“Why, yes. There’s nothing in it, absolutely no clue whatever. So far, no one has come forward to make even so much as an enquiry as to the identity of the dead man, and, if you remember, he looked foreign. Mervyn, too, said he talked with a slightly foreign accent. Now all that goes to show the thing couldn’t well have concerned Mervyn. Where’s the motive? That’s what I want to locate. I’m all for motive. Show motive, and it won’t be long before you get your case right home. That’s what I say—always have said.”
“Motive—eh?”
“Yes. Motive. Now what the deuce motive could Mervyn have had for doing away with this chap? First he fishes him out of the ice, in the middle of a dead cold snow-stormy night, at some risk to himself; then he takes him in and does for him in the most hospitable manner.”
“‘Does for him’—Is that a joke, Nashby?”
“Well, no. But what I’m getting at is—supposing Mervyn had a motive for wanting this fellow in Kingdom Come, all he had to do was to leave him in the water. See? He needn’t have gone to the bother of hauling him out at all.”
“So Stewart seemed to think,” was the answer. Stewart had been the speaker’s predecessor in the private investigation of the case, but had come pretty much to the same conclusion that the local police official had, that it was hardly worth while going on with. This man had then appeared on the scene to take it up, rather to Nashby’s astonishment. To the latter he was an “outside” man, but he had come properly accredited. To tell the truth, he had come as rather a nuisance. Nashby wanted the discovery of whatever there was to discover to his own credit. He did not relish any one from outside coming in to benefit by his gleanings.
“I don’t want to say anything against Stewart,” went on the last speaker. “I expect he’s an excellent man, in his line. In fact, from what I hear, I’m sure he is—in his line.”
“Well, but—what the devil good are any one of us if it isn’t in his line?” said the inspector, feeling rather nettled, but pushing the cut glass decanter—an ingredient of an appreciative public testimonial Tantalus—towards the other as though to cover it. The said other might have smiled pityingly—he felt like it—but did not.
“That sounds conclusive,” he answered. “But—it’s just when you get off your ‘line’ that you make discoveries. Now you know I’m not talking through my hat. I’ve had experiences—not in this country—that most of you here never get. I don’t say it to brag, mind, but as a bald statement of fact.”
“I know that, Mr Varne,” said Nashby, deferentially. “Well, we don’t get ’em, and it’s not our fault if we don’t.”