Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930

In the room of the crucible a terrible fate awaits professor Wheatland, maker of gems...

Chapter I Room of the Crucible

Lieutenant Williams, head of the city’s murder squad, followed the sedate butler down a softly carpeted hallway, under a fall of magnificent tapestry, and through a steel door into a room he had long wished to see.

A man in a linen smock rose from an easy chair before a table and came forward with outstretched hand. He was a rather heavy man of medium Height, but his keen eyes under bushy brows gave the lie to his dull large featured face.

“Professor Wheatland?” smiled the lieutenant. “I am very much interested to see your workshop, but I’m rather curious to know what you can want with me.”

For a moment Wheatland, scientist and society man, looked gravely and appraisingly at the tall lithe figure of the young lieutenant. He was satisfied with what he saw, since it amply lived up to the reputation the officer had built for himself in the past five years, and with a smile he motioned to a chair.

“I sent for you, lieutenant, because I am about to be murdered,” he said flatly.

“What!” Williams, gazing with interest about the curious room, brought his gaze back to the professor’s face with a start.

Wheatland nodded.

“Yes. It is quite a serious matter. But first of all, I must show you this room. Then you may understand better. Of course you have heard of my ability to manufacture diamonds?”

“Yes,” said the lieutenant, looking frankly incredulous. “And I must confess that with the rest of the city, I don’t believe you can.”

The professor smiled fleetingly.

“Look at this room,” he requested. “That door you came in by is positively the only opening it has. No other doors and no windows. Here I work in absolute secrecy. I have to, as my invention would be worth millions to many industries. You realize what it will mean if I make diamonds in this crucible.”

He motioned toward a stand near a huge electric furnace.

Williams nodded.

“Yeah, if you can make them,” he said. “But no man can make a real diamond, professor. Don’t try to hand me that.”

“I expect that attitude, naturally,” said the professor patiently. “But I have already demonstrated to the heads of various jewel industries that I can make diamonds in that furnace. They have seen me do it. The diamond powers are growing frightened. And well they may. But it is not to show you how I make diamonds that I asked you to come here. First of all I wish you to examine to your own satisfaction this room. Convince yourself that there is no way out of it save through the door by which you just entered.”

With growing interest, despite his incredulity, Williams rose and walked about the oval room, tapping the white painted walls and pausing to carefully examine the electric furnace.

“The door is locked by a combination only my wife and myself know,” went on the professor. “And I have been most careful to let my wife know this combination. Examine the lock if you please.”

Williams did so, wondering if what the papers said about the scientist was not true, and if he were not just a bit gone in the head.

“This,” said the professor scribbling on a paper and handing it to the astounded officer of the law, “is the combination. Memorize it if you please.”

The lieutenant having read the paper, the professor immediately burned it in a small dish on the table.

“In this room to-night, lieutenant,” he resumed, “I demonstrate to a few friends, a reporter, and the head of a famous diamond mining company, an expert, that I can mix my ingredients in this crucible and put the crucible in that furnace and in a short time take from the crucible a handful of genuine diamonds. I am giving a little dinner party first, but it is not with that I am interested. In this room, before this select little group leaves it, after my demonstration, I shall be killed.”

The lieutenant’s disgusted face flushed a little.

“How can you possibly know that?” he demanded.

“I have been told over the telephone and by notes left at my door and discovered in the morning by Jock, the butler. The notes will be of no help to the police, and I have not saved them. They have all been alike, worded the same, and composed of printed words cut from newspapers and stuck on a bit of wrapping paper. There has never been any envelope.”

“I should have liked to see them, however,” said the lieutenant impatiently. “They might have told us more than they told you. We have some rather good men at headquarters.”

“The notes all told me to stop this diamond faking, as they called it, or I would die,” went on the professor, not heeding the lieutenant’s remark. “This morning, after the papers had announced the demonstration that is to take place here to-night, I received the final note, in which I was told that if I tried to interest this diamond expert to-night in my trickery I would not leave this room alive. You have examined the room.”

“Yes,” said the lieutenant briefly.

The professor leaned forward tensely.

“There will be few guests here,” he said very low, his keen eyes on the young officer’s. “I will give you a list of them. The man who has been writing me these notes is in love with my wife, as well as desirous of possessing himself of my priceless formula for making these gems.”

“But then,” said the lieutenant a bit disgustedly, “you know the man.”

“I do not,” said the professor, leaning back again. “That is just it. I do not. Caresse, my wife, is most tactful. She is a very clever woman. Yet I know that she loves some man and that they are both plotting to get rid of me and to get their hands on the formula.”

“But if you are killed here in a sealed room, and some time afterward one of the men who were present starts to manufacture diamonds, how will he escape discovery?” asked Williams.

“That is exactly what will happen,” said the professor. “You do not properly estimate the brains of my enemy. My wife would never care for a stupid man. I have lost her because I dabbled too much in this room. But who would not, with such a fortune as this at stake? Do you realize what it means to make diamonds?”

“Yeah,” grinned the lieutenant, “but I don’t believe you can do it. No, you’d never get by with that, professor.”

“I sent for you to ask if you or one of the best men you have in your department will come to my dinner tonight,” said the professor coolly. “I am accustomed to laughter, sneers, incredulity. I ask only to prove what I can do. People must believe their eyes. Also, I want the protection of the police. I am to die to-night, lieutenant. And my work is not finished. All that I ask is that the man who kills me never dares use what my brain has discovered. This will not be like a crime out in the crowded world. You have convinced yourself that the only exit from this room is by that door, and that only myself, my wife and you possess the combination.”

“But if your wife has it and loves this man, she can give it to him,” said the lieutenant.

“Yes, that is why I told her,” chuckled Wheatland. “If she lets him use it to come in or out, he is identified. Jock looks like a meek person, but he is an ex-pugilist and he shoots from the hip. When I am not in here all night Jock is. Until I finance my vast venture we take no chances. I told my wife that combination to trap her, and the man she loves. But she is far too clever to use it. You have not met Caresse.”

Surely, thought the lieutenant, the man was a little mad. But for a moment the wild idea occurred to him that possibly the fellow could make a diamond! For weeks the papers had been giving him a lot of publicity and his several demonstrations before all sorts of men had been most successful. But no hard-boiled police lieutenant could swallow that stuff! The chap was a crook, despite his reputation and his social position.

Chapter II The Ghost Violin

“What is it you wish me to do if I attend your dinner tonight, professor?” asked the lieutenant after a moment during which he sat studying the room.

“Nothing,” said Wheatland grimly. “Just come and watch and wait. There will be plenty for you to do. After dinner we come in here, all of us, for the demonstration. I lock the door with the combination only you, my wife and I myself know. If Caresse has told this man she loves he will not dare to use it lest he brand himself.”

“Give me the list of your guests,” said the lieutenant, interested in spite of his incredulity; conscious of a thrill that was not entirely pleasant. Something seemed to warn him that he was standing on the threshold of danger.

Drawing a bit of paper toward him the professor wrote rapidly a list of names and addresses.

“Linda Price, my wife’s oldest friend,” he told Williams, touching the first name with his pencil tip. “A charming girl. Runs a fashionable tea shop. Not because she has to, but because she must be busy. She and Caresse will be the only women present. It is the men who interest me. You see, without the diamond expert, whom we may except since I have only met him once and Caresse not at all, there are four. I am not eliminating from this list young Frisby, the reporter on the News. Caresse went to school with him, although we do not see much of him. Then there is Philip Farren, my lawyer, Will Clinton, the chemist, and Eddie Harmer, who lives on his money. One of these men, lieutenant, is coming here to-night to put a finish to me, to make it possible for himself to win my wife, and to take the formula. Of this formula there is only one copy. Any one would think that I would naturally have another in a safe deposit box or some place as secure. But, no. If I die, my wife is not to have this formula. No one is. My secret of manufacturing diamonds dies with me. Caresse and her lover will not benefit by the fruits of my brain after they have rendered me powerless.”

The lieutenant put the list of guests slowly into his pocket. He seemed undecided about something.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he asked, “that your wife is in the plot to murder you?”

The professor’s face twisted grimly.

“I think that if I am killed, Caresse will know by whom and why,” he said deliberately. “I wanted you to know that. Her beauty and charm are quite unusual. There is something magnetic and potent about her personality. You will not believe that she can be capable of deception. But if I am murdered to-night, I have given you the motive. Remember that. That is more than you often get, lieutenant, before a crime has been committed!”

“But what makes you think that your wife is in love or that she is aware of these warning notes?” asked Williams.

“I know my wife,” said the professor grimly, “and you do not. And you never will. Don’t flatter yourself that you ever will, no matter what comes out of all this. But she cannot fool me.”

Lieutenant Williams, who had solved many strange cases, and was accustomed to many weird stories, simply stared at the professor. He could not imagine a man who knew that his end was near, acting as he was acting.

“The formula,” went on the professor calmly, “is typed upon a small square of paper. It is secreted in this room. Not even Jock knows where it is. If I am killed, not even Caresse, frantically searching, will find it.”

The lieutenant’s face showed varying emotions. He did not believe the professor quite sane. And yet, if the man could not make the diamonds in that absurd crucible, he must have a pretty store of the gems somewhere about! And what was his game? Nothing could make young Williams believe that any man could manufacture genuine diamonds.

And this murder stuff—

In any ordinary case he would have given any one who told him such a yarn the laugh long since, but Professor Wheatland was different. If he called on the police for help, he must be given help. He could not afford to forget the coming dinner party and laugh it off, and then have a hurry call come in to headquarters during the evening from the Wheatland mansion. But it was something new to the head of the murder squad to be summoned to the scene of crime before the crime had taken place, and that by the victim himself! No, he would not dare pass this up.

“You have no idea in what manner this criminal will approach you, professor?” he asked as he rose.

“Not the slightest.”

“Very well,” said the lieutenant with sudden decision. “I will attend your dinner to-night, professor, and study your guests with interest, you may be sure. If anything happens to you, you can be certain too, that we will get the man, no matter how clever he has been. Are you armed?”

“It would be of no use,” said Wheatland, with a strange smile. “A gun would do me no good against this danger, I somehow know. But if you advise it, I will carry one.”

“I certainly do advise it,” said the lieutenant with sharp suspicion. “There is nothing quite so comforting as an automatic in one’s pocket.”

As he spoke he swung upon the professor with a start, a very unpleasant sensation creeping up his spine. For in the air about them, inside that close cell-like apartment, there was growing the sound of a violin, a magnificent violin, and the thing it played was Chopin’s “Funeral March!”

“Great Scott!” cried Williams. “What is that?”

The professor had grown rather ghastly. He wiped his damp forehead and tried to smile.

“I didn’t want to tell you about that,” he said in a shaking voice. “I hear it all the time. It — more than the notes — has me rather rattled. Every now and then that cursed violin plays that depressing thing. You’ve no idea how it affects one.”

“But your wife — she plays?” asked Williams, rather bewildered.

“Not at all. Caresse is not musical. We have no radio and no musical instrument of any sort in the house. This is the ninth or tenth time I have heard the thing. At night it is hideous, when I am down here alone.”

The sound of the violin was dying out. Exquisitely played, it was growing fainter, and even as the lieutenant, using the combination he remembered, wrenched open the door, it ceased.

The softly carpeted corridor stretched away in both directions, entirely empty. There were no doors near the professor’s workroom.

“You have looked for this violin?” he asked the professor, as he returned to the room.

“Certainly,” said Wheatland still mopping his brow. “I have done all that mortal man can to solve its mystery. Of course it is a human agency, and it is not the thought of ghosts which upsets me, lieutenant. It is the thought of my own death with my work unaccomplished, and my wife and her lover triumphing.”

Chapter III A Murderer Defied

Dinner at the Wheatlands’. The long table, set in a room which was a triumph of paneling and tapestries, was weighed down with silver, exquisite china and glass. A delicate garden of orchids and ferns ran straight down the middle of it. Candlelight shed a soft glow over the women’s gowns, the men’s white shirt fronts, the silently moving figures of the two men serving, the pugilistic Jock and another man whom Lieutenant Williams did not know. A breath of flowers drifted in from the gardens through the open French windows.

At the head of the table sat Caresse Wheatland, a girl whom the lieutenant instantly found it difficult to describe. She was a flame, a flash, a vivid dash of exotic color, a lovely flare of something unbelievably exquisite — but definitely dangerous. Auburn-haired and brown-eyed, slim as a rapier, with a delicious curving mouth and a naturally perfect skin, she would dominate any gathering. For behind her arresting beauty was plenty of brains. Williams could see why the professor might fancy her in love with some other man, even plotting with the other man to free herself. She was nothing that could ever be held long by one person — as uncertain as quicksilver.

Had it not been for the music of that weird violin down in the strange room where the professor worked, the blasé young police lieutenant would not have believed any of the professor’s story. The man might be a genius, but he seemed a trifle cracked. But he could not forget that violin. If it could be explained by something logical, as of course it could, it at any rate spelled clanger for the professor.

Again and again the lieutenant’s puzzled eyes came back from a study of the guests, to that exotic young hostess, an emerald-studded cigarette holder between her rouged lips. What material she would make for the press if she ever got herself into a mixup! And then, naturally, his eyes went to the reporter, Fred Frisby, who sat on Mrs. Wheatland’s right and absorbed a good deal of her attention. Frisby was a sandy-haired young man with a likeable face and a store of good dinner yarns.

Next to Frisby sat Saleworth, the diamond expert, a gray-haired youngish man with a slow voice and a droll wit. The lieutenant did not pay much attention to him. Then came Linda Price, a fair-haired, dimpled young woman, who wore many diamonds and laughed at everything any one said.

Phil Farren, the lawyer, sat beside Linda. He was a type one passes on the street every day, medium height, medium color, medium brains, Williams decided, though he could not be too sure. He must not make a mistake about these people, for if that crazy professor was right, a clever crime was hatching about that magnificent dinner table. Boy, what news it would make! And what a case for his office!

Next to Farren sat the host, and next to him the chemist, Will Clinton. Stout and rather red-faced, and possessed of a jovial laugh, Clinton did not seem the type to make the brilliant successes he had made in his line, which went to show, thought Williams grimly, that one must not be too swift to judge, and certainly not in his work.

He himself sat beside Clinton, and next to him came Eddie Harmer, the idle millionaire. Harmer was young, as young as the lovely hostess, and his wavy dark hair, dark eyes and swarthy skin, coupled with a good figure and perfect grooming, made him very attractive. Caresse seemed to think so, for when she could tear herself from Frisby she turned instantly to Harmer, to the exclusion of the rest of the table which she left to Linda Price and her husband.

If any of those well bred people felt uncomfortable to have a police lieutenant seated at that exclusive board with them, they gave no evidence of it. Perhaps they were accustomed to the eccentricities of the host, although his presence, thought Williams, must cause the man who was contemplating a crime, some uneasiness.

The dinner moved along smoothly enough until the frozen dessert was passed and then, with no warning whatever, the host rose, cleared his throat and stood at the end of the table facing his radiant young wife until silence gradually fell and every one looked at him.

“Before we go down to my workroom,” said the professor in a pleasantly clear voice, “I wish to say a few words to the man who has come here to-night to murder me.”

Caresse gave a gasp and her face flushed with lovely warm color.

“Archie!” she said sharply. “Don’t be such an utter fool!”

“My dear,” Wheatland bowed courteously, “I don’t care to be interrupted if you please. There is a man at this table who has come here this evening to murder me, I repeat. He has sent me notes telling me so for the past weeks. He does not wish me to demonstrate this evening my marvelous ability to make genuine diamonds. He wishes to be able to do that himself, my dear Caresse, after he has stolen my precious formula and married you.”

“My dear fellow!” gasped Farren, horrified, while protests arose from about the table.

The lieutenant sat in grim silence, watching the shocked face upon which the candlelight danced strangely. It was not his job to interfere — yet. His feelings were anything but enviable. He realized that he was in a position no police lieutenant had probably ever been placed in, and he studied the men about that table with keen, anxious eyes. They were on the verge of a great crime, a mysterious crime. He was being told so. To-morrow it might sprawl across the pages of the press. To-night he broke bread with the murderer and knew not who he was! His hands were tied until the crime was committed. It was hideous.

The professor’s face was quite quiet as he looked about the table. His eyes did not linger longer on one face than on another.

And then before he could go on with his ghastly remarks, the faint sound of a violin playing the funeral march drifted in from the hall or the garden — it was hard to say which.

Linda Price screamed thinly and laid her jeweled hand over her mouth.

“What on earth is that?” she gasped. “Archie Wheatland, I don’t think this is funny! Make him stop, Caresse!”

Lieutenant Williams was frowning. His keen eyes never ceased their trip about the table, studying one face after another, but he could not pick up one guilty expression.

The playing of the violin came closer, came apparently to the very door of the handsome dining room and stopped there, its mournful strains filling the silent room.

Then Caresse Wheatland sprang to her feet.

“Archie, if this is more of your trickery, stop it at once!” she cried. “It is horrible! None of us are amused! Stop it, I say!”

Down the length of the flower-decked table the eyes of husband and wife locked.

“My dear,” said the professor slowly, “you know I speak the truth. As for the violin playing — I have not its secret. Somebody explain it, please. The man who has murder in his heart can do so, I know.”

But for a moment, while still the strains of the funeral march magnificently played, possessed the air, no one said a word, and then Frisby gave a strained laugh.

“Professor, this is great stuff for the front page!” he said. “I’ll work this up in my account of the demonstration to-night! Very clever and amusing.”

“I have nothing to do with it,” said Wheatland sternly. “The lieutenant knows I have not. He heard that violin to-day while down in my workroom with me. I can assure you there is no radio in the house or any other contraption which would explain it.”

“I heard it, yes,” said Williams then, quietly. “But I can’t say that the professor had nothing to do with it. I simply could not understand how he could have.”

The music abruptly ceased.

The professor and his young wife were still standing staring antagonistically at each other.

“Archie, you will take back what you said about me,” said the girl then through tight scarlet lips. “As for the idea of some one here wishing to murder you, that is like some of your other crazy notions. I don’t care about that. But the part about me, about some man loving me — that you must deny. And at once.”

“I am sorry,” said the professor bowing ironically, “but it is the truth. I know it and you know it. In an hour or so, all the world will know it. And I wish to add now that the man who leaves the workroom below stairs after the crime will brand himself as the criminal and my wife’s lover. If he takes the formula, or tries later on to manufacture diamonds, he will brand himself. I have told Lieutenant Williams the entire case, what I know of it. But I do not believe this frightens the man who has determined to end my life. He has a splendid defiance which appeals to Caresse. He is clever and fearless. I believe that is all. Let us go now and have the demonstration.”

But the diamond expert was on his feet, protesting with a white face.

“No, professor, if you have any such mad idea in your head, I must refuse to permit you to take the chance,” he said. “We will have no demonstration to-night.”

“To-night as well as any other time, my dear Saleworth,” replied the professor, smiling. “I do not intend to give up trying to prove to the world that I can make diamonds. This is the result of years of labor on my part. I insist upon going on with the matter and at once.”

“But you make us all so frightfully uncomfortable,” said the lawyer, Farren. “Great Scott, I feel as though I am a criminal myself!”

“And perhaps you are, my dear Farren,” smiled the professor grimly. “I do not know. But the lieutenant will find out.”

“I’d go home after that, Phil,” said Linda Price indignantly. “I wouldn’t stay for the silly old demonstration. Let us all go home.”

“The man who makes that move will be rather unfortunate,” said the professor mildly.

“You are right,” spoke Clinton then. “We must stay. I, for one, would not think of leaving. If anything so horrible as an attempt upon the professor’s life actually does take place, I want to be present after this speech of his. And that violin stuff rather has me going.”

“Quite so,” joined in Harmer, who had grown rather white. “Of course we cannot any of us leave now. Buck up, Linda. We’ve all got to see it through.”

“This man, one of you, feels quite safe,” said the professor looking about the table. “He has carefully thought out this thing. He feels he can defy the police. He is not afraid even though the famous Lieutenant Williams, who has many successes behind him, is seated at the table with him. Come, let us go and get the thing over with.”

Chapter IV In the Crucible Room

Caresse Wheatland stood for a moment at the head of the table, her radiant head held high. But the lieutenant, watching her, thought he saw death in her eyes. And why not? It was the death, perhaps, of her love, if the professor had spoken truth. In giving herself to the man she cared for, after the death of her husband, she signed his warrant, she branded him as a murderer. Marriage to Caresse Wheatland would have been a confession after that scene at the dinner table, provided the professor was murdered.

And as the little party left the dining room and walked in silence down the stairs and along the softly carpeted corridor to the apartment that held the crucible and the furnace, the lieutenant could not help thinking of a march to the electric chair. What were they going to and how would he and his office be able to cope with it? Was the professor right or insane with jealousy? Could he actually make a genuine diamond, or was he a fake? A crook? Williams could not decide.

But as he had several times before this brought out a handful of genuine diamonds from his crucible, and as he would probably bring out some more that night, no matter how he did it, there must be, to the lieutenant’s way of thinking, a store of diamonds in the house, in all likelihood, in that queer workroom. Suppose the criminal knew that? Knew the hiding place of the gems? But his plans must have been horribly upset by that dinner table speech of the professor’s, by the presence of Lieutenant Williams.

The professor, stepping ahead of the others, unlocked the door with its secret combination. Then, standing to one side, with a courteous gesture he invited them into the room.

Switching on the light by the door, the professor snapped the door shut with a meaning look at the lieutenant. And Williams knew that only the professor, Caresse and himself knew how to get out of that room. And one other, the murderer — if the woman he loved had told him.

In the lieutenant’s opinion, the professor well deserved to die, for anything more diabolical than the trap he had set for his lovely wife and her lover he could not imagine. It must have fanned into wild hatred the feeling already smoldering in the killer’s heart. And no woman could ever live happily with Wheatland. The lieutenant was inclined to sympathize with Caresse, although he was on the alert to pick up anything that might help him if the prophesied crime really took place.

The professor motioned them to chairs and removed his coat and turned up the sleeves of his dinner shirt, rolling them to his shoulder.

“Saleworth, you are at liberty to watch me mix my ingredients,” he nodded to the diamond expert, who was watching him uneasily.

“I again ask you not to try this tonight, professor,” said Saleworth earnestly. “You have made me most uncomfortable.”

“To-night as well as any other time,” said Wheatland, with a twisted smile. “But one more word. The door by which you all came in is the only exit from this room. There are no windows. The door is locked by a combination only myself, my wife and Lieutenant Williams know. Caresse may have told the man who is going to murder me. I do not know. But he will not make use of the knowledge — now.”

As he said this the professor turned a devilish grin upon the horrified faces about him. Picking up the crucible he passed it to the lieutenant.

“Every one kindly examine this most carefully,” he instructed.

In silence the container was passed from hand to hand.

The professor, in silence, too, carefully watched by Saleworth, mixed the ingredients which he told them would form, in the terrifically hot furnace, a small collection of genuine diamonds. And gathered about the table the little group examined the mixture before it was placed in the crucible.

“I have only one formula,” said the professor as he placed the crucible in the furnace. “That is in this room. I do not need any, for the trick is engraved upon my mind, so long I have labored at the thing. This formula is carefully hidden, but I think the murderer can find it. He thinks he can. It is for this secret he will kill me as much as to win my wife. But now he will have to take great care and skill in using it, else he will be sent to the chair.”

“Let us out of this hideous room!” gasped Linda Price. “I cannot stand this any longer. Caresse, poor darling, how do you endure it? The man is mad.”

“Perhaps that is why I endure it,” said Caresse with a strange smile. “He is mad, Linda. He can no more make a diamond than I can.”

The lieutenant believed her. And in watching closely the movements of the professor he had forgotten for the time the impending tragedy. For the life of him he could not discover how he worked the trick. But of course no diamonds were in that crucible at the moment. Plow the diamonds would get into it was what interested Williams.

Chapter V Eight Diamonds!

“We will have a wait of about a half hour, or a trifle more,” announced the professor, turning from the furnace. “Lieutenant, I will be grateful if you will stand beside the light switch. I do not intend to have my demonstration stopped before I show to Mr. Saleworth the diamonds which I shall take from the crucible.”

With folded arms Williams took up his stand beside the door where a button controlled the powerful lamp which was set in the snowy ceiling and which lighted the small apartment with a trying white glare. His eyes wandered from face to face. Every one was £rave and a bit shocked, uneasy and just a little disgusted, as was to be expected. But even with all his experience he could not decide what man had murder in his heart or the weapon upon him which would cause the death of the professor. And at that last thought he had an inspiration.

“Professor, since you are so set upon the idea that some one here is going to kill you,” he said pleasantly, “suppose I search the gentlemen for a weapon? If you are right and we find one, it may help us vastly later on.”

“A good idea,” said the professor, looking grimly about the circle. “Does every one agree to this?”

A chorus of vehement Voices replied. Apparently every one insisted upon the search. And the lieutenant’s face grew rueful. He was getting the idea that Caresse was right and they dealt with a madman.

“I did not follow your advice, lieutenant,” smiled Wheatland. “I have no gun upon me. I thought it unwise to bring one here.”

“I will search Caresse and she must search me,” said Miss Price in a high indignant voice. “Women can kill as well as men.”

The search, however, brought to light no weapon of any sort.

“My dear professor,” said the lieutenant, “there is nothing here which can end your life. Not even any poison, nor a hypodermic syringe. I see nothing on your tables that can be used for such a purpose. In what fashion do you expect to be killed by one of your guests?”

“I have no idea,” said the professor, looking about the silent circle. “But a man about to die cannot be fooled. The way will be found. I only ask this person to wait until I empty this crucible.”

“I shall faint if I do not get out of this dreadful room!” cried Linda Price hysterically.

“Put up with it,” advised Clinton gravely. “Archie is just a bit off his head.”

“I’ll say he is!” flared Eddie Harmer. “I never heard of anything so utterly ridiculous! We all know each other, but what Mr. Sale worth and the lieutenant think of us must be plenty!”

“We have as yet no reason to think anything wrong,” said Saleworth gently.

Silence then fell rather sullenly upon the strange little room. The furnace grew hotter and hotter. The professor leaned, with his bare arms folded, against the table edge and stared moodily at the fire.

“Can a fellow smoke, I should like to know?” asked Clinton then with a nervous laugh, producing a cigarette case.

“If you like,” nodded the professor.

Silence again. The professor looked frequently at his wrist watch. The tension grew and the group shifted feet uneasily. The thought of the locked door was not so good, if the professor really was mad, as most of them must have believed him to be. But the recollection that Caresse and the police lieutenant knew the combination was comforting. They could at least get out, no matter what happened.

At last, without a word, the professor stepped forward and, with Sale-worth watching him closely, took the crucible from the furnace.

“This must cool,” he said with a glance about at the excited faces.

It seemed like a nightmare to the lieutenant. A man making genuine diamonds before his eyes! He would never believe that. If the professor took diamonds from that crucible, then he put them there with some sleight of hand no one saw. He was just a clever crook. But what did this murder talk mean, and the sound of that invisible violin?

Saleworth himself opened the crucible when the time came. Eight exquisite diamonds rolled out into his palm.

“I insist that you take these gems and have them examined,” said the professor quietly. “To your own satisfaction.”

Chapter VI When the Light Went Out

“By Jove, they look like the real thing!” said Saleworth, bending over the stones, puzzled and anxious.

“You can easily prove that,” said the professor. “I am most grateful to the murderer for permitting me to convince Mr. Saleworth of the genuineness of my discovery.”

As he spoke the great glaring light in the ceiling went out and the small rather horrible room was plunged into darkness. There was a choking gasp from some one and a scream from Linda Price.

Even as Lieutenant Williams put out his hand to the switch the sound of that weird violin playing the funeral march seemed to fill the room. It was dreadful beyond words, that instant of darkness, with the wailing violin notes close to them all, exactly as though one of them was playing!

When the light came again the violin ceased, and the lieutenant stood looking down grimly at the body of the professor, on the floor at their feet, a red stain widening on his white shirt front!

The criminal had chosen the only moment when such a thing could possibly happen, that brief space of time when every one was held entranced by the glittering stones Saleworth had taken from the crucible. Even the lieutenant, scoff as he did, convinced as he was of the professor’s expert trickery, had for an instant been intent upon the gems. And in that instant the murderer had struck.

But that hideous violin!

“He is dead,” said Clinton, who was kneeling by the professor. “Great Heaven! He told the truth! One of us has killed him.”

“What with?” asked the lieutenant, stooping to the body. “I carefully went over this room and every one of you. What is this?”

From the breast of the professor he drew a short gleaming dagger, its handle set with precious stones.

Linda Price screamed again and put her hand to her wealth of blond hair.

“Oh... oh, it is mine!” she cried. “I wore it in my hair. I have two of them. I always wear one in the evening. They were my mother’s. Oh... oh, do you think I killed him?”

“For crying out loud!” said the lieutenant, staring in disgust at the pretty blonde. “How the heck did I miss that thing in your hair when I searched everybody? I should have seen that if I had had any eyes!”

“You would not,” said Caresse then quietly. “Not the way Linda wears it. She puts it deep in her hair with just the handle showing.”

Williams turned to look at her then. She knew who had stabbed her husband. There was no doubt of that. But she also knew that the man, if she loved him, was lost to her forever.

“Did you hear that cursed violin?” demanded Harmer nervously. “My gosh, we are in for it now! Is that door locked?”

“Yes, it has not been unlocked,” said the lieutenant steadily. “No one could unlock it save Mrs. Wheatland and myself. Could they, Mrs. Wheatland?”

“I did not tell the murderer the combination, if that is what you mean,” said Caresse Wheatland then, meeting Williams’s eyes boldly.

The professor’s words came back to him: “Don’t flatter yourself that you ever will know Caresse, no matter what comes out of all this.”

The cleverness of the criminal and the daring of him, of one of those men shut in that little room with him, amazed Lieutenant Williams. To use the jeweled dagger in Linda Price’s hair! And Linda always wore one. That was something to go upon. The man who had done that knew that Linda wore a weapon in her hair, hair that had never been bobbed or thinned out. During the search how he must have laughed! But Caresse Wheat-land, in searching her friend, knew of the dagger. Knew it would cause death if need be. And she had not mentioned it. Yet would she not have saved her lover from this position if she could? She would never dare marry him now. Nor would they dare to use the formula if there was one, which Williams doubted. The professor had, of course, never manufactured those diamonds.

But what had been his game?

At any rate, he had been sane enough about getting himself murdered.

“Can you imagine whatever caused that violin playing?” asked Frisby, touching the lieutenant’s arm, his face rather haggard, but pencil and paper in his hand, for Frisby was a natural reporter.

“I cannot,” snapped Williams.

“This is damn serious,” said Farren, the lawyer. “One of us stabbed the professor, you know. No need to look outside in the hall. Locked in here, one of us put out that light and killed him, just as the poor old boy said we would.”

“Undoubtedly,” said the lieutenant, who was still examining the body. “It narrows the circle.”

“It stamps me forever,” said Caresse, then in a still cold voice: “All my life all of you will believe that what my husband said at the dinner table was true. That one of you men present is my lover. That together we connived to kill Archie.”

“Oh, how could they think that?” cried Linda Price, putting her arm about her friend and still mopping her eyes. “Caresse, no one who knew you, darling—”

“Nonsense!” said Caresse clearly. “Look at Fred Frisby. He is already writing it up for his hideous old paper.”

“Miss Price,” said Williams, rising with the dagger in his hand and carefully wrapping it in his handkerchief before placing it in his pocket, “did you not feel some one jerk this from your head?”

“Yes,” said the girl, with big frightened eyes on the lieutenant, “I did. It pulled my hair. That was when I screamed.”

“I guess we were all pretty well keyed up,” said Clinton, walking up and down the small room.

“This certainly lets us in for a bad time,” growled Harmer again.

Without speaking, the lieutenant walked to the desk which stood in a corner. From it he took a sheet of clean white paper, a blotter, and a bottle of printers’ ink.

“I should like to take your fingerprints, if you please,” he said, looking about the silent circle. “I don’t for a moment think our clever criminal was fool enough to leave his prints on Miss Price’s jeweled pin, but just the same I must take them. One at a time, please. Mrs. Wheatland, you first.”

There was not a single protestation as the professor’s wife and his guests filed past the desk and submitted to having their finger tips inked.

“Now we’ll do-all we can to clear up this matter while we are locked in here together,” said the lieutenant, taking charge of the paper after setting a name under each print. “I feel sure you all wish me to do that. Only one of you stabbed the professor. The others must be keen to establish their innocence. It is the devil of a position for you all.”

“You do not say only one of us is guilty,” breathed Caresse, looking steadily into the lieutenant’s eyes. “You, like the rest of the group here present, think I am an accomplice. You believe Archie. And to-morrow the rest of the world will believe it.”

“Yes,” said Williams, meeting those glorious eyes calmly, “I am afraid you will have to be prepared for that, Mrs. Wheatland.”

“What rot!” cried Harmer, starting up angrily. “The professor was bug-house. You saw him do his diamond stunt. Ridiculous! Clinton, who is an expert chemist, says he was a fake. To-morrow night he was going to bring an alienist to examine Archie. Weren’t you, Will?”

Clinton flushed slightly.

“Yes, I was,” he admitted. “Frankly, I thought him not all there. He had changed in the past two years.”

Harmer’s bold championing of Mrs. Wheatland aroused the lieutenant’s interest. Would the guilty man step forth like that? Or was it a play, the play of a person relying upon the lieutenant’s common sense to tell him that no guilty man would do that?

“This thing is a bit beyond me, I’m afraid!” worried young Williams.

Saleworth, who had been pale and agitated since the crime, stepped to the side of Williams and held out his left hand.

“I say, what shall I do with these cursed diamonds?” he asked wretchedly. “I should like to have them thoroughly examined. But if Mrs. Wheatland—”

“Oh, by all means!” shrugged Caresse. “Do what you wish with them. You will find them genuine. My husband had a cache of diamonds about here, I feel sure. Perhaps I shall be lucky enough to find it.”

The lieutenant took half the stones into his fingers.

“I’ll give Mrs. Wheatland a receipt for these and you can do the same, Saleworth,” he said. “I, too, should like to give these to experts.”

“I am an expert,” said Saleworth a trifle stiffly. “And I pronounce them fine stones of the first water. How ever, the thing was too much of a menace to be lightly treated. Five experts wait to examine the stones I was to bring them after to-night’s demonstration.”

Mrs. Wheatland watched the men write their receipts with sullen, brilliant eyes. She shrugged them aside when they handed them to her and Williams laid them upon the desk top. He could so easily understand the terrible position in which the girl stood, whether she was guilty or not. With the death of the man at her feet, the door to her happiness was slammed in her face. Even if she had had nothing to do with the crime and loved one of the men present, marriage with that man would not be possible.

Chapter VII “I Play a Violia”

Having laid the receipts for the diamonds upon the desk, the lieutenant walked again to the body of the professor and stood before it for a silent moment. He was trying to see Wheatland and the entire room the moment before that light went out.

Saleworth had been bending over the diamonds which he had just taken from the cooled crucible. The professor had been beside him, and as far as Williams could recall, every one else grouped curiously about.

“I say, don’t you think we should take into consideration the playing of that unearthly violin?” asked Frisby. “That will make great headlines! And there are servants in the house, you know. Jock, in particular, was devoted to Archie.”

“But the man who stabbed him was locked here in this room with us and he took the jeweled pin from Miss Price’s hair to commit the crime,” snapped the lieutenant. “Don’t forget that. The violin player, no matter how involved, or how he worked the trick, was not in this room.”

“Yes,” said Farren. “One of us is guilty.”

“What good would it do one of us to kill the professor?” asked Clinton. “Even if his wild speech at the dinner table were true, none of us would dare marry Caresse now.”

“Perhaps the guilty man has the formula,” said Saleworth looking about.

“The formula, my aunt!” sneered Harmer. “There ain’t no such animal. Old Arch was stringing us and the public about these gems. Mother Nature made them all right.”

“You can easily have the stones traced,” said the lieutenant to the diamond expert. “They are large and pure enough.”

“Oh, quite,” bowed Saleworth.

“But suppose he did make them and nobody ever finds the formula for poor dear Caresse!” sobbed Linda Price. “How dreadful! If Arch was on the square, the result of years of labor will just be wiped out by the murderer — by one of you men. Nobody ever does believe in anything that has never been done before.”

“Be quiet, Linda,” said Caresse sharply. “The whole thing was a trap set for me, cannot you see? Archie’s wild jealousy is at the back of it all.”

For a moment the lieutenant was inclined to believe her. Forgetting the body at his feet he was almost swayed by the girl’s compelling charm. And then again he heard the professor’s grim voice: “If I am killed Caresse will know by whom and why.” And the professor had certainly been killed. That alone was the lieutenant’s job. He now had a murder on his hands and he could swing into his stride.

“All of you try to take up the positions now that you held when that light went out,” he said briskly. “Remember as best you can. Snap into it. We’ve got to get somewhere in this case to-night before I open that door.”

As every one moved rather uncertainly to obey, Will Clinton, the chemist, spoke hesitantly.

“I fancy I had better tell you now, lieutenant, before you find out for yourself,” he said. “I had a grievance against the professor. Some months ago he promised to let me into this secret of the diamond making. I was frankly incredulous and he promised to take me in as a partner. He has never done so and each time he put me off. He owed me money, several thousand, and that is why he promised to do this. I said that if he convinced me that he could actually manufacture diamonds we would cancel the debt.”

“I see,” said the lieutenant slowly. “All right. Thank you for your frankness, Mr. Clinton. If any one can think of anything else. That sort of thing saves me probably a good bit of work.”

Harmer gave a sudden, short laugh, not a pleasant laugh. His eyes met those of Caresse fleetingly.

“I suppose I may as well confess that I own a violin, and that I can also play it,” he said. “But I’ve never played the funeral march. Jazz is more in my line.”

Chapter VIII Too Many Combinations

For a moment the lieutenant looked about the small circle with a frown. He knew just what he was up against. As soon as that door was unlocked and these people released all sorts of things might happen. Never again would he have them completely in his power as he had them now, with the body of the murdered man at their feet. The murderer was there where he could handcuff him with no effort whatever and yet he had no idea which of the professor’s guests he was. Or she. Could Caresse, that flame of a girl with the smoldering eyes, have taken the dagger-like pin from her chum’s hair and stabbed her husband? It was possible. A woman’s youth and loveliness did not bar her from being a criminal, Lieutenant Williams knew well.

Yet somehow he was inclined to think this a man’s job. It had taken strength to plunge that dagger into the professor’s heart, strength and accuracy in the dark.

“Is this the best you can do?” he asked, looking about at the little group. “Are you all perfectly sure you were in these positions when that light went out?”

They assured him eagerly that they were, to the best of their recollection.

“Then Mr. Farren was closest to the light switch,” said the lieutenant thoughtfully.

“It seems that I was,” said the lawyer grimly.

“You saw no one brush past you?” asked Williams. “They would have to, you know, to reach that switch.”

“I was not conscious of anything like that,” said Farren firmly. “I was anxious to see what Saleworth would get from that crucible.”

“So were we all,” said Clinton with a short, uncomfortable laugh. “But you see, lieutenant, this room is so small, almost any of us, grouped as we were, could have reached out for that switch. Miss Price could have, or myself, or Farren, or Frisby. Speaking for myself, I can swear I would never have noticed. I was so dead anxious to see what Saleworth found when he opened the crucible.”

“Yes,” said the lieutenant grimly, “the moment was chosen well. Yet one of you put out that light and stabbed Professor Wheatland. I say to that person now that it is only a matter of time before I expose him, before I arrest him. I shall never stop until I solve this mystery. It is going to be a big case, as you all must realize. I cannot afford to be called in as the professor called me, and asked for aid, and then be present during the actual murder and fall down on the case. One man here in this little room is doomed. He need not think for one moment that he can get away with this.”

Eddie Harmer was rolling himself a cigarette. He had done so frequently during the evening, Williams had noted. His long, slim fingers were entirely steady, and his eyes met the lieutenant’s gravely.

“This is as serious for us as it is for you, lieutenant,” he said. “If you do fall down on it, we shall all be under a cloud the rest of our lives.”

“And even though the professor’s dinner speech would seem to let me out,” put in Saleworth, “I cannot be considered innocent. I was in here with all of you, locked into this small space. I must accept the same position the rest of you are in.”

“Will you let us out now?” gasped Linda Price, looking appealing at the lieutenant. “I cannot stand it in here another moment.”

She looked on the edge of fainting and Williams fancied he saw raw panic in her eyes. But why? The girl was nothing but a guest. The best friend of Caresse Wheatland. Even so, why should she be so frightened? The lieutenant watched her shaking fingers rearranging her hair.

“I’d like to say one thing,” said Frisby then briskly, putting away his notebook in which he had been busily writing. “That is, that in my opinion, there is no formula and no process to this diamond making. The professor is simply — was, I should say — a slick magician. He put it over on everybody for some reason of his own. He smuggled those gems into that crucible each time, somehow. He must have. And so all that stuff about the criminal wanting to kill him for the formula and the chance to make diamonds himself, is nonsense. The criminal probably killed him for some private grievance and possibly, for a chance to win Caresse. The professor had plenty of enemies. But there is nothing but a trick to this diamond stuff. However, it is going to be written up by me as ‘The Diamond Death’ and it’ll go big you can bet, in the morning editions.”

“Has the professor ever been abroad, Mrs. Wheatland?” asked the lieutenant, coming out of deep thought and paying no attention to the reporter.

“No.”

“I see what you are getting at,” nodded Saleworth brightly. “The diamonds. If it was trickery, he must have had a lot of them here close by, probably in this room.”

Williams did not reply. He continued to study the faces in the group and his manner made them all exceedingly uncomfortable. Linda Price shrank into a corner with her hands over her eyes and Caresse put an arm about her.

“I think there is too much smoking in this room, gentlemen,” said the lieutenant suddenly, picking up a small dish from the desk top. “Just place your cigars and cigarettes in this, if you please.”

Without demur the surprised gentlemen dropped their cigars and cigarettes in the receptacle, handed them by the lieutenant. And before them all Williams picked up in his slender wiry fingers the cigarette Eddie Harmer had just rolled and lighted. Unrolling it he shook the tobacco from it and held it close to his eyes for a tense moment.

Lifting his head he shot Harmer a glance which would have made any other man cringe under the circumstances, but which slid off young Harmer like water from a duck’s back, leaving him indifferently amused and rather brazen.

“Harmer, there is upon the inside of this cigarette paper the combination to the lock of this door,” he said sharply. “Explain that, if you please.”

“Easy,” shrugged Harmer. “The moment the professor died, while you were examining him Caresse whispered it to me. She said she felt sure she would not have another chance. I wrote it down on one of my cigarette papers because I saw the fix we were in and I figured on a search and all sorts of stunts before we got out of here. My memory is about an inch long and I felt sure during all the stuff we were in for, I’d get that darn combination mixed up.”

An ominous silence settled upon the room. In the lieutenant’s ears the professor’s voice seemed to be speaking. Had Caresse, after all, branded the man she loved, the guilty man?

“And why did Mrs. Wheatland give you the combination of the door?” asked Williams quietly.

“She thinks there is a cache of diamonds in this room and she wanted me to try to find it,” said Harmer frankly. “She was afraid she would not get a chance to tell me again nor a chance to look herself after this. I know she has stolen in here whenever she could to examine the place.”

“You apparently miss the fact that in giving you this combination, it might look as though Mrs. Wheatland thought you the guilty man and was trying to assist you to get out of the room,” said Williams dryly.

“Nonsense!” snapped Clinton, his face very red. “Caresse whispered that door combination to me the moment we entered this room, before Arch started his demonstration!”

“I was a bit ahead of you both,” put in Farren grimly. “As we came along the hall Caresse told it to me and said she felt sure there were diamonds hidden here. She wanted me to look for them, not only to give them to her but to stop her husband from getting himself caught up by the law and openly disgracing them both.”

“Just as the professor put that crucible in the fire Caresse told me the combination of the lock,” said Frisby then, with a little chuckle. “She said she’d explain later. Since I have a mind like a card index, got to have in my game, I didn’t have to do anything as elaborate as Harmer and write it on a cigarette paper.”

Across the smoke-filled little apartment Lieutenant Williams met the brilliant eyes of Caresse. Leaning against the wall with folded arms and the jeweled cigarette holder dangling in one hand, she looked back at him with mockery that was like a glove flung in his face. If she knew the man, she had done a clever thing to protect him and yet give him information. It had been just possible that Williams would not have found that out. And one of them might have had the luck or the brains to discover that hiding place of the gems, if there was one!

“By Jove!” said Saleworth rather blankly. “No one told me about the lock.”

“And why, Mrs. Wheatland, did you tell Clinton, Farren and Frisby the combination, before the crime took place?” asked Williams crisply.

“Archie was so sure he was going to be killed, that I thought he probably would be,” replied that amazing girl coolly.

“But these men, one of them, might have taken the diamonds,” reminded the lieutenant

“No,” said Caresse, her head flung high. “They are honest. I could trust them all.”

“Yet one of them stabbed your husband,” said Williams dryly.

Caresse merely shrugged and made no reply.

“Very well.” said the lieutenant then, looking about. “I shall alter the combination of that lock. No one but myself will be able to enter this room after the professor’s body is removed. If there is a cache of unset diamonds here used by Professor Wheatland in his manufacturing stunt, we shall find it. I am laying my cards frankly on the table now. We cannot stay in here all night. It is getting on our nerves now. Every one of you will be under police surveillance from this time on-ward. You will remain here until my men arrive and then you will be at liberty to return to your homes. I understand that you have nothing more to tell me? None of you can recall any little thing that will assist me?”

Utter silence answered him, and after a moment or so the lieutenant turned quietly to the telephone upon the desk, lifted the receiver and called into the transmitter: “Police headquarters!”

And across the two sharp words there shivered an ear-piercing scream as Linda Price fell in a dead faint to the floor before Farren who stood beside her, could catch her.