“No, I don’t mean those, either. The finding of the criminal will wipe those out at once. It’s the hunt that is hard. The quarry is elusive and hard to track. Find the motive first; that’s always a sound plan.” And with that Moore and I went off, leaving behind us a greatly perplexed pair of sleuths of the law. A car belonging to the house conveyed us home, and by good luck we were not late for luncheon. The shortcake materialized and proved worthy of all praise, and Kee refused to talk about the tragedy at all until the meal was over and we gathered in the lounge afterward. Lora and Maud had heard only scraps of information from neighbours and tradesmen, but they had not been inquisitive, preferring to wait until we returned to tell them all about it. And so the four of us sat down for a real confab. I listened while Keeley told his wife all the information he had so far accumulated, and I couldn’t help admiring the straightforward, clean-cut story he told. He might have been a skilled reporter, giving the known facts to the public. Of course my conscience pricked me because I was holding back the very important bit of evidence that I seemed the only one to know. Apparently no one but myself had seen Alma Remsen go in her canoe to Pleasure Dome the night before at about half past one o’clock. I might be accessory after the fact. I might be aiding and abetting a criminal, but, shameless that I was, I didn’t care, and had no intention of telling my secret. My justification, adequate in my own mind, was that I didn’t for a minute believe Alma Remsen had killed her uncle. It was too incredible, too impossible. Go to his house, she did. Stay there about an hour, she did. But kill him, no! Perhaps she saw the deed committed, perhaps she arrived later, and saw the dead victim, perhaps—a very doubtful perhaps—she arranged the bizarre decorations, but strike the deadly blow—never! So, I felt I had a right to keep still about the matter, for why drag the girl into detestable prominence, and have her wrongly suspected of crime, when all I had to do was to keep silence? Lora listened quietly, with sundry intelligent nods of her head, and Maud Merrill was no less interested. I had great respect for the intelligence of both these women, and listened eagerly for their comments. “Too many suspects,” said Lora, as Kee finished his recital. “Yes,” agreed Maud, “there’s positively nobody in the house outside suspicion.” “Then we must eliminate,” said Kee. “We can’t exactly eliminate,” Lora told him, “but we can guess who had the strongest motive.” “Guess!” “That’s all we can do. I can’t see that there are any clues that mean anything. All those flowers and things were already in the room. As clues, they all go for nothing. The murderer was not necessarily a man of fantastic tastes or a child of playful tendencies, he only cut up those tricks so we would think he was.”