Speaker 1: The Diamond Maker. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Jerome Lawson,
Speaker 1: April two thousand eight. The Diamond Maker by H. G. Wells.
Speaker 1: Some business had detained me in Chancery Lane nine in
Speaker 1: the evening, and thereafter, having some inkling of a headache,
Speaker 1: I was disinclined either for entertainment or further work. So
Speaker 1: much of the sky, as the high cliffs of that
Speaker 1: narrow cannon of traffic left visible, spoke of a serene night,
Speaker 1: and I determined to make my way down to the
Speaker 1: embankment and rest my eyes and cool my head by
Speaker 1: watching the variegated lights upon the river. Beyond comparison, the
Speaker 1: night is the best time for this place. A merciful
Speaker 1: darkness hides the dirt of the waters, and the lights
Speaker 1: of this transitional age, red, glaring, orange, gas, yellow, and
Speaker 1: electric white are set in shadowy outlines of every possible
Speaker 1: shade between gray and deep purple. Through the arches of
Speaker 1: Waterloo Bridge. A hundred points of light marked the sweep
Speaker 1: of the embankment and above its parapets rised the towers
Speaker 1: of Westminster, warm gray against the starlight. The Black River
Speaker 1: goes by with only a rare ripple, breaking its silence
Speaker 1: and disturbing the reflections of the lights that swim upon
Speaker 1: its surface. A one night, said a voice at my side.
Speaker 1: I turned my head and saw the profile of a
Speaker 1: man who was leaning over the parapet beside me. It
Speaker 1: was a refined face, not unhandsome, though pinched and pale enough,
Speaker 1: and the coat collar turned up and pinned round the
Speaker 1: throat marked his status in life as sharply as a uniform.
Speaker 1: I felt I was committed to the price of a
Speaker 1: bed and breakfast if I answered him. I looked at
Speaker 1: him curiously. Would he have anything to tell me worth
Speaker 1: the money? Or was he the common incapable, incapable even
Speaker 1: of telling his own story. There was a quality of
Speaker 1: intelligence in his forehead and eyes, and a certain tremulousness
Speaker 1: in his nether lip that decided me very warm, said I,
Speaker 1: But not too warm for us here, No, he said,
Speaker 1: still looking across the water. It is pleasant enough here,
Speaker 1: just now. It is good, he continued, after a pause,
Speaker 1: to find anything so RESTful as this in London. After
Speaker 1: one has been fretting about business all day, about getting on,
Speaker 1: meeting obligations and parrying dangers. I do not know what
Speaker 1: one would do if it were not for such pacific corners.
Speaker 1: He spoke, with long pauses between the sentences. You must
Speaker 1: know a little of the irksome labor of the world. Oh,
Speaker 1: you would not be here. But I doubt if you
Speaker 1: can be so brain weary and footsore as I am. Bah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I doubt if the game is worth the candle.
Speaker 1: I feel inclined to throw the whole thing over, name,
Speaker 1: wealth and position, and take to some more modest trade.
Speaker 1: But I know if I abandon my ambition had as
Speaker 1: she uses me, I should have nothing but remose left
Speaker 1: for the rest of my days. He became silent. I
Speaker 1: looked at him in astonishment. If ever I saw a
Speaker 1: man hopelessly hard up, it was the man in front
Speaker 1: of me. He was ragged, and he was dirty, unshaven,
Speaker 1: and unkempt. He looked as though he had been left
Speaker 1: in a dustmin for a week. And he was talking
Speaker 1: to me of the irksome worries of a large business.
Speaker 1: I almost laughed outright. Either he was mad or playing
Speaker 1: a sorry jest on his own poverty. If high aims
Speaker 1: in high positions, said, I have their drawbacks of hard
Speaker 1: work and anxiety. They have their compensations influence, the power
Speaker 1: of doing good, of assisting those weaker and poorer than ourselves.
Speaker 1: And there is even a certain gratification in display. My
Speaker 1: banter under the circumstances, was in very vile taste. I
Speaker 1: spoke on the spur of the contrast of his appearance
Speaker 1: and speech. I was sorry even while I was speaking.
Speaker 1: He turned to haggard, but very composed faith upon me,
Speaker 1: said he I forgot myself. Of course you would not understand,
Speaker 1: he measured me for a moment. No doubt, it is
Speaker 1: very absurd. You will not believe me even when I
Speaker 1: tell you. So that it is fairly safe to tell you,
Speaker 1: and it will be a comfort to tell some one.
Speaker 1: I really have a big business in hand, a very
Speaker 1: big business. But there are troubles just now. The fact
Speaker 1: is I make diamonds. I suppose, said I. You are
Speaker 1: out of work. Just a present. I'm sick of being disbelieved,
Speaker 1: he said impatiently, and suddenly, unbuttoning his wretched coat, he
Speaker 1: pulled out a little canvas bag that was hanging by
Speaker 1: a cord round his neck. From this he produced a
Speaker 1: brown pebble. I wonder if you know enough to know
Speaker 1: what that is? He handed it to me. Now, a
Speaker 1: year or so ago, I had occupied my leisure in
Speaker 1: taking a London science degree, so that I have a
Speaker 1: smattering physics and mineralogy. The thing was not unlike an
Speaker 1: uncut diamond of the darker sort, though far too large,
Speaker 1: being almost as big as the top of my thumb.
Speaker 1: I took it and saw it had the form of
Speaker 1: a regular octahedron, with the curved faces peculiar to the
Speaker 1: most precious of minerals. I took out my penknife and
Speaker 1: tried to scratch it, vainly, leaning forward towards the gas lamp.
Speaker 1: I tried the thing on my watch glass and scored
Speaker 1: a white line across that with the greatest ease. I
Speaker 1: looked at my interlocutor with rising curiosity. It certainly is
Speaker 1: rather like a diamond. But if so, it's a behemoth
Speaker 1: of diamonds. Where did you get it? I tell you
Speaker 1: I made it, he said, give it back to me.
Speaker 1: He replaced it hastily and buttoned his jacket. I will
Speaker 1: sell it to you for a hundred pounds, he suddenly
Speaker 1: whispered eagerly. With that, my suspicions returned. The thing might,
Speaker 1: after all, be merely a lump of that almost equally
Speaker 1: hard substance corundum, with an accidental resemblance in shape to
Speaker 1: the diamond. Or if it was diamond, how came he
Speaker 1: by it? And why should he offer it at a
Speaker 1: hundred pounds? We looked into one another's eyes. He seemed eager,
Speaker 1: but honestly eager. At that moment, I believed it was
Speaker 1: a diamond he was trying to sell. Yet I am
Speaker 1: a poor man. A hundred pounds would leave a visible
Speaker 1: gap in my fortunes, and no sane man would buy
Speaker 1: a diamond by gas light from a ragged tramp on
Speaker 1: his personal warranty. Only Still, a diamond that size conjured
Speaker 1: up a vision of many thousands of pounds, then, thought I.
Speaker 1: Such a stone could scarcely exist without being mentioned in
Speaker 1: every book on gems. And again I called to mind
Speaker 1: the stories of contraband and light fingered kaffirs. At the cape.
Speaker 1: I put the question of purchase on one side. How
Speaker 1: did you get it? Said I? I made it. I
Speaker 1: had heard something of my son, But I knew his
Speaker 1: artificial diamonds were very small. I shook my head. You
Speaker 1: seem to know something of this kind of thing. I
Speaker 1: will tell you a little about myself. Perhaps then you
Speaker 1: may think better of the purchase. He turned round with
Speaker 1: his back to the river, and put his hands in
Speaker 1: his pockets. He sighed, I know you will not believe me. Diamonds,
Speaker 1: he began, and as he spoke his voice lost its
Speaker 1: faint flavor of the tramp and assumed something of the
Speaker 1: easy tone of an educated man. Are to be made
Speaker 1: by throwing carbon out of combination in a suitable flux
Speaker 1: and under a suitable pressure. The carbon crystallizes out, not
Speaker 1: as black lead or charcoal powder, but as small diamonds.
Speaker 1: So much has been known to chemists for years, but
Speaker 1: no one yet it hit upon exactly the right flux
Speaker 1: in which to melt up the carbon, or exactly the
Speaker 1: right pressure for the best results. Consequently, the diamonds made
Speaker 1: by chemists are small and dark, and worthless as jewels. Now, I,
Speaker 1: you know, have given up my life to this problem,
Speaker 1: given my life to it. I began to work on
Speaker 1: the conditions of diamond making when I was seventeen, and
Speaker 1: now I am thirty two. It seemed to me that
Speaker 1: it might take all the thoughts and energies of a
Speaker 1: man for ten years or twenty years. But even if
Speaker 1: it did, the game was still worth the candle. Suppose
Speaker 1: one to have at last just hit the right trick
Speaker 1: before the secret got out, and diamonds became as common
Speaker 1: as co one might realize millions, millions. He paused and
Speaker 1: looked for my sympathy. His eyes shone hungrily to think,
Speaker 1: said he, that I am on the verge of it all,
Speaker 1: And here I had He proceeded about a thousand pounds
Speaker 1: when I was twenty one, And this, I thought, eked
Speaker 1: out by a little teaching, will keep my researches going.
Speaker 1: A year or two was spent in study at Berlin, chiefly,
Speaker 1: and then I continued on my own account. The trouble
Speaker 1: was the secrecy. You see, if once I had let
Speaker 1: out what I was doing, other men might have been
Speaker 1: spurred on by my belief in the practicability of the idea.
Speaker 1: And I do not pretend to be such a genius
Speaker 1: as to have been sure of coming in first in
Speaker 1: the case of a race for the discovery. And you see,
Speaker 1: it was important that if I really meant to make
Speaker 1: a pile. People should not know. It was an artificial
Speaker 1: process and capable of turning out diamonds by the ton.
Speaker 1: So I had to work all alone. At first I
Speaker 1: had a little laboratory, but as my resources began to
Speaker 1: run out, I had to conduct my experiments in a wretched,
Speaker 1: unfurnished Roman candish town, where I slept at last on
Speaker 1: a straw mattress on the floor. Among all my apparatus.
Speaker 1: The money simply flowed away. I grudged myself everything except
Speaker 1: scientific appliances. I tried to keep things going by a
Speaker 1: little teaching, but I am not a very good teacher,
Speaker 1: and I have no university degree, nor very much education
Speaker 1: except in chemistry. And I found I had to give
Speaker 1: a lot of time and labor for precious little money.
Speaker 1: But I got nearer and nearer the thing. Three years
Speaker 1: ago I settled the problem of the composition of the
Speaker 1: flux and got near the pressure by putting this flux
Speaker 1: of mine, and I said, carbon composition into a closed
Speaker 1: up gun barrel, filling up with water, sealing tightly and heating.
Speaker 1: He paused, rather risky, said I yes, it burst and
Speaker 1: smashed all my windows and a lot of my apparatus,
Speaker 1: but I got a kind of diamond powder none the less.
Speaker 1: Following out the problem of getting a big pressure upon
Speaker 1: the molten mixture from which the things were to crystallize,
Speaker 1: I hit upon some researches of dowbris at the Paris
Speaker 1: laboratory de Powdre a Salpeitrae. He exploded dynamite in a
Speaker 1: tightly screwed steel cylinder too strong to burst, and I
Speaker 1: found he could crush rocks into a muck, not unlike
Speaker 1: the South African bed in which diamonds are found. It
Speaker 1: was a tremendous strain on my resources, but I got
Speaker 1: a steel cylinder made for my purpose after his pattern.
Speaker 1: I put all my stuff in my explosives, built up
Speaker 1: a fire in my furnace, but the whole concern in
Speaker 1: and went out for a walk. I could not help
Speaker 1: laughing in his manner of fact manner, did you not
Speaker 1: think it would blow up the house? Were there other
Speaker 1: people in the place? It was in the interest of science,
Speaker 1: he said. Ultimately, there was a cost among a family
Speaker 1: on the floor below, a begging letter writer in the
Speaker 1: room behind mine, and two flower women were upstairs. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it was a bit thoughtless, but possibly some of them
Speaker 1: were out. When I came back, the thing was just
Speaker 1: where I left it, among the white hot coals. The
Speaker 1: explosive hadn't burst the case, and then I had a
Speaker 1: problem to face. You. No, time is an important element
Speaker 1: in crystallization. If you hurry the process, the crystals are small.
Speaker 1: It is only by prolonged standing that they grow to
Speaker 1: any size. I resolved to let this apparatus call for
Speaker 1: two years, letting the temperature go down slowly during the time,
Speaker 1: and I was now quite out of money, and with
Speaker 1: a big fire in the rent of my room, as
Speaker 1: well as my hunger to satisfy, I had scarcely a
Speaker 1: penny in the world. I can hardly tell you all
Speaker 1: the shifts I was put to while I was making
Speaker 1: the diamonds. I've sold newspapers, held horses, opened cab doors
Speaker 1: for many weeks. I had dressed envelopes. I had a
Speaker 1: place as assistant to a man who owned a barrow
Speaker 1: and used to call down one side of the road
Speaker 1: while he called down the other. Once for a week,
Speaker 1: I had absolutely nothing to do, so I begged what
Speaker 1: a week that was. One day, the fire was going
Speaker 1: out and I had eaten nothing all day, and a
Speaker 1: little chap taking his girl out, gave me sixpence to
Speaker 1: show off. Thank Heaven for vanity. How the fish shops smelt.
Speaker 1: But I went and spent it all on coals and
Speaker 1: had the furnace bright red again. And then, well, hunger
Speaker 1: makes a fool of a man. At last three weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I let the fire out. I took my cylinder and
Speaker 1: unscrewed it while it was still so hot that it
Speaker 1: punished my hands. And I scraped out the crumbling lava
Speaker 1: like mass with a chisel and hammered it into a
Speaker 1: powder upon an iron plate. And I found three big
Speaker 1: diamonds and five small ones. As I sat on the
Speaker 1: floor hammering, my door opened and my neighbor, the begging
Speaker 1: letter writer, came in. He was drunk, as he usually is.
Speaker 1: Nurkist said he you're drunk, said I, structive scoundrel said
Speaker 1: he go to your father, said I, meaning the father
Speaker 1: of lies. Never you mind, said he, and gave me
Speaker 1: a cunning wink, and hiccoughed, and, leaning up against the
Speaker 1: door with his other eye against the door post, began
Speaker 1: to babble of how he had been prying in my
Speaker 1: room and how he had gone to the police that morning,
Speaker 1: and how they had taken on everything he had to say.
Speaker 1: Say if I was a gentleman, said he. Then I
Speaker 1: suddenly realized I was in a hole. Either I should
Speaker 1: have to tell these police my little secret and get
Speaker 1: the whole thing blown upon, or be lagged as an anarchist.
Speaker 1: So I went up to my neighbor and took him
Speaker 1: by the collar and rolled him about a bit, and
Speaker 1: then I gathered up my diamonds and cleared out. The
Speaker 1: evening newspapers called my den the kentish Ton bomb factory.
Speaker 1: And now I cannot part with the things for love
Speaker 1: or money if I go into respectable jewelers. They asked
Speaker 1: me to wait and go and whisper to a clerk
Speaker 1: to fetch a policeman. And then I say I cannot wait.
Speaker 1: And I found out a receiver of stolen goods, and
Speaker 1: he simply stuck to the one I gave him and
Speaker 1: told me to prosecute if I wanted it back. I
Speaker 1: am going about now with several hundred thousand pounds worth
Speaker 1: of diamonds round my neck, and without either food or shelter.
Speaker 1: You were the first person I have taken into my confidence.
Speaker 1: But I like your face, and I am hard driven.
Speaker 1: He looked into my eyes. It would be madness, said
Speaker 1: I for me to buy a diamond under the circumstances. Besides,
Speaker 1: I do not carry hundreds of pounds about of my pocket.
Speaker 1: Yet I more than half believe your story. I will,
Speaker 1: if you like, do this come to my office to morrow.
Speaker 1: You think I am a thief, said he, keenly, you
Speaker 1: will tell the police. I'm not coming into a trap. Somehow,
Speaker 1: I am assured you are no thief. Here is my card.
Speaker 1: Take that. Anyhow, you need not come to any appointment.
Speaker 1: Come when you will. He took the card, and, in
Speaker 1: earnest of my good will, think better of it, and come,
Speaker 1: said I. He shook his head doubtfully. I will pay
Speaker 1: back your half crown with interest some day, such interest
Speaker 1: as will amaze you, said he. Anyhow, you will keep
Speaker 1: the secret. Don't follow me. He crossed the road and
Speaker 1: went into the darkness, toward the little steps under the
Speaker 1: archway leading into Essex Street. Then I let him go,
Speaker 1: and that was the last I ever saw of him. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: I had two letters from him asking me to send
Speaker 1: bank notes, not checks to certain addresses. I weighed the
Speaker 1: matter over and took what I conceived to be the
Speaker 1: wisest course. Once he called upon me when I was out,
Speaker 1: My urchin described him as a very thin, dirty and
Speaker 1: ragged man with a dreadful cough. He left no message.
Speaker 1: That was the finish of him. So far as my
Speaker 1: story goes, I wonder sometimes what has become of him.
Speaker 1: Was he an ingenious monomaniac or a fraudulent dealer in pebbles?
Speaker 1: Or has he really made diamonds as he asserted? The
Speaker 1: latter is just sufficiently incredible to make me think at
Speaker 1: times that I have missed the most brilliant opportunity of
Speaker 1: my life. He may, of course be dead, and as
Speaker 1: diamonds carelessly thrown aside, one I repeat, was almost as
Speaker 1: big as my thumb. Or he may be still wandering
Speaker 1: about trying to sell the things. It is just possible
Speaker 1: he may yet emerge upon society and, passing athwart my heavens,
Speaker 1: in the serene altitude sacred to the wealthy, and the
Speaker 1: well advertised reproached me silently for my want of enterprise.
Speaker 1: I sometimes think I might have at least risked five
Speaker 1: pounds end of the diamond maker by H. G. Wells
Speaker 1: recording by Jerome Last April two thousand eight,