ged him
out by the back entrance, down some mews, into another street. I
followed them at a distance. They hailed a taxi. One man got in with
him and drove away, the others disappeared. I came here."

Sabatini reached out his hand for a cigarette.

"I have seldom," he declared, "listened to a more interesting
episode. You didn't happen to hear the direction given to the driver
of the taxicab?"

"I did not."

"You have no idea, I suppose," Sabatini asked, with a sudden keen
glance, "as to the identity of the man whom you believe to be dead?"

"None whatever," Arnold replied, "except that it was the same man
who was watching the house on the night when I dined there. He told
me then that he wanted Rosario. There was something evil in his face
when he mentioned the name. I saw his hand grasping the window-sill.
He was wearing a ring--a signet ring with a blood-red stone."

"This is most engrossing," Sabatini murmured. "A signet ring with a
blood-red stone! Wasn't there a ring answering to that description
upon the finger of the man who stabbed Rosario?"

"There was," Arnold answered.

Sabatini knocked the ash from his cigarette.

"The coincidence," he remarked, "if it is a coincidence, is a little
extraordinary. By the bye, though, you have as yet given me no
explanation as to your visit here. Why do you connect me with this
adventure of yours?"

"I do not connect you with it at all," Arnold answered; "yet, for
some reason or other, I am sure that your sister knew more about
this man and his presence in her sitting-room than she cared to
confess. When I left there, everything was in confusion. I have come
to tell you the final result, so far as I know it. You will tell her
what you choose. What she knows, I suppose you know. I don't ask for
your confidence. I have had enough of these horrors. Tooley Street
is bad enough, but I think I would rather sit in my office and add
up figures all day long, than go through another such night."

Sabatini smiled.

"You are young, as yet," he said. "Life and death seem such terrible
things to you, such tragedies, such enormous happenings. In youth,
one loses one's sense of proportion. Life seems so vital, the
universe so empty, without one's own personality. Take a pocketful
of cigarettes, my dear Mr. Chetwode, and make your way homeward. We
shall meet again in a day or two, I dare say, and by that time your
little nightmare will not seem so terrible."

"You will let y