CHAPTER I – DOCTOR FELL

“A bit thick, I call it,” Pollard looked round the group; “here’s Mellen been dead six weeks now, and the mystery of his taking-off still unsolved.”

“And always will be,” Doctor Davenport nodded. “Mighty few murders are brought home to the villains who commit them.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” drawled Phil Barry, an artist, whose dress and demeanor coincided with the popular idea of his class. “I’ve no head for statistics,” he went on, idly drawing caricatures on the margin of his evening paper as he talked, “but I think they say that only one-tenth of one per cent, of the murderers in this great and glorious country of ours are ever discovered.”

“Your head for statistics is defective, as you admit,” Doctor Davenport said, his tone scornful; “but percentages mean little in these matters. The greater part of the murders committed are not brought prominently before public notice. It’s only when the victim is rich or influential, or the circumstances of some especial interest that a murder occupies the front pages of the newspapers.”

“Old Mellen’s been on those same front pages for several weeks – off and on, that is,” Pollard insisted; “of course, he was a well-known man and his exit was dramatic. But all the same, they ought to have caught his murderer – or slayer, as the papers call him.”

“Him?” asked Barry, remembering the details of the case.

“Impersonal pronoun,” Pollard returned, “and probably a man anyway. ‘Cherchez la femme,’ is the trite advice, and always sounds well, but really, a woman seldom has nerve enough for the fatal deed.”

“That’s right,” Davenport agreed. “I know lots of women who have all the intent of murder in their hearts, but who never could pull it off.”

“A good thing, too,” Barry observed. “I’d hate to think any woman I know capable of murder! Ugh!” His long, delicate white hand waved away the distasteful idea with a gesture that seemed to dismiss it entirely.

There were not many in the Club lounge, the group of men had it mostly to themselves, and as the afternoon dusk grew deeper and the lights were turned on, several more went away, and finally Fred Lane rose to go.

“Frightfully interesting, you fellows,” he said, “but it’s after five, and I’ve a date. Anybody I can drop anywhere?”

“Me, please,” accepted Dean Monroe. “That is, if you’re going my way. I want to go downtown.”

“Was going up,” returned Lane, “but delighted to change my route. Come along, Monroe.”

But Monroe had heard a chance word from Doctor Davenport that arrested his attention, and he sat still.

“Guess I won’t go quite yet – thanks all the same,” he nodded at Lane, and lighted a fresh cigarette.

Dean Monroe was a younger man than the others, an artist, but not yet in the class with Barry. His square, firm-set jaw, and his Wedgwood blue eyes gave his face a look of power and determination quite in contrast with Philip Barry’s pale, sensitive countenance. Yet the two were friends – chums, almost, and though differing in their views on art, each respected the other’s opinions.

“Have it your own way,” Lane returned, indifferently, and went off.

“Crime detection is not the simple process many suppose,” Davenport was saying, and Monroe gave his whole attention. “So much depends on chance.”

“Now, Doctor,” Monroe objected, “I hold it’s one of the most exact sciences, and – ”

Davenport looked at him, as an old dog might look at an impertinent kitten.

“Being an exact science doesn’t interfere with dependence on chance,” he growled; “also, young man, are you sure you know what an exact science is?”

“Yeppy,” Monroe defended himself, as the others smiled a little. “It’s – why, it’s a science that’s exact – isn’t it?”

His gay smile disarmed his opponent, and Davenport, mounted on his hobby, went on: “You may have skill, intuition, deductive powers and all that, but to discover a criminal, the prime element is chance. Now, in the Mellen case, the chances were all against the detectives from the first. They didn’t get there till the evidences were, or might have been destroyed. They couldn’t find Mrs Gresham, the most important witness until after she had had time to prepare her string of falsehoods. Oh, well, you know how the case was messed up, and now, there’s not a chance in a hundred of the truth ever being known.”

“Does chance play any part in your profession, Doctor?” asked Monroe, with the expectation of flooring him.

“You bet it does!” was the reply. “Why, be I never so careful in my diagnosis or treatment, a chance deviation from my orders on the part of patient or attendant, a chance draught of wind, or upset nerves – oh, Lord, yes! as the Good Book says, ‘Time and Chance happeneth to us all.’ And no line of work is more precarious than establishing a theory or running down a clew in a murder case. For the criminal, ever on the alert, has all the odds on his side, and can block or divert the detective’s course at will.”

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.”

“Salt is one commodity that has remained fairly inexpensive,” said Barry, speaking slowly, and with his eyes on his cigarette, from which he was carefully amputating the ash, “and a detective who could truly diagnose motive is not to be sneezed at. Besides, revenge is often a reason.”

“That comes under the head of hate,” promptly responded Monroe. “The three motives include all the gamut of human emotion, and some of their ramifications will include every murder motive that ever existed.”

“Fear?” quietly suggested Doctor Davenport.

“Part of hate,” said Monroe, but he was challenged by Pollard.

“Not necessarily. A man may fear a person whom he does not hate at all. But there’s another motive, that doesn’t quite fit your classification, Monroe.”

Before the inevitable question could be put another man joined the group.

“Hello, folks,” said Robert Gleason, as he sat down; “hope I don’t intrude – and all that. What you talking about?”

“Murder,” said Barry. “Murder as a Fine Art, you know.”

“Don’t like the subject. Let’s change it. Talk about the ladies, or something pleasant, you know. Eh?”

“Or Shakespeare and the musical glasses,” said Pollard.

“No musical glasses, nowadays,” bewailed Gleason. “No more clink the canakin, clink. It’s drink to me only with thine eyes. Hence, the preponderance of women and song in our lives, since the third of the trio is gone.”

Gleason was the sort of Westerner usually described as breezy. He was on intimate terms with everybody, whether everybody reciprocated or not. Not a large man, not a young man, he possessed a restless vitality, a wiry energy that gave him an effect of youth. About forty, he was nearer the age of Doctor Davenport than the others, who were all in their earliest thirties.

Nobody liked Gleason much, yet no one really disliked him. He was a bit forward, a little intrusive, but it was clear to be seen that those mannerisms were due to ignorance and not to any intent to be objectionable. He was put up at the Club by a friend, and had never really overstepped his privileges, though it was observable that his ways were not club ways.

“Yep, the Ladies – God bless ’em!” he went on. “What could be a better subject for gentlemen’s discussion? No personalities, of course; that goes without saying.”

“Then why say it?” murmured Pollard, without looking at the speaker.