"Don't be absurd, Leverage! I'm often wrong—very wrong. And don't think that I'm a transcendent detective; they don't really exist, you know. I'm merely trying to be human, to learn the nature of the people with whom I'm dealing. I try to learn 'em as well as they know themselves—maybe a little better; and then I try to separate the wheat of vital facts from the chaff of the inconsequential."
"Just the same," insisted Leverage loyally, "you always get 'em!"
"And when I do, it is because I have used nothing more than plain common sense. Don't think that I attach no importance to physical clues. They're immensely valuable; but the one weakness in a criminal is his lack of common sense. His perspective is awry, his sense of values distorted. Usually he bothers his head about a myriad minor details, and pays but scant attention to the genuinely important things. It is upon that weakness that I am banking—particularly so in the case of Barker."
"I insist that you're a wonder, Carroll!"
"And I insist that you're foolishly complimentary. Did you ever stop to realize, Eric, that when a crime is committed the advantage lies entirely with the detective? The detective can make a thousand mistakes during the course of his investigations and still trap his man; but the criminal cannot make one single error—not one!"
"Maybe so, David; but it takes a good man to recognize that one, and to know what to do with it."
Carroll grinned and left, and then for two days devoted himself to a study of the conditions surrounding the murder—that and routine matters. The trunk, for instance, was duly returned by the railroad from New York, and Carroll and his friend made a minute investigation of every article contained therein. Their search was well-nigh fruitless. The trunk contained little save the wardrobe of a well-dressed man—suits, shirts, underwear, shoes, caps. There were also golf and tennis togs; a few books; a handsome leather secretary, containing a good many personal letters and one or two business missives which were of little interest. Altogether the examination of the trunk—a process which occupied three hours—established nothing definite, save that there was nothing to be discovered. Its results were hopelessly negative.
Meanwhile the city sizzled with gossip of the Warren murder. The seemingly impenetrable mystery surrounding the case, its many sensational features, the admission of the police department that the woman in the case was not Hazel Gresham, fiancée of the dead man, yet the certainty that there was a woman, and that she was of the better class—all this served to keep the tongues of men and women alike wagging at both ends.
Carroll was besieged with anonymous letters. Dozens of prominent married women were mentioned as having been, at one time or another, the object of Warren's amorous attentions. Carroll read each one carefully and filed it away. He had hoped for this, but the results had far exceeded his expectations, and he found himself bewildered rather than assisted by the response from nameless individuals who were morbidly eager to be of help.
The detective knew that the running down of each individual trail—the investigation of each of Warren's supposed affairs of the heart—would be an interminable procedure. And so far not a single one of the letters had varied from another. They connected Warren's name with that of some married woman, and let it go at that. It was quite evident that the dead man had been very much of a Lothario; too much so for the mental ease of the investigator who was struggling to link the cause of his death with one particular affair.