Tragedy at Beechcroft by A. Fielding

POINTER was not often as perplexed as he was by this case. Edwards, by the double crime, came into what was evidently a big fortune. He was not in any money difficulties as far as was known to the police, and moreover, he was a man to whom risk was as the breath of life. Money as a rule means nothing to such natures. But undoubtedly he could have had motive, as well as opportunity.

Edwards was very insistent that the crime was what might be called a business one--for the sake of the gearless car designs. But he himself had these designs, all of them, and no attempt seemed to have been made on his life. A murderer so clever, so calculating, and so daring as this one had been, does not usually leave the reason for his crime out of his calculations. True, there might be other patents, other designs. Moncrieff's papers had been searched, but not, to Pointer's acute eye, as they would have been for plans. Pointer had finally decided that only very recent papers were disturbed, and that the search was still going on. But nothing suggested that the murderer knew of the safe in the garage, or was interested in that building. Also, he could not see that any such motive would have necessitated, what he thought he had here, a quick, ruthless, cunning crime, which had to be improvised, and in which time was all-important.