John Waring's life has never been better. He has just been elected as president of Corinth University, and his engagement has been confirmed to an attractive local widow. Just as it doesn't seem that anything could mess this up, a strange girl walks into his life. When Waring is found dead behind the bolted doors of his study, detective Fleming Stone only has the small footprints found outside the French windows as clues to solve the murder. A locked-room mystery at its best, Carolyn Wells' novel is delightfully reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes'.