“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.”