"If one had but a man's nerve!" she murmured. "Dear Andrea, you make me very much ashamed. Yet this is serious—surely it is very serious?"
Arnold had withdrawn as far as possible out of hearing, but Sabatini beckoned him forward.
"You are missing the ballet," he said. "You must take the front chair there. You, too, will be interested in this news which my sister has been telling me. Our friend Starling has been arrested, after all. I was afraid he was giving himself away."
"For the murder of Mr. Rosario?" Arnold asked.
"Precisely," Sabatini replied. "A very unfortunate circumstance. Let us hope that he will be able to prove his innocence."
"I don't see how he could have done it," Arnold said slowly. "We saw him only about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour later coming up from the restaurant on the other side of the hotel."
"Oh! he will come very near proving an alibi, without a doubt," Sabatini declared. "He is quite clever when it comes to the point. I wonder what sort of evidence they have against him."
"Is there any reason," Arnold asked, "why he should kill Mr. Rosario?"
Sabatini studied his program earnestly.
"Well," he admitted, "that is rather a difficult question to answer. Mr. Rosario was a very obstinate man, and he was certainly persisting in a course of action against which I and many others had warned him, a course of action which was certain to make him exceedingly unpopular with a good many of us. I am not sure, however, whether the facts were sufficiently well known—"