The Adventure of the Empty House - Page 2

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 {sic}
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 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