Fastolfe's homely face was set in grim lines when Baley returned.
"Any progress?" he asked.
"I eliminated part of a possibility. --Perhaps."
"Part of a possibility? How do you eliminate the other part? Better yet, how do you establish a possibility."
Baley said, "By finding it impossible to eliminate a possibility, a beginning is made at establishing one."
Isaac Asimov, The Robots of Dawn, Bantam (NY:1994) p. 198.
The Robots of Dawn, of course, is one of Asimov's science fiction mysteries. Asimov is underappreciated as a mystery writer.
