"Got any ideas?" he demanded.
I had a lot of ideas, but I was not going to express myself without
a lot of stark evidence. I do not yearn to have the prefix "ex-"
installed in front of my title of Captain of Detectives. I'm much too
young to be retired. So instead of trying to explain, I said, "The
_modus operandi_ is--"
Chief Weston snorted, "Schnell, there isn't a clue in the whole damned
building, and yet you stand there and yap about _modus operandi_?"
"That's the point, Chief. The cluelessness is itself the _modus
operandi_ that points to--"
"You talk as if we had a whole file of unsolved, clueless, sealed-room
homicides!"
"Chief," I said, "a true 'perfect crime' would be one in which no clue
existed, including the fact of the crime itself--except those clues
that were deliberately planned by the perpetrator for some purpose of
his own."
* * * * *