thousand tons to the square inch is added by means of the two
guns. In other words, gentlemen, pure carbon, vaporized, is caught
between two projectiles which enter the cube simultaneously from
opposite sides, being fired by electricity. The impact is so terrific
that what had been two feet of compressed carbon is instantly
condensed into an irregular disk, one inch or an inch and a half
thick. _And that disk, gentlemen, is a diamond!_

"The violence of the operation, coupled with the intense heat, fuses
everything--furnace, projectiles, electric wires, fire-brick, even
asbestos, into a single mass. The cube is opened, and this mass,
white-hot, is dropped into cold water. This increases the pressure
until the mass is cool. Then it is broken away, and in the center is
a diamond--as big as a biscuit, gentlemen! Four small bores lead
from the two-inch bore through the cube, and permit the escape of air
as the projectiles enter. There is no rebound because the elastic
quality of the carbon is crushed out of existence--driven, I may say,
into the diamond itself. Of course the furnace, the two projectiles
and the connecting electric wires are all destroyed at each charge,
which brings the total cost of the operation to a little more than
eight hundred dollars, including nearly three tons of brown sugar.
The diamond resulting is worth at least a million when broken up for
cutting, sometimes even two millions. That is all, I think."

There was a long, awed silence. Mr. Latham, leaning against the
giant cube, stared thoughtfully at his toes; Mr. Schultze was peering
curiously about him, thence off into the gloom; Mr. Czenki still had
a question.

"I understand that all the diamonds were made in that disk-like
shape," he remarked at last. "Then the uncut stones that were stolen
were--"

"They were natural stones," interrupted Mr. Wynne, "imported for
purposes of study and experiment. I told Chief Arkwright the truth,
but not all of it. In the last twenty years Mr. Kellner had
destroyed some twenty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds in this
way. I may add that while Mr. Kellner had succeeded in making
diamonds of large size he had never made a perfect one until eight
years ago. But meanwhile the expenses of the work, as you will
understand, were enormous, so during the past eight years about a
million dollars' worth of diamonds have been sold, one or two at a
time, to meet this expense."

He paused a momen