Markham grunted good-naturedly. He was busy cutting and lighting his cigar.
"I believe you chaps have another hallucination about crime," continued Vance, "—namely, that the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. This weird notion is even explained on some recondite and misty psychological ground. But, I assure you, psychology teaches no such prepost'rous doctrine. If ever a murderer returned to the body of his victim for any reason other than to rectify some blunder he had made, then he is a subject for Broadmoor—or Bloomingdale. . . . How easy it would be for the police if this fanciful notion were true! They'd merely have to sit down at the scene of a crime, play bezique or Mah Jongg until the murderer returned, and then escort him to the bastille, what? The true psychological instinct in anyone having committed a punishable act, is to get as far away from the scene of it as the limits of this world will permit."[1]
"In the present case, at any rate," Markham reminded him, "we are neither waiting inactively for the murder to out, nor sitting in Benson's living-room trusting to the voluntary return of the criminal."
"Either course would achieve success as quickly as the one you are now pursuing," Vance said.
"Not being gifted with your singular insight," retorted Markham, "I can only follow the inadequate processes of human reasoning."
"No doubt," Vance agreed commiseratingly. "And the results of your activities thus far force me to the conclusion that a man with a handful of
- ↑ In "Popular Fallacies About Crime" (Saturday Evening Post: April 21, 1923, p. 8) Sir Basil Thomson also upheld this point of view.
