Page:Chipperfield--Unseen Hands.djvu/168

156 "If the crime, as you call it, were for gain and happened to be committed by a member of the family it would be reasonable to suppose that the guilty person would be the one to profit ultimately, would it not?"

"Ultimately perhaps but not necessarily directly." A quick flash of memory had recalled the note which Odell himself had laid before his chief an hour before, and with it a sudden inkling of the possible truth had come. "If some member of the family were placed in a compromising position by an outsider and forced into crime for the immediate benefit of that outsider, in order to gain immunity for himself, it would cease to be a purely family matter, and its investigation would very likely bring shame and unhappiness and possibly incarceration to the instigator. Are you entirely disinterested in this theoretical discussion, Mr. Drew?"

He smiled steadily into the dark, smoldering eyes across the table, and Drew forced a sickly grimace in return, but the fingers holding his cigar twitched murderously.

"Quite." His voice was curiously even. "I confess I am disappointed in you, Sergeant: I had taken you to be a man of independent thought and action, not hidebound like the majority of your confrères. I have been speaking from a purely altruistic point of view. I wished to spare a heart-broken and panic-stricken family from further pain, and to save one young person from an unmerited punishment for what the family themselves would be the first to characterize as a mere mistake. I hoped that you could be induced to see the matter from that standpoint."

"And in saving the family from further annoyance in-