“You can try. Why do you want to?”
Morley shook his head. “Not that I want to. That if I am permitted to, I have a suggestion. I wish to make it clear that I have great respect for the competence of the police, within proper limits. If the man who murdered Doris Hatten had been vulnerable to police techniques and resources, he would almost certainly have been caught. But he wasn’t. You failed utterly. Why?”
“You’re telling me.”
“Because he was out of bounds for you. Because your exploration of motive is restricted by your preconceptions.” Morley’s black eyes gleamed. “You’re a layman, so I won’t use technical terms. The most powerful motives on earth are motives of the personality, which cannot be exposed by any purely objective investigation. If the personality is twisted, distorted, as it is with a psychotic, then the motives are twisted too. As a psychiatrist I was deeply interested in the published reports of the murder of Doris Hatten — especially the detail that she was strangled with her own scarf. When your efforts to find the culprit — thorough, no doubt, and even brilliant — ended in complete failure, I would have been glad to come forward with a suggestion, but I was as helpless as you.”
“Get down to it,” Cramer muttered.
“Yes.” Morley put his elbows on the table and paired all his fingertips. “Now today. On the basis of the assumptions I began with, it is a tenable theory, worthy to be tested, that this was the same man. If so he has made a mistake. Apparently no one got in here today without having his name checked; the man at the door was most efficient. So it is no longer a question of finding him among thousands or millions; it’s a mere hundred or so, and I am willing to contribute my services. I don’t think there are more than three or four men in New York qualified for such a job, and I am one of them. You can verify that.”
The black eyes flashed. “I admit that for a psychiatrist this is a rare opportunity. Nothing could be more dramatic than a psychosis exploding into murder. I don’t pretend that my suggestion is entirely unselfish. All you have to do is to have them brought to my office — one at a time, of course. With some of them ten minutes will be enough, but with others it may take hours. When I have—”
“Wait a minute,” Cramer put in. “Are you suggesting that we deliver everyone that was here today to your office for you to work on?”
“No, not everyone, only the men. When I have finished I may have nothing that can be used as evidence, but there’s an excellent chance that I can tell you who the strangler is, and when you once know that—”
“Excuse me,” Cramer said. He was on his feet. “Sorry to cut you off, Doctor, but I must get downtown.” He was on his way. “I’m afraid your suggestion wouldn’t work. I’ll let you know—”