The Diamond Maker by Arthur B. Reeve
"The Diamond Maker" is a Craig Kennedy scientific detective story in which the professor is hired by an insurance company to investigate the suspicious death of a wealthy jeweler and the bizarre robbery of his office safe. Andrews, third vice-president of the Great Eastern Life Insurance Company, engages Kennedy to look into the death of Solomon Morowitch, a Maiden Lane diamond merchant, and the simultaneous theft of valuable gems from his business safe. The insurance company is prepared to pay the one hundred thousand dollar policy to Morowitch's widow but wants to resolve certain troubling circumstances first. Morowitch died at home after being brought back in a semiconscious state, attended only by his wife and briefly by Dr. Thornton, who noted a sickish sweet odor on the dying man's breath and later suspected cyanogen poisoning, though he listed pneumonia as the cause of death on the certificate. The safe at the jewelry office was found with a large hole burned through its steel top, something that baffled police entirely. Kennedy visits the office and demonstrates that the hole was made using thermite, a compound of iron oxide and powdered aluminum capable of burning through hardened steel at extreme temperatures. He notes that the door lock was untampered with, meaning the thief entered using a key. At the Morowitch home, Kennedy examines papers and discovers a desk calendar entry referencing a pending deal with a man named Poissan regarding a discovery related to diamonds. Mrs. Morowitch confirms that her husband had been negotiating with a chemist over some discovery involving diamonds but claims ignorance of the details and directs Kennedy to the junior partner, Kahan. Dr. Thornton, initially reluctant, eventually discloses that Morowitch in his dying delirium repeatedly spoke of diamonds, claiming he could make them, and seemed to want to summon Kahan to share his secret. Kennedy traces Poissan through a business directory and finds him to be a manufacturer of electric furnaces on William Street. Kennedy and his narrator companion Jameson visit Poissan the following evening, posing as a university professor and the son of a wealthy banker interested in investing. Poissan demonstrates a process using an electric arc furnace and molten iron to create high pressure around a carbon core, supposedly producing artificial diamonds. During the demonstration, Kennedy realizes that water introduced onto the electrodes reacts with carbon and atmospheric nitrogen to produce hydrocyanic acid, the same cyanogen gas that killed Morowitch, who had presumably witnessed a similar demonstration. Poissan, his deception exposed, locks the door and plans to leave Kennedy and Jameson to suffocate while he and his assistant Francois escape with the stolen Morowitch jewels. Kennedy had prepared for this contingency by placing a selenium cell on the window ledge outside the laboratory before entering. Selenium conducts electricity when exposed to light, and Kennedy had previously run wires down the elevator shaft to Andrews waiting below with a signal bell. When Kennedy removes his coat from the window ledge, the light from the electric furnace activates the selenium cell, completes the circuit, and rings the bell in the street below. Andrews and his men arrive. Kennedy shoots the lock off the door with his automatic revolver, freeing them before the cyanogen fumes prove fatal. Poissan, cornered, destroys the stolen jewels by plunging them into the electric furnace, reducing them to worthless graphite before he can be stopped. He is arrested for the murder of Morowitch, who had come to witness the diamond-making demonstration, been overcome by cyanogen fumes, and sent home to die while Poissan used his keys to rob the office safe. Andrews acknowledges that Mrs. Morowitch and Kahan are innocent and arranges for the insurance payment to be made immediately.
By Arthur B. Reeve · First published 1909 · Genre: Mystery, Crime Fiction, Detective Fiction