“I do, and I’d have it, too, if I were staying here much longer. But I’m going to settle up things soon now, and go back to home, sweet home.” “How did you, a New Englander, chance to make Seattle your home?” asked Monroe, always of a curious bent. “Had a chance to go out there and get rich. You see, Coggs’ Hollow, as one might gather from its name, was a small hamlet. I lived there till I was twenty-five, then, getting a chance to go West and blow up with the country, I did. Glad of it, too. Now, I’m going back there, and—I hope to take with me a specimen of your fair feminine. Yes, sir, I hope and expect to take along, under my wing, one of these little moppy-haired, brief-skirted lassies, that will grace my Seattle home something fine!” “Does she know it yet?” drawled Barry and Gleason stared at him. “She isn’t quite sure of it, but I am!” he returned with a comical air of determination. “You know her pretty well, then,” chaffed Barry. “You bet I do! I ought to. She’s my sister’s stepdaughter.” “Phyllis Lindsay!” cried Barry, involuntarily speaking the name. “The same,” said Gleason, smiling; “and as I’m due there for dinner, I’ll be toddling now to make myself fine for the event.” With a general beaming smile of good nature that included all the group, Gleason went away. For a few moments no one spoke, and then Monroe began, “As I was saying, there are only three motives for murder—and I stick to that. But you were about to say, Pollard——?” “I was about to say that you have omitted the most frequent and most impelling motive. It doesn’t always result in the fatal stroke, but as a motive, it can’t be beat.” “Go on—what is it?” “Just plain dislike.” “Oh, hate,” said Monroe. “Not at all. Hate implies a reason, a grievance. But I mean an ineradicable, and unreasonable dislike—why, simply a case of: ‘I do not like you, Doctor Fell, The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know and know full well, I do not like you, Doctor Fell.’ One Tom Brown wrote that, and it’s a bit of truth, all right!” “One Martial said it before your friend Brown,” informed Doctor Davenport. “He wrote: ‘Non amo, te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quore; Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.’ Which is, being translated for the benefit of you unlettered ones, ‘I do not love thee, Sabidius, nor can I say why; this only can I say, I do not love thee.’ There’s a French version, also.” “Never mind, Doc,” Pollard interrupted, “we don’t want your erudition, but your opinion. You say you know psychology as well as physiology; will you agree that a strong motive for murder might be just that unreasonable dislike—that distaste of seeing a certain person around?” “No, not a strong motive,” said Davenport, after a short pause for thought. “A slight motive, perhaps, by which I mean a fleeting impulse.”