An intrepid young journalist investigates the murder of an unknown man in this spellbinding mystery from the Golden Age of detective fiction On his way home after a long night's work, newspaper editor Frank Spargo stumbles across a crime scene on Middle Temple Lane in the heart of London's legal district. An elderly man lies dead in an entryway, his nose bloodied. He wears an expensive suit and a fashionable gray cap, but the police find nothing of...

Mr. Rivington is tall, slender and willowy; Mr. Wells is stoutly built and looks as if nothing could break him. Mr. Rivington is a dreamer who loves art and can pursue his cultured interests thanks to the inheritance his uncle has left him; Mr. Wells is philosophic in a dry-humoured fashion and works in Foreign Service. But despite their differences these two young gentlemen are great friends. When they meet on a spring day in 1906, after Mr. Wells's...