It was in the cold bleak autumn following the spectacular Dragon murder case[1] that Philo Vance was confronted with what was probably the subtlest and most diabolical criminal problem of his career. Unlike his other cases, this mystery was one of poisoning. But it was not an ordinary poisoning case: it involved far too clever a technique, and was thought out to far too many decimal points, to be ranked with even such famous crimes as the Cordelia Botkin, Molineux, Maybrick, Buchanan, Bowers and Carlyle Harris cases.
The designation given to it by the newspapers—namely, the Casino murder case—was technically a misnomer, although Kinkaid’s famous gambling Casino in West 73rd Street played a large part in it. In fact, the first sinister episode in this notorious crime actually occurred beside the high–stake roulette table in the “Gold Room” of the Casino; and the final episode of the tragedy was enacted in Kinkaid’s walnut–paneled Jacobean office, just off the main gambling salon.
