make a serious blunder unless you can prove all this. When did it
all happen?"

"Two years ago. Oh, I'm not mistaken about it; it is as clear as
sunlight to me now. They took him back and tried him. Members of the
troupe swore he had threatened on numerous occasions to kill her if
she continued to repulse him. On the night of the murder--it was
after the opera--he was heard to threaten her. She defied him, and
one of the women in the company testified that he sought to
intimidate Malban by placing the point of his stiletto against her
white neck. But, in spite of all this, he was acquitted. I was in
New York when the trial ended, but I read of the verdict in the
press dispatches. Some one killed her, that is certain, and the
nasty job was done in her room at the hotel. I heard some of the
evidence, and I'll say that I believed he was the guilty man, but I
considered him insane when he committed the crime. He loved her to
the point of madness, and she would not yield to his passion. It was
shown that she loved the chorus singer who was first charged with
her murder."

"Ravorelli doesn't look like a murderer," said Lord Bob, stoutly.

"But he remembers seeing me in that courtroom, Bob."






IV