I was on hand at the appointed hour, and, after carefully locking the door, the professor became confidential.
COUNTERFEIT SAPPHIRES.
“You remember your experiments to produce sapphires,” he said, “and you also remember that I took great interest in them. When you were disheartened and gave up, I did not abandon hope, and at last I have been rewarded. I have produced a perfect sapphire by following another process from yours. You used alumina and boracic acid; I have been using the same things, but have added another acid, and an oxide that gives the color to the stone at the same time that it facilitates the crystallization. Here is the result.”
As he spoke he opened a table drawer, and from a small box produced three beautiful stones. Apparently they were sapphires of correct shape, color, and density, and worth a great deal of money. They reflected the gas light, and for a short time I saw a fortune before me. When I had examined them thoroughly and placed them on the table, the professor continued: “Now, these are sapphires made in my laboratory—just as Nature has made them in hers. They are of the same material as the natural sapphire, and a man can sell them for genuine stones and not be guilty of any fraud.”
I assented to his proposition.
“Here is a fortune in my secret; but to make the secret available, it is necessary to proceed with great caution. The instant it is known or suspected that the stones are made by an artificial process, the market will be ruined. I have thought the whole thing over, and determined upon a plan. We will form a small company, the fewer men in it the better, and fit up a laboratory in connection with a tin shop, or something of the sort. The shop will be a blind to prevent suspicion, and the laboratory can be in the rear, where we will pretend to have a new process for soldering tin. When the stones are made, we can put them on the market slowly, and sell them just fast enough to prevent getting up a panic.”
A MAGNIFICENT SCHEME.
He went on with the details of his scheme, which was plausible enough, only it was a trifle too large. Had he been an adventurer, I should have suspected him at once; but here was a scientific gentleman, whose name was on the title page of a book that had been received as an authority, and, so far as I knew, his reputation was without blemish. I was captivated by the brilliancy of the enterprise, and readily consented to join him and bring the matter to the attention of some of my friends. He wanted about twenty thousand dollars for a share in the secret, and as capital wherewith to set up and stock his proposed laboratory. To wind up the evening and leave me fully convinced, he opened a crucible, which, he averred, he had that afternoon taken from the furnace and laid away to cool. From the black mass of slag at the bottom he extracted a couple of sapphires, smaller than the ones he had previously shown me, but as perfect in every way as the others. My mind was nearly but not quite made up. I asked the privilege of taking one of these latest sapphires, and also one of the others, to show to a friend whom I wished to join me in the speculation.
The professor consented, with the injunction that I must not reveal the secret of their manufacture, and that I should be very cautious about exciting the suspicion of any outsider as to their artificial character. “We must be very careful,” said he, “not to let the dealers know that the stones are not dug from the ground, like all others in the market. They are in every respect the same, but the question of demand and supply tells more readily on precious stones than on anything else that men deal in.”