Page:The Benson Murder Case (1926).pdf/359

 ter of context,—the missing factor, d' ye see, simply has to conform and harmonize with what is already known."

He made one of his rare gestures of delicate emphasis.

"Now, the problem of circumventing suspicion is an important detail in every deliberated crime. And since the general conception of this particular crime was pos'tive, conclusive and concrete, it followed that each one of its component parts would be pos'tive, conclusive and concrete. Therefore, for the Major merely to have arranged things so that he himself should not be suspected, would have been too negative a conception to fit consistently with the other psychological aspects of the deed. It would have been too vague, too indirect, too indef'nite. The type of literal mind which conceived this crime would logically have provided a specific and tangible object of suspicion. Cons'quently, when the material evidence began to pile up against the Captain, and the Major waxed vehement in defending him, I knew he had been chosen as the dupe. At first, I admit, I suspected the Major of having selected Miss St. Clair as the victim; but when I learned that the presence of her gloves and hand-bag at Benson's was only an accident, and remembered that the Major had given us Pfyfe as a source of information about the Captain's threat, I realized that her projection into the rôle of murderer was unpremeditated."

A little later Markham rose and stretched himself.

"Well, Vance," he said, "your task is finished. Mine has just begun. And I need sleep."