Evening Star Newspaper, March 18, 1922, Page 8

.1 could ¥ The Story So Far. Kennedy went to Dr. Thornton, who gave the ‘Geathi certificate. | Thornton sald he had been called to see Mr. Morowitch and found him in a semi.conscious state. There Wi sweet odor to his breath. There was conge tion in the lungs. e pave him oxygen &3 treatment for pueumonia. a'so knowing it would be good treatment for poisoning, which he vaguely suspected. He was called sud- denly to another patient and when be returned Morowitch way dead. = He made out & cer. tificate for death of pneumonia. He was glad to tell Kennedy his doubts, and admitted Morowitch might have died of some poison Which he had not been etrong enough to throw off; for he had & weak heart, He had mur- mured weakly, “I can make them, d 1 can make thém, Kuban.” The next ds nedy rigged up a little contrivanc And made an appointment with Poissan to 2 demoy wires give tration of his dlamond making that night at his office, saying he would bring being & Walter, whom he represented as Joung ~millionaire. _That evening he _aud Walter went to get Mr. Andrews at his office. S we left the office. Andrews signaled to the two men out- side, and they quietly foi- lowed a few feet in the rear. but without seeming to be doing so. Poissan’s laboratory was at the top of#a sort of loft building a dozen stories or so high. It was a pecullar building, with several entrances be- sides a freight elevator at the rear and fire escapes that led to adjoining Ve nm“.d nd the corner in We stopped arou orne: the ‘shadow, and Kennedy and An- drews talked earnestly. As near as o out, Kennedy was in- sisting that it would be best for An- drews and his men not to enter the building at all, but wait downstairs while he and 1 went up. At last the arrangement was agreed on. “Here,” said Kennedy, undoing a package he had carried, “is a little electric bell with a couple of fresh dry batteries_attached to it, and wires that will reach at least four hundred feet. You and the men wait in the shadow here by this side en- trance for five minutes after Jarle- son and 1 go up. Then you must jen- gage the night watchman in seme way. While he is away you will find two wires dangling down the elev tor shaft. Attach them to these wires from the bell and the batteries—these two—vyou know how to do that. The wires will be hanging in_the third shaft—only one. elevator is running at night, the first. The moment you hear the bell begin to ring, jump into the elevator and come up to the twelfth floor—we'll need you.™” As Kenne elevator I could what an ideal place a downtown of- fice bullding is for committing a crime, even at this early hour of the evening. If the streets were deserted. the ofiice buildings were positively uncanny in their grim, black silence with only here and there a }ight. ‘The elevator in the first shaft shot Gown again to the ground tioor, and a it disappeared Kennedy took Lwo Spoo of wire from his nocket and hasti shoved them through the lattice work of the third elevator shaft. They quickly unrolled, ard | could hear them strike the top of the empty car below in the basement. That meant that Andrews on the ground floor could reach the ‘wires and attach them to the bell. Quigkly in the darkness Kenuedy at- tached the ends of the wires to the curious little coil I had seen him work- | ing on in the laboratory, and we pro- ceeded down the hall to the rooms oce pied by Poissan. Kennedy had allowed for the wire to reach from the elevator shaft up th: ed he paid it out in such a manner that it fell on the floor close where, in the darkness, it would never be noticed or stumbled over. Around an “L”-in the hall T could see a ground-glass window with a light shining through it. Kennedy stopped at the window and quickly place the lit- te coil on the ledge. close up against the glass, with the wires running from it down the hall, Then we entered. “On time to the minute, professor.” exclaimed Poissan, snapping shut his watch. “And this, T presume, is the banker who is interested in my great “discovery of making artificial diamonds of any size or color?” he added, indi- cating me. “Yes,” answered Craig, “as I told you, & son of Mr. T. Pierpont Spencer. 1 shook hands with as much dignity as 1 could assume, for the role of im- personation was a new one to me. Kennedy carelessly laid his coat and hat on the inside ledge of the ground- glass window, just opposite the spot where he had placed the little coil on the other side of the glass. I noted that the window was simply a large pane of wire glass set in the wall for the pur- pose of admitting light in the daytime from the hall outside. The whole thing seemed eerie to me— especially as Poissan's assistant was a huge fellow and had an evil look such as I had seen in pictures of the inhab- itants of quarters of Paris which one does mot frequent except in the com- pany of a safe guide. 1 was glad Ken- nedy had brought his revolver and rather vexed that he had not told me to do likewise. However, I trusted tha: Craig knew what he was about. We seated ourselves some distance from a table on which was a_ huge, ob- Jong contrivance that reminded me of the diagram of a parallelopiped which had caused so much trouble in my solid geometry at college. “That's the electric furnace, sir.” said Craig to me with an assumed deference, becoming a college professor explaining things to the son of a great financier. “You see the electrodes at either end? When .the current is turned on and led through them into the furnace you can get the most amazing temperatures in the crucible. The most refractory of chemical compounds can be broken up by that heat. What is the® highest tem- perature you hi#¥e attained, professor?” “Something over 3,000 degrees centri- grade,” replied Poissan, as he and his assistant busied themselves abouts the furnaee. We sat watching him in silence. “Ah, gentlemen. now I am' ready.” he exclaimed at length, when every- thing was arranged to his satisfac- tion. “You see, here is a lump of sugar carbon—pure amorphous car- bon. Diamonds. as you know, are composed of pure carbon crystailized under enormous pressure. ‘Now, my theory is that if we can cembine an enormous pressure and an enormous heat we can make diamonds artificial- ly. The problem of pressure is the thing, for here in the furnace we have /the necessary heat. It occurred to me that when molten cast iron cools it exerts a tremendous pressure. That pressure is what I use.” “You know, Spencer, solid iron floats on molten iron like solid water—ice— floats on liquid water,” explained| Craig to me. Poissan nodded. “I take this sugar carbon _and place it in this soft iron cup. Then I screw on this cap over the cup so. Now, I place this mass of iron scraps in the crucible of the fur- nace and start the furnace. He turned a switch. and long yel- low-blue sheets of flame spurted out from the electrodes on either side. It was weird, gruesome. One could feel the heat of the tremendous electric discharge. As I looked at the bluish-yellow flames they gradually changed to a beautiful purple and a sickish sweet odor filled the room. The furnace roared at first, but as the vapors in- ereased it became a better conductor of the electricity, and the roaring ceased. In aimost no time the mass of iron scraps became molten. Suddenly Poissan plunged the cast-iron cup into the seething mass. The cup float- ed and quickly began to melt. As it did eo he waited attentively until the proper moment. Then with a deft mo- tion he seized the whole thing with a long pair of tongs and plunged it into a vat of running water. A huge cloud of steam fllled the room. T felt a drowsy sensation stealing over me as the sickish sweet smell from the furnace increased. Gripping ' the chair, I roused myself and watch- ed Poissan attentively. He was work- ing rapidly. As the molten mass cool- ed’and solidifled he took it out of the . water and laid it on an anvil. Then his assistant began to hammer 'The Diamond a- By ARTHUR B. REEVE . One of The Star’s Week-End Fiction . Series, Complete in Three Installments y and I rode up in thej not help thinking | hall also. and as he walik-| to the wail, | it with careful, sharp blows, chipping off the outside. ou see we have to get down to the core of carbon gently,” he said, as he picked up the little pieces of iron and threw them into a scrap box. “First rather brittle cast iron, then hard Iron, then iron and carbon, then some black diamonds, and in the very center the diamonds. “Ah! we are getting to them. Here is a small diamond. ~ See, Mr. Spencer —gently, Francois—we shall come to i terrupted Craig; “let your assistant break them out while I stand over m." “Impossible. You would not know when you saw them. They are just rough stones.” i “Oh, yes, 1 would.” “No, stay where you are. Unless I attend to it the diamonds might be ruined.” 5 There was something peculiar about {his insistence, but after he picked out the next diamond I was hardly pré- pared for Kennedy's next remark. ! “Let me see the palms of your ! hands.” ¥ - | “Poissan shot an angry glance at Kennedy, but he did not open his hands. . “I merely wish to convince you, Mr. Spencer,” said Kennedy to me, “that it is no sleight-of-hand trick and that the professor has not several uncut stones palmed in. his hand like a prestidigitator.” The Frenchman faced us, his face livid_ with rage. “You call me & prestidigitator, a fraud—you shall | suffer for that! Sacrebleu! Ventre du Saint Gris! No man ever insults the honor of Poissan. Francois, water on the electrodes The assistant dashed a few drops of {water on the electrodes. - The sickislr] odor increased tremendously. 1 felt myself almost going, but with an effort I again roused myself. I wondered how Craig stood the fumes, for I suffered an. intense headache and nausea. “Stop!” Craig thundered. “There’s enough cyanogen in this room al- ready. I know your game—the water forms acetylene with the carbon, and i that uniting with the nitrogen of the air under the terrific heat of the electric arc forms hydrocyanic acid. Would you poison us, too? Do you think you can put me unconscious out on the street and have a soclety doc- tor diagnose my case as pneumonia? Or do you think we shall die quietly in some hospital, as a certain New York banker did last year after he had watched an alchemist make sil- ! Ver out of apparently nothing' The effect on Poissan was terrible. He advanced toward Kenedy, the veins in his-face fairly standing out. Shaking his {:’refin(er. he shouted: “You know thdt, do you? You are no professor. and this is no banker. | You are spies, spies. You come from the friends of Morowitch, do you? You have gone too far with me.” Kennedy said nothing, but retreat- ed and took his-coat apd hat off. the window ledge. The hideous pene- trating light of the tongues of flame from. the furnace played on the ground-glass window. Poissan laughed a, hollow laugh. “Put down your hat and coat, Mistair Kennedy,” he hissed. “The door has been locked ever since you have been here. Those windows are barred, the telephone wire is cut, and it is three hundred feet to the street. We shall leave you here when the : fumes have overcome you. Francois and I can stand them up to a point, and when we reach that point we are going.” Instead of being cowed, Kennedy grew bolder, though I, for my part. felt so weakened that I feared the outcome of a hand-to-hand encounter | with either Poissan or.Francois,” who appeared as fresh as if nothing had Ihappened. They were hurriedly pre- paring to leave us. { *That would do vou'no good,” Ken- {nedy rejoined, “for we have no safe full of jewels for you to rob. There lare no keys to offices to be stolen i from our pockets. And let me tell j you—you are not the only man in New York who knows the secret of thermit. I have told the secret to the police, and they are only waiting to find why, destroyed Morowitch's correspondence under the letter ‘P* to apprehend the robber of his safe. Your secret is out.” . “Revenge! Revenge!" Polssan cried. “I will have revenge. Francols, | bring out the jewels—ha! ha!—here i } Morowitch. Tonight Francols and I will go down by the back elevator to a secret exit. In two hours all your police in New, York cannot find us. But In two_hours you two impostors will be suffocated—perhaps you will die of cyanogen, - like Morowitch, whose jewels I have at last.” He went to the door into the hall and stood there with a mocking laugh. I moved-to make a rush to- ;‘lrg them, but Kennedy raised his ‘You will suffocate,” Poissan hissed again. Just then we heard the elevator door clang, and hurried steps came down the iong hall. Craig whipped out his automatic and began pumping the bullets out in rapid succession. As_the smoke cleared I expécted to see Poissan and Francois lying on the floor. Instead, Craig had fired at the lock on the doo: He had shattered it into a jin this bag are the jewels of Mr.! | publish weekly. The second Pneuinonia causes about one-ténth of all deaths in this part of the world. It stands second on the list of diseases arranged in order of the number of deaths’ caused, being surpassed only by heart disease, which is a chronic condition permitting some oppor- tunity for curative or palliative meas- ures to be employed. The term “pneumonja” includes two chief types of infiammation 'of the lungs. ~ Broncho-pneumoniu is_more prevalent at the extremes of life; while persons in middle life are more commonly affected with the lobar form. This disease takes a high toll among . children under five years old. From the age of five to adolescence it is relatively uncommon and mild, but beginning with early adult life pneu- monia exhibits a steadily increasing severity until in the very old it be- comes “nearly always fatal. It is strikingly a disease of the cold months, the summer prevalence being very low. i Pneumonia Gerra Disease. Pneumonia is & germ disease. Sev- eral kinds of bacteria are capable of producing it. These same kinds of bacteria may be found in the mouths, noses and throats of persons who are in perfect health; indeed, some of them are found so commoniy there as to be regarded as normal inhabitants. Why is it that these germs are sometimes apparently harmless and at other (imes deadly assailants? It has been found that the apparently harmless germs taken from the throats of healthy persons are never- theless very deadly to species of animals which have feeble powers of resistance. Furthermore, in the ma- jority of cases of penumonia there is found a history of tome debilitating condition well calculated to lower the resigtance of the Individual. There is also a theory that the germs may play at Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and suddenly take on vicious tendencies, but the evidence is not convincini At any rate we are bound to con- clude that debilitating influences are very {mportant. factors in caus- ing pneumonia. These predisposing causes must be examined more closely if we are to devise a scheme for pre- venting the disease. Z Measles, whooping cough, influenza and other acute infections very fre- quently prepare the soil for the de- velopment. of pneumonia by lowering the resistance of the patient to the bacteria already present in his own mucous membranes or those brought to him unwittingly by others. Severe chilling of the body from sitting in a draught or falling into cold water, for example, may profoundly affect the circulation of blood through the lungs and permit the bacteria to gain a foothold there. Breathing in irri- tating gases or dusts may accomplish the same result—such substances, for example, as the poisonous gases of warfare, stone and metal dusts in in- dustry and anesthetics administered for a long time. Methods of Prevention. The prevention of pneumonia must be based on the foregoing observa- tipns. . Since the germs which cause it are of many kinds and commonly carried by healthy people, no direct attack upon the bacteria is practi- cable except, and this exception is very Imngportant, that we should al- ways regard the pneumonia patient as ‘dangerous to other persons and should disinfect the discharges from his mouth and nose, and all articles handled or used by him, at the bed- side. This is essential even in hos- pital wards where there may be pneu- monia cases only, since the infection in some cases may be of a more se- vere type than in the others. The bulk of preventive measures must, therefore, be directed against the predisposing causes. * So far as the individual is concerned this consists of observing certain hyigleme pre- cautions. Do not consider yourself so hardy that you can afford to sit in cold draughts or dispense with an overcoat on long, cold rides with im- punity. If such exposure has been —_— 'thousand bits. Andrews and his men were running down the hall. “Curse you!'!" muttered Poissan as he banged the now useless lock, “who let those fellows in? Are you a wizard?”’ Craig smiled coolly as the ventila- tion cleared the room of the deadly cvanogen. “On the window sill outside, is a selenfum cell. Selenium is a bad conductor of electricity in the dark and an excellent conductor when ex- posed to light. I merely moved my coat and hat, and the light from the furnace which was golng to suffocate us played through the glass on the cell, the circuit was completed with out your suspecting that I could com- municate with friends outside. A bell Was rung on the street, and here they are. Andrews, there is the murderer of Morowitch, and there in his hands are. the Morowitch——" Poissan _had moved toward the furnace. With a quick motion he selzed the long tongs. There was a cloud of choking vaper. Kennedy leaped to the switch and shut off the current. With the tongs he lifted out a shapeless piece of valueless black graphite. “All that is left of the priceless Morowlitch jewels,” he exclaimed ru fully. “But we have the murdere: i “And tomorrow a certified check for one hundred thousand dollars goes -to Mrs. Morowitch with my humblest apologies and sympathy,” added Andrews. “Prof. Kennedy, you have earned your retainer.” THE END. HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE H This'is the first of a series of fourteen articles, prepared by experts of the United States public health service, which The Star article will appear next Saturday. PNEUMONIA. unavoidable, do your best to rfilhul a normal condition of the circulation before retiring. A warm drink (non- alcoholic), a bath and ‘rubdown and warm, dry clothing may readily make the difference between continue health and an attack of pneumonia. Try to keep yourself fit by the ra- tional use of food, air, sunlight, work, recreation and sleep.’ If you are at- tacked by any febrile iliness, take to bed early. There is no doubt that thousands of lives were unnecessarily lost during the influenza epidemic, be- | cause stricken individuals courageously, *but foolishly, tried to “stick it out' another day before taking to bed. Bad Atmosphere Dangerous. Certain occupations having bad at- mospheric conditions apparently pre- dispose to pneumonia. of employers to safeguard these in- : dustries by such general measures as | may be. practicabie, and of the em- ployed to use respirators when neces- sary. ‘. P As has been indlcated, a very'im- portant factor in preventing pneu- monia is found in the avoldance of other acute Infectious diseases. The mass control of these conditions i function of health uthorities, but th individual citizen Iu by no means res Ilieved of responsibility nor deprived of opportunity for personal initiative and co-operation, 1t I the legal obli- gation of individuais having knowl- cdge of the existence of reportable discases in their_households to report this to the health authorities, It is their privilege to insist upon the most ! modern local health machinery which will employ enlightened measures of prevention. Prominent among these measures in this connection are the prompt and thorough collection of re | borts of disease and the Mmstitution such measures as may be indicated (quarantine, Inolation, bedside disin- fection, etc.); effective sanitary con- trol of water and food supplies and the disposal of wastes; medical in- spection of schools M which the co- operation of the teachers is secured, and the furnishing of dependable in- formation to the public through «the rewspapers, through health bulletins, lectures and demonstrations, and es- pecially through the activities of [Sisiting nurses. It a local health: ad- ministration does not do these things it is the privilege of the citizens to find the reason. TOURING CAR *1395 ?.0.8. cLevELAND WARRINGTON MOTOR CAR COMPANY 1] satesroom: { 1] 1000 1440 8¢, 8 and Telophons North $860, The Chandler Motor Car Co. Cleveland Let Cuticura Keep Your Fresh and Young - . Daily use of the the skin smooth and clear, wi h:n- of the Ointment now and then pre- weat little skin troubles serious. Cuticura Talcum is At bano 5Dosis 4001 — Children Special Care of That Baby should have a bed of its own all are agreed. Yet it is more reasonable for an infant to sleep with grown-ups than to use a man’s medicine in an attempt to A prepared for grown-ups. Bears the Cry For RIA regulate the delicate organism of - that same infant. Either practice is to be shunned.” Neither would * be tolerated by specialists in children’s diseases. Your. Physician will tell you that Baby’s medicine must prepared with even greater care than food. Baby's stomach when in good health is too often od . 3 - m'm:hnd yt{:t‘l‘gfl:u‘ mm especiall; dmm’ your 12 an; t a e for Infants and Children ? Don’t be deceived. 7 : m a mt:let mtgthia:—nhmmnt, Mothers, that you should remem! function well, the digestive organs of your Baby must receive special care. No Baby is so abnormal that the desired results may be had from the use of medicines primarily MOTHERS SHOULD READ THE BOOKLET THAT I8 AROUND EVERY BOTTLE OF FLEJCHER'S CASTOMA , cenuine CASTORIA ALWAYS . Signature ‘of & 1t is the duty | [l ' . ) O, SATURDAY,. MARCH 18, 1922.. NITROPIC! The Elysian Zone of That Flavor Rich and Rare , = 'Add a new zone to your geography, for you are living in it!. It is the zone of coffee ‘ delight—the zone of perennial fair weather at mealtime. Sanitary’s Famous Green Bag Cof- fee is grown in the tropic zone—it is consumed in the SANITROPIC zone! Didnt’ know of this revision of the world map, yousay? Itis be- coming an old story to most Washingtonians. ‘One cup of that coffee—with the true tropic | \ flavor, rich and rare—and the discoveryofthe Elysian.zone will be instantaneous—and mem-. orable as‘a redetter event in the calendar of | 0 happiness! 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