The Ariadne Inn catered for two classes: the “regulars” who absorbed their pints of beer in the public-bar, and passing motorists who congregated in the cocktail-bar and the garden. Soon after six o’clock on a warm evening in August, the place was packed with bibulous humanity, and in the general bustle it was not immediately apparent that one of the guests at a table in the twilit garden was not asleep but dead…

There were mysterious elements in the cause of his death and a still greater mystery in his previous activities, for who was this Mr. Warstock and why had he come to the Ariadne?

The ingenious John Rhode has not only set a complicated puzzle for Superintendent Jimmy Waghorn and the Sage of Westbourne Terrace, Doctor Lancelot Priestley, but has also shown the use to which a large country house can be put and the possible danger of belonging to a London Club…