The Return of Sherlock Holmes | Page 2

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 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 banknotes 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, he would indeed be a remarkable shot
who could with a revolver inflict so deadly a wound. Again, Park Lane
is a frequented thoroughfare; 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 investigation. I confess that I made little
progress. In the evening I strolled across the Park, and found myself
about six o'clock at the Oxford Street end of Park Lane. A group of
loafers upon the pavements, all staring up at a particular window,
directed me to the house which I had come to see. A tall, thin man with
coloured glasses, whom I strongly suspected of being a plain-clothes
detective, was pointing out some theory of his own, while the others
crowded round to listen to what he said. I got as near him as I could,
but his observations seemed to me to be absurd, so I withdrew again in
some disgust. As I did so I struck against an elderly, deformed man,
who had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he
was carrying. I remember that as I picked them up, I observed the title
of one of them, THE ORIGIN OF TREE WORSHIP, and it struck me
that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile, who, either as a trade or
as a hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes. I endeavoured to
apologize for the accident, but it was evident that these books which I

had so unfortunately maltreated were very precious objects in the eyes
of their owner. With a snarl of contempt he turned upon his heel, and I
saw his curved back and white side-whiskers