When Markham had finished reading the summary, he went through it a second time. Then he laid it on the table.
“Yes, Vance,” he said, “you’ve covered the main points pretty thoroughly. But I can’t see any coherence in them. In fact, they seem only to emphasize the confusion of the case.”
“And yet, Markham, I’m convinced that they only need rearrangement and interpretation to be perfectly clear. Properly analyzed, they’ll tell us everything we want to know.”
Markham glanced again through the pages.
“If it wasn’t for certain items, we could make out a case against several people. But no matter what person in the list we may assume to be guilty, we are at once confronted by a group of contradictory and insurmountable facts. This précis could be used effectively to prove that every one concerned is innocent.”
“Superficially it appears that way,” agreed Vance. “But we first must find the generating line of the design, and then relate the subsidi’ry forms of the pattern to it.”
Markham made a hopeless gesture.
“If only life were as simple as your æsthetic theories!”
“It’s dashed simpler,” Vance asserted. “The mere mechanism of a camera can record life; but only a highly developed creative intelligence, with a profound philosophic insight, can produce a work of art.”
“Can you make any sense—æsthetic or otherwise—out of this?” Markham petulantly tapped the sheets of paper.