Doctor Ely Davenport was, without being pompous, a man who was at all times conscious of his own personality and sure of his own importance. He was important, too, being one of the most highly thought of doctors in New York City, and his self-esteem, if a trifle annoying, was founded on his real worth. He often said that his profession brought him in contact with the souls of men and women quite as much as with their bodies, and he was fond of theorizing what human nature might do or not do in crucial moments. The detection of crime he held to be a matter requiring the highest intelligence and rarest skill. “Detection!” he exclaimed, in the course of the present conversation, “why detection is as hard to work out as the Fourth Dimension! As difficult to understand as the Einstein theory.” “Oh, come now, Doctor,” Pollard said, smiling, “that’s going a bit too far. I admit, though, it requires a superior brain. But any real work does. However, I say, first catch your motive.” “That’s it,” broke in Monroe, eagerly. “It all depends on the motive!” “The crime does,” Davenport assented, drily, “but not the detection. You youngsters don’t know what you’re talking about—you’d better shut up.” “We know a lot,” returned Monroe, unabashed. “Youth is no barrier to knowledge these days. And I hold that the clever detective seeks first the motive. You can’t have a murder without a motive, any more than an omelette without eggs.” “True, oh, Solomon,” granted the doctor. “But the motive may be known only to the murderer, and not to be discovered by any effort of the investigator.” “Then the murder mystery remains unsolved,” returned Monroe, promptly. “Your saying so doesn’t make it so, you know,” drawled Phil Barry, in his impertinent way. “Now, to me it would seem that a nice lot of circumstantial evidence, and a few good clews would expedite matters just as well as a knowledge of the villain’s motive.” “Circumstantial evidence!” scoffed Monroe. “Sure,” rejoined Barry; “Give me a smoking revolver with initials on it, a dropped handkerchief, monogrammed, of course, half a broken cuff-link, and a few fingerprints, and I care not who knows the motive. And if you can add a piece—no, a fragment of tweed, clutched in the victim’s rigid hand—why—I’ll not ask for wine!” “What rubbish you all talk,” said Pollard, smiling superciliously; “don’t you see these things all count? If you have motive you don’t need evidence, and _vice versa_. That is, if both motive and evidence are the real thing.” “There are only three motives,” Monroe informed. “Love, hate and money.” “You’ve got all the jargon by heart, little one,” and Pollard grinned at him. “Been reading some new Detective Fiction?” “I’m always doing that,” Monroe stated, “but I hold that a detective who can’t tell which of those three is the motive, isn’t worth his salt.”