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“Motive enough!” cried Mark Drew angrily. “A secret love-affair with my father’s wife that has been going on for more than a year. A lust for money that is famous on the China coast—along with your well-known lack of scruples in stopping at nothing to get it. Motive, my dear Doctor———”
“You think,” sneered Parker, “that I would paw over this man’s luggage—that I would steal his silly knife?”
“Why not? A man who would steal another’s wife would hardly stop at the theft of a little weapon like this!” Drew turned to the detective. “Sergeant Barnes, this man claims that at the time the crime was committed he was walking from his hotel to this house. There are good pavements, good sidewalks, all the way. Let me call your attention to his shoes. They are unbelievably wet; they are muddy.”
“Rot!” snarled Parker. “That means nothing. The sidewalk was torn up be-
