There were points about this strange business which would, I was sure, have specially appealed to him, and the efforts of the police would have been supplemented, or more probably anticipated, by the trained observation and the alert mind of the first criminal agent in Europe.
All day as I drove upon my round I turned over the case in my mind, and found no explanation which appeared to me to be adequate.
At the risk of telling a twice-told tale I will recapitulate the facts as they were known to the public at the conclusion of the inquest.
The Honourable Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, at that time Governor of one of the Australian Colonies.
Adair's mother had returned from Australia to undergo the operation for cataract, and she, her son Ronald, and her daughter Hilda were living together at 427, Park Lane.
The youth moved in the best society, had, so far as was known, no enemies, and no particular vices.
He had been engaged to Miss 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 30th, 1894.
Ronald Adair was fond of cards, playing continually, but never for such stakes as would hurt him.