“If you entrust the case to me,” he said, in a tone singularly winning for a man in his station and of his personal appearance, “I shall do my best to sustain the confidence Judge Parlin and Mr. Wing gave me; but let me warn you, in my profession there is no royal road. I have no instinct that enables me to scent a murderer or other criminal. I reach results by hard work, close attention to details, and perseverance. I make it a condition of undertaking any case that nothing shall be concealed from me. I must start with at least the knowledge that my principal possesses.”
“I’ve told everything to the coroner. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve heard the testimony.” She spoke with dignity, almost with hostility, in her voice.
“I heard the testimony,” he said, “but are you sure you’ve told everything? There’s sometimes things that we know which aren’t facts—that is, not facts as the term is understood when one is giving testimony.”
“For instance?”
“You have impressions of what led up to this tragedy.” There was nothing of question in his tone. It was as if he stated what was indisputable.
The statement seemed to strike her and to arouse a new train of thought. She was silent for some time, and he sat watching anxiously, but without a sign of impatience. At last she looked up and answered:
“You are mistaken; I’m absolutely in the dark. There’s nothing to point in any direction.”
He accepted the disappointment, but accepted it as absolute. He evidently had striven by the assertion so positively made to surprise her into new thought, with the hope that it might hit on something that in his skilled hands would have meaning. He saw not only that he had not succeeded, but that there was no ground for success.
“That, in itself,” he said, “is significant. It shows that we must dig deeper in his life than we have yet done. The motive; we want the motive!”
“There was no motive,” she said. “It was motiveless. There are men who do murder for murder’s sake.” Under sting of her life experience, she spoke with keen bitterness.