The Billiard Room Mystery

Seeing Bathurst this evening, after a lapse of eight years, has given me a most insistent inclination to set down, for the first time, the real facts of that cause célèbre, that was called by the Press at the time, the "Billiard Room Mystery." Considering the length of the interval, and regarding the whole affair from every possible point of view, it is sufficiently plain to me that an authentic history of the case can harm nobody and can prejudice no interests. I therefore succumb to the temptation, serenely confident that, no matter what shortcomings there may be in the telling, the affair itself as a whole, is entitled to rank as one of the most baffling in the annals of criminology.

Inasmuch as I was a member of the audience to-night at a private theatrical performance and Anthony Bathurst was playing lead for the company (amateur of course) that was entertaining us, I had no opportunity for conversation with him, but I am certain that had I had this opportunity, I should have found that his brain had lost none of its cunning and that his uncanny gifts for deduction, inference, and intuition, were unimpaired. These powers allied to a masterly memory for detail and to an unusual athleticism of body, separated him from the majority--wherever he was, he always counted--one acknowledged instinctively his mental supremacy--he was a personality always and everywhere. A tall, lithe body with that poised balance of movement that betrays the able player of all ball games, his clean-cut, clean-shaven face carried a mobile, sensitive mouth and grey eyes. Remarkable eyes that seemed to apprehend and absorb at a sweep every detail about you that was worth apprehending. A man's man, and, at the same time, a ladies' man. For when he chose, he was hard to resist, I assure you. Such, eight years ago, was Anthony Lotherington Bathurst, and such had he promised to be from comparative immaturity, for he had been with me at Uppingham, and afterwards at Oxford.

Which latter fact goes to the prime reason of my being at Considine Manor in the last week of July of the year of the tragedy.

At Oxford we had both grown very pally with Jack Considine, eldest son of Sir Charles Considine, of Considine Manor, Sussex, and although Bathurst had to a certain extent fallen away from the closest relations of the friendship, Jack and I were bosom companions, and it became my custom each year, when the 'Varsity came down, to spend a week at Considine Manor, and to take part in Sir Charles' Cricket Week. For I was a fairly useful member, and had been on the fringe of the 'Varsity Eleven; indeed many excellent judges were of the opinion that Prescott, who had been given the last place, was an inferior man. But of that, more later.

Bathurst never took his 'Varsity cricket seriously enough. Had he done so he would probably have skippered England--he's the kind that distinguishes whatever he sets his hand to--but it was cricket that took me to Considine Manor, and it was cricket that took both Prescott and Bathurst--but not in the same direction.