The Murders in Praed Street by John Rhode — Read

That eccentric scientist, Dr. Priestley, sat in his study on the Monday morning following the death of Mr. Copperdock, busily engaged in sorting out a mass of untidy-looking papers. Most of them he tore up and placed in the wastepaper basket by his side; a few he glanced at and put aside. The April sun lit up the room with a pale radiance, lending an air of Spring even to this dignified but rather gloomy house in Westbourne Terrace.

Dr. Priestley was thus engaged when the door opened and his secretary, Harold Merefield, came into the room. There was an air of heaviness about both men, the old and the young, as though the Spring had not yet touched them, and Winter held them still in its grip. One might have guessed that some absorbing work had monopolized their energies, leaving them no leisure for anything but the utmost concentration. And one would have guessed right. For the last six months Dr. Priestley had been engaged upon the writing of a book which was to enhance his already brilliant reputation. Its title was Some Aspects of Modern Thought, and in it Dr. Priestley had, with his usual incontrovertible logic, shattered the majority of the pet theories of orthodox science. It was, as the reviews were to say, a brilliant achievement, all the more entertaining from the vein of biting sarcasm which ran through it.