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not going to smoke!” Shaw protested. “Great heavens, man, are you intent on killing yourself?”
    “The case is not without its features of interest,” my companion began as though the other had not spoken. “Young Hopkins has a career unless I am very much mistaken. Are there any points which occur to you, Watson?”
    “Aside from the business of the book, I must confess I was perplexed by the manner in which rigor morris had set in,” I replied. “One does not expect to find it so pronounced in the neck and abdomen and so conspicuously absent in the fingers and joints.”
    “But what about the book?” Shaw interposed, excitedly. “Surely its importance cannot be overestimated. It must have been a ghastly ordeal for him to reach it.”
    “I do not underestimate its importance, I assure you. I merely question its value at the moment. Oh, I have encountered such evidence before.” He waved a languid hand. “In a man’s dying extremity, he tries to communicate the name of his murderer or else that murderer’s motive. Unfortunately, without knowing more of Jonathan McCarthy than any of us do at present, it is highly unlikely that his outré clue can be forced into yielding much of value. What are we supposed to infer from it? That he saw himself as Mercutio? As Tybalt? That he was involved in a familial vendetta? Is it a word, a phrase, a passage, or a character that we are looking for? You see?” he threw out both hands in an expressive gesture. “It tells us nothing.”
    “But he must have thought otherwise,” I protested.
    “He must indeed. Or possibly he could not think of anything else in the crisis. I doubt he could have managed pen and paper, even had he reached them–and they were farther away, still. Then again, the clue may be perfectly obvious to a specific individual for whom he intended it.” He shrugged.
    “Then where do we begin?” Shaw demanded, puzzled. He was brushing his beard forward with his fingers into rather a fierce attitude.
    Holmes smiled.
    “Dunhill’s would seem as likely a point of departure as any.”
    “Dunhill’s?”
    “They may be able to assist me in identifying the origins of the murderer’s cigar. I shall go there after luncheon. In the meantime, I suppose we might begin with Bunthorne. Any idea who that might be?”
    “Bunthorne?” We stared at him, I, for one, never having heard the name. He smiled yet more broadly, then drew forth his pocket book and produced a torn piece of paper from it.
    “This is from McCarthy’s engagement diary.”
    “I thought you said his murderer had pinched his engagements for February the twenty-eighth.”
    “So he did. This, as you can see, is for February the twenty-seventh, and I pinched it.”
    “It contains but one entry,” I observed, “for six-thirty at the Café Royal.”
    “Precisely. With someone named Bunthorne.”
    Shaw silently reached forward and took up the paper, a scowl on his face, rendering his features more comical than usual. Abruptly he broke into an amused chuckle of appreciation.
    “I can tell you who Bunthorne is–and so could anyone else in the West End, I fancy, but as you don’t frequent anything but Covent Garden and the Albert Hall, I doubt very much if you’d know.”
    “Is he famous, then, this Bunthorne?” I asked.
    The critic laughed again. “Quite famous. One might even say infamous–but not under that name. My late colleague appears to have noted his engagements in a sort of code.”
    “How do you know for whom Bunthorne stands? Is it a nickname?” Holmes enquired.
    “Not precisely. Still I daresay he would answer to it.” Shaw spread the paper out and jabbed at it with forefinger. “It’s the restaurant that makes it certain. usually to be found there, holding court,”
    “Holding court?” I ejaculated. “Who the devil is he, the Prince of Wales?”
    “He is Oscar Wilde.”
    “The playwright?”
    “The genius.”
    “What links him with this ‘Bunthorne’?”