"I think they had come to the conclusion that he was dead," Arnold replied; "for after a time they put on his overcoat and dragged 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 your sister know?" Arnold begged. "She shall know all that you have told me," Sabatini promised. "I do not say that it will interest her--it may or it may not. In any case, I thank you for coming."