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

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.