"Doyle, Arthur Conan - The Return Of Sherlock Holmes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

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