“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.”