Not far from Moscow, an extremely mysterious and secret crime took place. In his suburban estate, a nobleman, Sergey Sergeevich Kartsev, was murdered. The police determined that the unfortunate man had been strangled. On the old man’s neck there were clearly imprinted, oddly long fingers of the strangler. No trace of the culprit could be found in the room. The door had been locked from the inside; the windows were nailed shut for winter. Who and why needed to kill a retired gentleman will have to be figured out by the police and Sherlock Holmes—apparently, Holmes’s help is, as always, unavoidable here.