Lord, yes! as the Good Book says, ‘Time and Chance happeneth to us all.’ And no line of work is more precarious than establishing a theory or running down a clew in a murder case. For the criminal, ever on the alert, has all the odds on his side, and can block or divert the detective’s course at will.”
Doctor Ely Davenport was, without being pompous, a man who was at all times conscious of his own personality and sure of his own importance. He was important, too, being one of the most highly thought of doctors in New York City, and his self-esteem, if a trifle annoying, was founded on his real worth.
He often said that his profession brought him in contact with the souls of men and women quite as much as with their bodies, and he was fond of theorizing what human nature might do or not do in crucial moments.
The detection of crime he held to be a matter requiring the highest intelligence and rarest skill.
“Detection!” he exclaimed, in the course of the present conversation, “why detection is as hard to work out as the Fourth Dimension! As difficult to understand as the Einstein theory.”
“Oh, come now, Doctor,” Pollard said, smiling, “that’s going a bit too far. I admit, though, it requires a superior brain. But any real work does. However, I say, first catch your motive.”
“That’s it,” broke in Monroe, eagerly. “It all depends on the motive!”
“The crime does,” Davenport assented, drily, “but not the detection. You youngsters don’t know what you’re talking about—you’d better shut up.”
“We know a lot,” returned Monroe, unabashed. “Youth is no barrier to knowledge these days. And I hold that the clever detective seeks first the motive. You can’t have a murder without a motive, any more than an omelette without eggs.”
“True, oh, Solomon,” granted the doctor. “But the motive may be known only to the murderer, and not to be discovered by any effort of the investigator.”
“Then the murder mystery remains unsolved,” returned Monroe, promptly.
“Your saying so doesn’t make it so, you know,” drawled Phil Barry, in his impertinent way. “Now, to me it would seem that a nice lot of circumstantial evidence, and a few good clews would expedite matters just as well as a knowledge of the villain’s motive.”
“Circumstantial evidence!” scoffed Monroe.
“Sure,” rejoined Barry; “Give me a smoking revolver with initials on it, a dropped handkerchief, monogrammed, of course, half a broken cuff-link, and a few fingerprints, and I care not who knows the motive. And if you can add a piece—no, a fragment of tweed, clutched in the victim’s rigid hand—why—I’ll not ask for wine!”
“What rubbish you all talk,” said Pollard, smiling superciliously; “don’t you see these things all count? If you have motive you don’t need evidence, and vice versa. That is, if both motive and evidence are the real thing.”
“There are only three motives,” Monroe informed. “Love, hate and money.”
“You’ve got all the jargon by heart, little one,” and Pollard grinned at him. “Been reading some new Detective Fiction?”
“I’m always doing that,” Monroe stated, “but I hold that a detective who can’t tell which of those three is the motive, isn’t worth his salt.”
“Salt is one commodity that has remained fairly inexpensive,” said Barry, speaking slowly, and with his eyes on his cigarette, from which he was carefully amputating the ash, “and a detective who could truly diagnose motive is not to be sneezed at. Besides, revenge is often a reason.”
“That comes under the head of hate,” promptly responded Monroe. “The three motives include all the gamut of human emotion, and some of their ramifications will include every murder motive that ever existed.”
“Fear?” quietly suggested Doctor Davenport.
“Part of hate,” said Monroe, but he was challenged by Pollard.
“Not necessarily. A man may fear a person whom he does not hate at all. But there’s another motive, that doesn’t quite fit your classification, Monroe.”
Before the inevitable question could be put another man joined the group.
“Hello, folks,” said Robert Gleason, as he sat down; “hope I don’t intrude—and all that. What you talking about?”
“Murder,” said Barry. “Murder as a Fine Art, you know.”
“Don’t like the subject. Let’s change it. Talk about the ladies, or something pleasant, you know. Eh?”
“Or Shakespeare and the musical glasses,” said Pollard.
“No musical glasses, nowadays,” bewailed Gleason. “No more clink the canakin, clink. It’s drink to me only with thine eyes. Hence, the preponderance of women and song in our lives, since the third of the trio is gone.”
Gleason was the sort of Westerner usually described as breezy. He was on intimate terms with everybody, whether everybody reciprocated or not. Not a large man, not a young man, he possessed a restless vitality, a wiry energy that gave him an effect of youth. About forty, he was nearer the age of Doctor Davenport than the others, who were all in their earliest thirties.
Nobody liked Gleason much, yet no one really disliked him. He was a bit forward, a little intrusive, but it was clear to be seen that those mannerisms were due to ignorance and not to any intent to be objectionable. He was put up at the Club by a friend, and had never really overstepped his privileges, though it was observable that his ways were not club ways.
“Yep, the Ladies—God bless ’em!” he went on. “What could be a better subject for gentlemen’s discussion? No personalities, of course; that goes without saying.”
“Then why say it?” murmured Pollard, without looking at the speaker.
“That’s so! Why, indeed?” was the genial response. “Now, you know, out in Seattle, where I hail from, there’s more—oh, what do you call it, sociability like, among men. I go into a club there and everybody sings out something gay; I come in here, and you all shut up like clams.”
“You objected to the subject we were discussing,” began Monroe, indignantly, but Barry interrupted, with a wave of his hand, “The effete East, my dear Gleason. Doubtless you’ve heard that expression? Yes, you would. Well, it’s our renowned effeteness that prevents our falling on your neck more effusively.”
“Guying me?” asked Gleason, with a quiet smile. “You see, boys, before I went to Seattle, I was born in New England. I can take a little chaff.”
“You’re going to tell us of your ancestry?” said Pollard, and though his words were polite his tone held a trace of sarcastic intent.
Gleason turned a sudden look on him.
“I might, if you really want me to,” he said, slowly. “I might give you the story of my life from my infancy, spent in Coggs’ Hollow, New Hampshire, to the present day, when I may call myself one of the leading citizens of Seattle, Wash.”
“What or whom do you lead?” asked Pollard, and again the only trace of unpleasantness was a slight inflection in his really fine voice.
“I lead the procession,” and Gleason smiled, as one who positively refuses to take offense whether meant or not. “But, I can tell you I don’t lead it here in New York! Your pace is rather swift for me! I’m having a good time and all that, but soon, it’s me for the wildness and woolliness of the good old West again! Why, looky here, I’m living in a hole in the wall—yes, sir, a hole in the wall!”
“I like that!” laughed Doctor Davenport. “Why, man, you’re in that apartment of McIlvaine’s—one of the best put-ups in town.”