“Anything strike you as peculiar?”
“N—o.”
“There were tears in his eyes—the only ones shed in that house for Stockbridge—outside of the daughter.”
Delaney gulped. “I didn’t see them,” he said frankly.
“No! Well, I did—and when he wasn’t expecting me to see them. A woman is never wholly lost who can blush, or a man who can shed tears.”
“Sounds like good deduction,” admitted the operative. “But then, Chief, there are a lot of fine actors in this world. I think there has been some in this case.”
“This case, Delaney,” Drew said, “is like many others which appear at first impossible of solving. All things can be solved by first principles. Give me all the facts and I’ll give you the answer to any riddle. The answer will come! Don’t try to write your plot until you have words to form your story. Don’t make the mistake of forcing an answer to father a wish. In other words, Delaney, best of friends, we haven’t all the facts we are going to get in this case and therefore it is idle to attempt to deduce who shot Stockbridge!”
“Or how he was shot, Chief?”
“It’s almost the same thing. Both answers will come with hard work and plenty of it. We must keep along the main stem. Truth is a tree with many branches. It rises from the roots named cause, and reaches the top called effect. It springs from motive up to crime in one straight stem. We must trim away the branches and the false-work, and then we can see the trunk.”
“There’s one I’d like to trim right now,” said Delaney, pausing in his snow-caked stride.