“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.