"Most unlikely, I should think," said one.
"Altogether improbable," added another.
"Do you opine that Othello smothered the princes in the Tower?" asked a third.
"Listen to my premises before you laugh at my conclusions," said he of the bald head, obviously nettled by the general incredulity. "Look at the details: they are almost identical. In each case the victim is stabbed to the heart; in each case the wound is almost imperceptibly small. There is no effusion of blood; no robbery is committed; and no trace of the assassin remains. I'd stake my head upon it that these are not purely accidental coincidences!"
"I beg your pardon," said a gentleman, who till now had been standing by a window at the further end of the room with his back to the speakers; "but will you have the goodness to inform me in what part of Rome this—this murder has been committed?"
"Down, I believe, in one of the narrow lanes near the theatre of Marcellus."
"And the victim is a Roman subject?"
"The child of Roman parents."
"A child!"
"A child, sir; a little fellow of only eleven years of age, and the son of a baker named Tommaseo."