was now a dull grey.

"What's that stuff you were putting on the wire?" I asked.

"Oh, just a by-product made in the manufacture of sulphuric acid,"

answered Kennedy airily, adding, as if to change the subject: "I want you to go with me to-night. I told Poissan I was a professor in the university and that I would bring one of our younger trustees, the son of the banker, T. Pierpont Spencer, who might put some capital into his scheme. Now, Jameson, while I'm finis.h.i.+ng up my work here, run over to the apartment and get my automatic revolver. I may need it to-night. I have communicated with Andrews, and he will be ready. The demonstration will take place at half-past-eight at Poissan's laboratory. I tried to get him to give it here, but he absolutely refused."

Half an hour later I rejoined Craig at his laboratory, and we rode down to the Great Eastern Life Building.

Andrews was waiting for us in his solidly furnished office. Outside I noted a couple of husky men, who seemed to be waiting for orders from their chief.

From the manner in which the vice-president greeted us it was evident that he was keenly interested in what Kennedy was about to do. "So you think Morowitch's deal was a deal to purchase the secret of diamond-making?" he mused.

"I feel sure of it," replied Craig. "I felt sure of it the moment I looked up Poissan and found that he was a manufacturer of electric furnaces. Don't you remember the famous Lemoine case in London and Paris?"

"Yes, but Lemoine was a fakir of the first water;" said Andrews. "Do you think this man is, too?"

"That's what I'm going to find out to-night before I take another step,"

said Craig. "Of course there can be no doubt that by proper use the electric furnace will make small, almost microscopic diamonds. It is not unreasonable to suppose that some day someone will be able to make large diamonds synthetically by the same process."

"Maybe this man has done it," agreed Andrews. "Who knows? I'll wager that if he has and that if Morowitch had bought an interest in his process Kahan knew of it. He's a sharp one. And Mrs. Morowitch doesn't let gra.s.s grow under her feet, when it comes to seeing the main chance as to money. Now just supposing Mr. Morowitch had bought an interest in a secret like that and supposing Kahan was in love with Mrs. Morowitch and that they--"

"Let us suppose nothing, Mr. Andrews," interrupted Kennedy. "At least not yet. Let me see; it is now ten minutes after eight. Poissan's place is only a few blocks from here. I'd like to get there a few minutes early. Let's start."

As we left the office, Andrews signalled to the two men outside, and they quietly followed a few feet in the rear, but without seeming to be with us.

Poissan's laboratory was at the top of a sort of loft building a dozen stories or so high. It was a peculiar building, with several entrances besides a freight elevator at the rear and fire-escapes that led to adjoining lower roofs.

We stopped around the corner in the shadow, and Kennedy and Andrews talked earnestly. As near as I could make out Kennedy was insisting that it would be best for Andrews and his men not to enter the building at all, but wait down-stairs while he and I went up. At last the arrangement was agreed on.

"Here," said Kennedy, undoing a package he had carried, "is a little electric bell with a couple of fresh dry batteries attached to it, and wires that will reach at least four hundred feet. You and the men wait in the shadow here by this side entrance for five minutes after Jameson and I go up. Then you must engage the night watchman in some way. While he is away you will find two wires dangling down the elevator shaft.

Attach them to these wires from the bell and the batteries--these two--you know how to do that. The wires will be hanging in the third shaft--only one elevator is running at night, the first. The moment you hear the bell begin to ring; jump into the elevator and come up to the twelfth floor--we'll need you."

As Kennedy and I rode up in the elevator I could not help thinking what an ideal place a down-town office building is for committing a crime, even at this early hour of the evening. If the streets were deserted, the office-buildings were positively uncanny in their grim, black silence with only here and there a light.

The elevator in the first shaft shot down again to the ground floor, and as it disappeared Kennedy took two spools of wire from his pocket and hastily shoved them through the lattice work the third elevator shaft.

They quickly unrolled, and I could hear them strike the top of the empty car below in the bas.e.m.e.nt. That meant that Andrews on the ground floor could reach the wires and attach them to the bell.

Quickly in the darkness Kennedy attached the ends of the wires to the curious little coil I had seen him working on in the laboratory, and we proceeded down the hall to the rooms occupied by Poissan, Kennedy had allowed for the wire to reach from the elevator-shaft up this hall, also, and as he walked he paid it out in such a manner that it fell on the floor close to the wall, where, in the darkness, it would never be noticed or stumbled over.

Around an "L" in the hall I could see a ground-gla.s.s window with a light s.h.i.+ning through it. Kennedy stopped at the window and quickly placed the little coil on the ledge, close up against the gla.s.s, with the wires running from it down the hall. Then we entered.

"On time to the minute, Professor," exclaimed Poissan, snapping his watch. "And this, I presume, is the banker who is interested in my great discovery of making artificial diamonds of any size or colour?" he added, indicating me.

"Yes," answered Craig, "as I told you, a son of Mr. T. Pierpont Spencer."

I shook hands with as much dignity as I could a.s.sume, for the role of impersonation was a new one to me.

Kennedy carelessly laid his coat and hat on the inside ledge of the ground-gla.s.s window, just opposite the spot where he had placed the little coil on the other side of the gla.s.s. I noted that the window was simply a large pane of wire-gla.s.s set in the wall for the purpose of admitting light in the daytime from the hall outside.

The whole thing seemed eerie to me--especially as Poissan's a.s.sistant was a huge fellow and had an evil look such as I had seen in pictures of the inhabitants of quarters of Paris which one does not frequent except in the company of a safe guide. I was glad Kennedy had brought his revolver, and rather vexed that he had not told me to do likewise.

However, I trusted that Craig knew what he was about.

We seated ourselves some distance from a table on which was a huge, plain, oblong contrivance that reminded me of the diagram of a parallelopiped which had caused so much trouble in my solid geometry at college.

"That's the electric furnace, sir," said Craig to me with an a.s.sumed deference, becoming a college professor explaining things to the son of a great financier. "You see the electrodes at either end? When the current is turned on and led through them into the furnace you can get the most amazing temperatures in the crucible. The most refractory of chemical compounds can be broken up by that heat. What is the highest temperature you have attained, Professor?"

"Something over three thousand degrees Centigrade," replied Poissan, as he and his a.s.sistant busied themselves about the furnace.

We sat watching him in silence.

"Ah, gentlemen, now I am ready," he exclaimed at length, when everything was arranged to his satisfaction. "You see, here is a lump of sugar carbon--pure amorphous carbon: Diamonds, as you know, are composed of pure carbon crystallised under enormous pressure. Now, my theory is that if we can combine an enormous pressure and an enormous heat we can make diamonds artificially. The problem of pressure is the thing, for here in the furnace we have the necessary heat. It occurred to me that when molten cast iron cools it exerts a tremendous pressure. That pressure is what I use."

"You know, Spencer, solid iron floats on molten iron like solid water--ice--floats on liquid water," explained Craig to me.

Poissan nodded. "I take this sugar carbon and place it in this soft iron cup. Then I screw on this cap over the cup, so. Now I place this ma.s.s of iron sc.r.a.ps in the crucible of the furnace and start the furnace."

He turned a switch, and long yellowish-blue sheets of flame spurted out from the electrodes on either side. It was weird, gruesome. One could feel the heat of the tremendous electric discharge.

As I looked at the bluish-yellow flames they gradually changed to a beautiful purple, and a sickish sweet odour filled the room. The furnace roared at first, but as the vapors increased it became a better conductor of the electricity, and the roaring ceased.

In almost no time the ma.s.s of iron sc.r.a.ps became molten. Suddenly Poissan plunged the cast-iron cup into the seething ma.s.s. The cup floated and quickly began to melt. As it did so he waited attentively until the proper moment. Then with a deft motion he seized the whole thing with a long pair of tongs and plunged it into a vat of running water. A huge cloud of steam filled the room.

I felt a drowsy sensation stealing over me as the sickish sweet smell from the furnace increased. Gripping the chair, I roused myself and watched Poissan attentively. He was working rapidly. As the molten ma.s.s cooled and solidified he took it out of the water and laid it on an anvil.

Then his a.s.sistant began to hammer it with careful, sharp blows, chipping off the outside.

"You see, we have to get down to the core of carbon gently," he said, as he picked up the little pieces of iron and threw them into a sc.r.a.p-box.

"First rather brittle cast iron, then hard iron, then iron and carbon, then some black diamonds, and in the very centre the diamonds.

"Ah! we are getting to them. Here is a small diamond. See, Mr.

Spencer--gently Francois--we shall come to the large ones presently."

"One moment, Professor Poissan," interrupted Craig; "let your a.s.sistant break them out while I stand over him."

"Impossible. You would not know when you saw them. They are just rough stones."

"Oh, yes, I would."

"No, stay where you are. Unless I attend to it the diamonds might be ruined."

There was something peculiar about his insistence, but after he picked out the next diamond I was hardly prepared for Kennedy's next remark.

"Let me see the palms of your hands."

Poissan shot an angry glance at Kennedy, but he did not open his hands.

"I merely wish to convince you, 'Mr. Spencer,'" said Kennedy to me, "that it is no sleight-of-hand trick and that the professor has not several uncut stones palmed in his hand like a prestidigitator."