However, I will write again shortly.
Mr. Snyder derived the utmost enjoyment from the report. He liked the
substance of it, and above all, he was tickled by the bitter tone of
frustration which characterized it. Oakes was baffled, and his knowledge
of Oakes told him that the sensation of being baffled was gall and
wormwood to that high-spirited young man. Whatever might be the result
of this investigation, it would teach him the virtue of patience.
He wrote his assistant a short note:
Dear Oakes,
Your report received. You certainly seem to have got the hard
case which, I hear, you were pining for. Don't build too much
on plausible motives in a case of this sort. Fauntleroy, the
London murderer, killed a woman for no other reason than that
she had thick ankles. Many years ago, I myself was on a case
where a man murdered an intimate friend because of a dispute
about a bet. My experience is that five murderers out of ten
act on the whim of the moment, without anything which, properly
speaking, you could call a motive at all.
Yours very cordially,
Paul Snyder
P. S. I don't think much of your Pickett theory. However, you're
in charge.
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