Arnold shook his head.

“She does not know that I have come.”

“You have brought me some news on your own account, then?”

“I have brought you some news,” Arnold admitted.

Sabatini looked at him critically.

“You look terrified,” he remarked.  “What have you been doing?  Help yourself to a drink.  You’ll find everything on the sideboard there.”

Arnold laid down his hat and mixed himself a whiskey and soda.  He drank it off before he spoke.

“Count Sabatini,” he said, turning round, “I suppose you are used to all this excitement.  A man’s life or death is little to you.  I have never seen a dead man before to-night.  It has upset me.”

“Naturally, naturally,” Sabatini said, tolerantly.  “I remember the first man I killed—­it was in a fair fight, too, but it sickened me.  But what have you been doing, my young friend, to see dead men?  Have you, too, been joining the army of plunderers?”

Arnold shook his head.

“I took your sister home,” he announced.  “We found a light in her sitting-room and the door locked.  I got in through the window.”

“This is most interesting,” Sabatini declared, carefully marking the place in his book and laying it aside.  “What did you find there?”

“A dead man,” Arnold answered, “a murdered man!”

“You are joking!” Sabatini protested.

“He had been struck on the forehead,” Arnold continued, “and dragged half under the couch.  Only his arm was visible at first.  We had to move the couch to discover him.”

“Do you know who he was?” Sabatini asked.

“No one had any idea,” Arnold answered.  “I think that I was the only one who had ever seen him before.  The night I dined at Mr. Weatherley’s for the first time and met you, I was with Mrs. Weatherley in her room, and I saw that man steal up to the window as though he were going to break in.”

“This is most interesting,” Sabatini declared.  “Evidently a dangerous customer.  But you say that you found him dead.  Who killed him?”

“There was no one there who could say,” Arnold declared.  “There were no servants in that part of the house, there had been no visitors, and Mr. Weatherley had been in bed since half-past nine.  We telephoned for a doctor, and we fetched Mr. Weatherley out of bed.  Then a strange thing happened.  We took Mr. Weatherley to the room, which we had left for less than five minutes, and there was no one there.  The man had been carried away.”

“Really,” Sabatini protested, “your story gets more interesting every moment.  Don’t tell me that this is the end!”

“It is not,” Arnold replied.  “It seemed then as though there were nothing more to be done.  Evidently he had either been only stunned and had got up and left the room by the window, or he had accomplices who had fetched him away.  Mr. Weatherley was very much annoyed with us and we had to make excuses to the doctor.  Then I left.”