The Diamond Master Part 16

He started forward, with gritting teeth, and simultaneously Chief Arkwright, Detective-Sergeant Connelly and Mr. Czenki laid restraining hands upon him. Something in the expert's grip on his wrist caused him to stop and cease a futile struggle; then came a singular expression of resignation about the mouth and he sat down again.

"h.e.l.lo! This Mr. Latham! . . . . This is Detective Birnes. . . .

I've been able to locate some diamonds, but it's necessary to know something of the quant.i.ty of those you mentioned. You remember Mr.

Schultze said something about . . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . Oh, there _were?_ . . Unexpected developments, yes. . . . I'll call and see you to-night about eight. . . . Yes. . . . Good-by!"

Mr. Birnes reentered the room, his face aglow with triumph. Mr.

Wynne glanced almost hopelessly at Mr. Czenki, then turned again to the detective.

"I should say there _were_ more than sixty thousand dollars' worth of them," Mr. Birnes blurted. "There were at least a million dollars'

worth. Mr. Schultze intimated as much to me; now Mr. Latham confirms it."

Chief Arkwright turned and glared scowlingly upon the diamond expert.

The beady black eyes were alight with some emotion which he failed to read.

"Where are they, Czenki?" demanded the chief harshly.

"I have nothing to say," replied Mr. Czenki softly.

"So your disappearance Friday night, and your absence all day yesterday did have to do with this old man's death?" said the chief, directly accusing him.

"I have nothing to say," murmured Mr. Czenki.

"That settles it, gentlemen," declared the chief with an air of finality. "Czenki, I charge you with the murder of Mr. Kellner here.

Anything you may say will be used against you. Come along, now; don't make any trouble."

CHAPTER XVI

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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. He arose. "Der miracle has come to pa.s.s!

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 a.s.surance. "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 pa.s.sed a thin hand across his flushed brow, and was thoughtfully silent.

"I don't believe it," a.s.serted 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 ident.i.ty. . . .

I proved an alibi by the s.h.i.+pping 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_."