The Return of Sherlock Holmes | Page 4

Edith Woodley, of Carstairs, but the engagement had
been broken off by mutual consent some months before, and there was
no sign that it had left any very profound feeling behind it. For the rest
the man's life moved in a narrow and conventional circle, for his habits
were quiet and his nature unemotional. Yet it was upon this easy-going
young aristocrat that death came in most strange and unexpected form
between the hours of ten and eleven-twenty on the night of March 30,
1894.
Ronald Adair was fond of cards, playing continually, but never for such
stakes as would hurt him. He was a member of the Baldwin, the
Cavendish, and the Bagatelle card clubs. It was shown that after dinner
on the day of his death he had played a rubber of whist at the latter club.
He had also played there in the afternoon. The evidence of those who
had played with him -- Mr. Murray, Sir John Hardy, and Colonel
Moran -- showed that the game was whist, and that there was a fairly
equal fall of the cards. Adair might have lost five pounds, but not more.
His fortune was a considerable one, and such a loss could not in any
way affect him. He had played nearly every day at one club or other,
but he was a cautious player, and usually rose a winner. It came out in
evidence that in partnership with Colonel Moran he had actually won
as much as four hundred and twenty pounds in a sitting some weeks
before from Godfrey Milner and Lord Balmoral. So much for his recent
history, as it came out at the inquest.
On the evening of the crime he returned from the club exactly at ten.
His mother and sister were out spending the evening with a relation.

The servant deposed that she heard him enter the front room on the
second floor, generally used as his sitting-room. She had lit a fire there,
and as it smoked she had opened the window. No sound was heard
from the room until eleven-twenty, the hour of the return of Lady
Maynooth and her daughter. Desiring to say good-night, she had
attempted to enter her son's room. The door was locked on the inside,
and no answer could be got to their cries and knocking. Help was
obtained and the door forced. The unfortunate young man was found
lying near the table. His head had been horribly mutilated by an
expanding revolver bullet, but no weapon of any sort was to be found
in the room. On the table lay two bank-notes for ten pounds each and
seventeen pounds ten in silver and gold, the money arranged in little
piles of varying amount. There were some figures also upon a sheet of
paper with the names of some club friends opposite to them, from
which it was conjectured that before his death he was endeavouring to
make out his losses or winnings at cards.
A minute examination of the circumstances served only to make the
case more complex. In the first place, no reason could be given why the
young man should have fastened the door upon the inside. There was
the possibility that the murderer had done this and had afterwards
escaped by the window. The drop was at least twenty feet, however,
and a bed of crocuses in full bloom lay beneath. Neither the flowers nor
the earth showed any sign of having been disturbed, nor were there any
marks upon the narrow strip of grass which separated the house from
the road. Apparently, therefore, it was the young man himself who had
fastened the door. But how did he come by his death? No one could
have climbed up to the window without leaving traces. Suppose a man
had fired through the window, it would indeed be a remarkable shot
who could with a revolver inflict so deadly a wound. Again, Park Lane
is a frequented thoroughfare, and there is a cab-stand within a hundred
yards of the house. No one had heard a shot. And yet there was the
dead man, and there the revolver bullet, which had mushroomed out, as
soft-nosed bullets will, and so inflicted a wound which must have
caused instantaneous death. Such were the circumstances of the Park
Lane Mystery, which were further complicated by entire absence of
motive, since, as I have said, young Adair was not known to have any
enemy, and no attempt had been made to remove the money or

valuables in the room.
All day I turned these facts over in my mind, endeavouring to hit upon
some theory which could reconcile them all, and to find that line of
least resistance which my poor friend had declared to be the
starting-point of every