"I"ll tell you what," said the inspector, jubilantly, after a slight pause. "We will charge him with being in unlawful possession of certain diamonds, supposed to have been stolen. He has given me a false name and a silly address. Park Lane, the young imp said he lived in."
"A man in your position ought to be more accurate," interposed Philip.
"I did not say I lived in Park Lane. I told you I intended to buy a house there."
Seldom, indeed, were the minor deities of the police station bearded in this fashion, and by a callow youth. But the inspector was making the copperplate hair strokes which had gained him promotion, and his brain had gone back to its normal dullness.
"I will just see if we cannot bring him before a magistrate at once," he said, addressing Mr. Isaacstein. "Can you make it convenient to attend the court within an hour, sir? Then we will get a week"s remand, and we will soon find out----"
"A week"s remand!" Philip became white again, and those large eyes of his began to burn. "What have I done----"
"Silence! Search him carefully and take him to the cells."
The boy turned despairingly to the Jew.
"Mr. Isaacstein," he said, with a pitiful break in his voice, "why do you let them do this thing? You are a rich man, and well known. Tell them they are wrong."
But Isaacstein was wobbling now in a renewed state of excitement.
"What can I do, boy!" he vociferated, almost hysterically. "You must say where you got these stones, and then, perhaps, you can clear up everything."
Philip"s lips met in a thin seam.
"I will never tell you," he answered, and not another word would he utter.
They searched him and found nothing in his pockets save a key, a broken knife, some bits of string neatly coiled, and a couple of b.u.t.tons. He spent the next hour miserably in a whitewashed cell. He refused some coffee and bread brought to him at twelve o"clock, and this was the only sentient break in a wild jumble of conflicting thoughts. The idea came to him that he must be dreaming--that soon he would awaken amidst the familiar surroundings of Johnson"s Mews. To convince himself that this was not so, he reviewed the history of the preceding twenty-four hours.
At that time yesterday he was going to Fleet Street with a capital of ninepence to buy a quire of newspapers. He remembered where he had sold each of the five copies, where he bought a penny bun, and how he came to lose his stock and get cuffed into the bargain for rescuing a girl from an overturning carriage.
Then his mind reverted to his fixed resolve to hang himself, and his stolid preparations for the last act in his young life"s tragedy. Was that where the dream started, or was the whole thing a definite reality, needing only a stout heart and unfaltering purpose to carry him through triumphantly? Yes. That was it. "Be strong and brave and all will be well with you." Surely his mother had looked beyond the grave when she uttered her parting words. Perhaps, if he lay down and closed his eyes, he would see her. He always hoped to see her in his dreams, but never was the vision vouchsafed to him. Poor lad, he did not understand that his sleep was the sound sleep of health and innocence, when dreams, if they come at all, are but grotesque distortions of the simple facts of everyday existence. Only once had he dimly imagined her presence, and that was at a moment which his sane mind now refused to resurrect.
Nevertheless, he was tired. Yielding to the conceit, he stretched himself on the wooden couch that ran along one side of his narrow cell.
Some one called to him, not unkindly.
"Now, youngster, jump up. The van is here."
He was led through gloomy corridors and placed in a receptacle just large enough to hold him uncomfortably in a huge, lumbering vehicle. He thought he was the only occupant, which was true enough, the prisoners"
van having made a special call for his benefit.
After a rumbling journey through unseen streets, he emerged into another walled-in courtyard. He was led through more corridors, and told to "skip lively" up a winding staircase. At the top he came out into a big room, with a well-like s.p.a.ce in front of him, filled with a huge table, around which sat several gentlemen, among them Mr. Isaacstein, while on an elevated platform beyond was an elderly man, who wore eyegla.s.ses and who wrote something in a book without looking up when Philip"s name was called out.
A police inspector, whom Philip had not seen before, made a short statement, and was followed by the constable who effected the arrest.
His story was brief and correct, and then the inspector stated that Mr.
Wilson, of Grant & Sons, Ludgate Circus, would be called at the next hearing, as he--the inspector--would ask for a remand to enable inquiries to be made. Meanwhile, Mr. Isaacstein, of Hatton Garden, had made it convenient to attend that day, and would be pleased to give evidence if his worship desired to hear him.
"Certainly," said Mr. Abingdon, the magistrate. "This seems to be a somewhat peculiar case, and I will be glad if Mr. Isaacstein can throw any light upon it."
But Mr. Isaacstein could not do any such thing. He wound up a succinct account of Philip"s visit and utterances by declaring that there was no collection of meteoric diamonds known to him from which such a remarkable set of stones could be stolen.
This emphatic statement impressed the magistrate.
"Let me see them," he said.
The parcel was handed up to him, and he examined its contents with obvious interest.
"Are you quite sure of their meteoric origin, Mr. Isaacstein?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Can you form any estimate of their probable value?"
"About fifty thousand pounds!"
The reply startled the magistrate, and it sent a thrill through the court.
"Really! So much!" Mr. Abingdon was almost scared.
"If, after cutting, they turn out as well as I expect, that is a moderate estimate of their worth."
"I take it, from what you say, that meteoric diamonds are rare?"
Isaacstein closed his throat with a premonitory cough and bunched up his shoulders. A slight wobble was steadied by his stumpy hands on the rail of the witness box. He was really the greatest living authority on the subject, and he knew it.
"It is a common delusion among diamond miners that diamonds fall from the skies in meteoric showers," he said. "There is some sort of foundation for this mistaken view, as the stones are found in volcanic pipes or columns of diamantiferous material, and the crude idea is that gigantic meteors fell and plowed these deep holes, distributing diamonds in all directions as they pa.s.sed. But the so-called pipes are really the vents of extinct volcanoes. Ignorant people do not realize that the chemical composition of the earth does not differ greatly from that of the bodies which surround it in s.p.a.ce, so that the same process of manufacture under high temperature and at great pressure which creates a diamond in a meteor has equal powers here. In a word, what has happened in the outer universe has also happened at Kimberley. Iron acts as the solvent during the period of creation, so to speak. Then, in the lapse of ages, it oxidizes by the action of air or water, and the diamonds remain."
The magistrate nodded.
"There are particles of a mineral that looks like iron among these stones?" he said.
The question gave Isaacstein time to draw a fresh supply of breath. Sure of his audience now, he proceeded more slowly.
"That is a certain proof of a meteoric source. A striking confirmation of the fact is supplied by a district in Arizona. Here, on a plain five miles in diameter, are scattered thousands of ma.s.ses of metallic iron, varying in weight from half a ton to a fraction of one ounce. An enormous meteoric shower fell there at some period, and near the center is a crater-like hole which suggests the impact of some very large body which buried itself in the earth. All mineralogists know the place as the Canyon Diabolo, or Devil"s Gulch, and specimens of its ore are in every collection. Ordinary tools were spoiled, and even emery wheels worn by some hard ingredient in the iron, and a.n.a.lysis has revealed the presence therein of three distinct forms of diamond--the ordinary stone, like these now before you, both transparent and black graphite, and amorphous carbon; that is, carbon without crystallization."
"I gather that the diamantiferous material was present in the form of tiny particles and not in stones at all approaching these in size?" said Mr. Abingdon.
"Exactly. I have never either seen or heard of specimens like those. In 1886 a meteor fell in Russia, and contained one per cent. of diamond in a slightly metamorphosed state. In 1846 the Ava meteorite fell in Hungary, and it held crystalline graphite in the bright as well as the dark form. But, again, the distribution was well diffused, and of slight commercial value. Sir William Crookes, or any eminent chemist, will bear me out in the a.s.sumption that the diamonds now before your eyes are absolutely matchless by the product of any recorded meteoric source."
Isaacstein, having delivered his little lecture, looked and felt important. The magistrate bent forward with a pleasant smile.
"I am very much obliged to you for the highly interesting information you have given," he said. "One more question--the inevitable corollary of your evidence is that the boy now in the dock has either found a meteor or a meteoric deposit. Can you say if it is a matter of recent occurrence?"
"Judging by the appearance of the accompanying sc.r.a.ps of iron ore, I should say that they have been quite recently in a state of flux from heat. The silicates seem to be almost eliminated."
The magistrate was unquestionably puzzled. Queer incidents happen in police courts daily, and the most unexpected scientific and technical points are elucidated in the effort to secure an accurate comprehension of matters in dispute. But never, during his long tenancy of the court, had he been called on to deal with a case of this nature. He smiled in his perplexity.
"We all remember the copy-book maxim: "Let justice be done though the heavens fall,"" he said; "but here it is clearly shown that the ideal is not easily reached."
Of course, everyone laughed, and the reporters plied pen and pencil with renewed activity. Here was a sensation with a vengeance--worth all the display it demanded in the evening papers. Headlines would whoop through a quarter of a column, and Philip"s meteor again run through s.p.a.ce.
The boy himself was apparently the most disinterested person present.