|
246
|
DIAMOND
|
||
|
|
|||
|
microscopic
slides lay on cotton. Mounted on one was a flat black blob about the
size of a pinhead: "I don't know what that is," said the doctor, "but I
do know it's not a diamond. It was associated with the others." On the
other slide was a tiny group of ten specks, lined up in two rows of
five each. The whole thing was less than half an inch in width, and
even less than that in height.
"Good Lord," I said, "is that it? I mean, are those them?"
"That's
it. There are your Hannay diamonds," said the doctor. He handed me a
magnifying glass: "You can see them quite well with this, if you go
over to the window."
Looked
at that way, the little black specks came up and showed that they had
depth and weren't black at all. They even developed sparkle of a
Lilliputian sort. They looked like diamonds all right, and the three
biggest, if you can call anything of that dimension big even in the
comparative, looked like replicas of a number of diamonds I had seen
and handled without being afraid I might sneeze and disperse them.
Perhaps I was prejudiced, but I saw no signs that they were fragments
of one bigger stone. I handed the slide back to the doctor.
"And
now," I said, "all we've got to do, I suppose, is figure out if they
could possibly have been made by Hannay. I already know what your
private opinion is on that matter."
He
had calmed down by this time and was even ready to admit another view
than his own. He said, "Not everybody agrees with me. Only yesterday I
was asked to bring these things out to show a couple of people from
Canada. They've studied the matter for some time and they think Hannay
did make diamonds. Furthermore, they've got an idea they can repro-
|
|||
|
|
|||