Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930
Diamond Death
by Madeleine Sharps Buchanan
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.”