Читать книгу The Cardinal Moth - Fred M. White - Страница 4

CHAPTER IV.

A DUSKY POTENTATE.

A very late breakfast, past two o'clock, in fact, was laid out in one of the private sitting-rooms of Gardner's hotel that self-same afternoon. Gardner's only catered for foreign princes and ambassadors and people of that kind, the place was filled with a decorous silence, the servants in their quiet liveries gave a suggestion of a funeral of some distinguished personage, and that the body had not long left the premises. But despite the fact, some queer people patronised Gardner's from time to time, and His Highness the Shan of Koordstan was not the least brilliant in that line.

It was nearer three when he pushed his plate away and signified to the servant that he had finished his breakfast. A morsel of toast and caviare assisted by a glass of brandy and soda-water is not a meal suggestive of abstemious habits, and, indeed, the Shan of Koordstan by no means erred in that direction.

He looked older than his years, and had it not been for his dusky complexion and yellow eyes, might have passed for a European of swarthy type. His features were quite regular and fairly handsome; he was dressed in the most correct Bond Street fashion, the cigarette he held between his shaky fingers might have come from any first-class club.

"I've got a devil of a head," he said, as the servant softly crept away with the tray. "I shall have to drop that old Cambridge set. I can't stand their ways. If anybody comes I am out, at least out to everybody besides Mr. Harold Denvers; you understand."

The servant bowed and retired. He came back presently with a card on a salver, and he of Koordstan gave a careless nod of assent. The next moment Harold Denvers came into the room. He sniffed at the mingled odour of brandy and cigarette smoke, and smiled. Koordstan was watching him with those eyes that never rested. Their side gleam and the hard set of the grinning mouth showed that a tiger was concealed there under a thin veneer of Western civilisation.

"You've got back again, Denvers," he said. "'Pon my word, you're devilish lucky. They had quite meant to put you out of the way this time."

"Your Highness is alluding to Sir Clement Frobisher, of course," Harold said.

Koordstan crossed over to an alcove and pushed the curtain back. Beyond was a small conservatory filled with choice orchids. They were a passion with him as with Frobisher. One of his chief reasons for coming to Gardner's was because it was possible to fill the small conservatory with a selection of his favourites. The atmosphere was damp and oppressive, but the Shan seemed to revel in it.

"That's about the size of it," he said. "Frobisher found out that you were épris of his lovely ward, and he had other views for her. The young lady has a will of her own, I understand."

"If you could see your way," Harold murmured, "to leave Miss Lyne out of the discussion——"

"My dear chap, I have not the slightest intention of erring against good taste. I like you, and out of all the men I come in contact with, you are the only honest man of the lot. Now I have stated why you were to be got out of the way I can proceed. Can't you see that there is somebody else who is your mortal enemy besides Frobisher?"

"I cannot call any one particularly to mind at present."

"Oh, you are blind!" Koordstan cried. "What about George Arnott? Now I know that, like a great many people, you regard Arnott as a fool. He has the laugh of a jackass, with the silly face of a cow. But behind the mooncalf countenance of his and that watery eye is a fine brain, and no heart or conscience. He and Frobisher are hand in glove together: they have some fine scheme afloat. And the price of Arnott's alliance is the hand of a certain lady, who shall be nameless."

"Do you mean that Arnott, when I went out to Armenia, actually——"

"Actually! Yes, that is the word. I shall be able to prove it when the time comes. And now you have come about those concessions that I was to consider with a view——"

"Begging your pardon—the concessions which your Highness has promised to my company."

"Drop that polite rot, old chap," Koordstan said, with engaging frankness. "You speak like that, but you regard me as a sorry ass who is building his own grave with empty brandy bottles. Entre nous, I did promise you those concessions, but you can't have them."

Harold knew his man too well to rage and storm or show his anger. He had counted on this matter. He had seen his way through dangers and perils of the fertile valleys of Koordstan and a fortune and perhaps fame behind. The hard grin on the face of the Shan relaxed a little.

"I'll tell you how it is," he said. "You know a lot about my people and what a superstitious gang they are. And you have heard the history of the Blue Stone of Ghan. As a matter of fact it's a precious big ruby, and is a talisman that every Shan of Koordstan is never supposed to be without. Now if I sold that stone or gave it away, what would happen to me when I got home?"

"They would tear you to pieces and burn your body afterwards."

"Precisely. Now that is a pretty way to treat a gentleman who merely has the misfortune to be hard up. And I have been most infernally hard up lately, owing to my unlucky speculations and those tribe troubles. Can't get in the taxes, you know. So the long and short of it is, that I pledged the Blue Stone."

Harold started. The statement did not convey much to the Western ears generally, but Denvers realised the true state of the case. The Shan was not a popular monarch; he was too European and absentee for that, and if the fact came out the priests would ruin him.

"That was a most reckless thing to do," Harold said.

"It was acting the goat, wasn't it?" Koordstan said carelessly, as he pared his long nails. "There was a new orchid or something that I had to buy. Sooner or later I shall recover the Blue Stone. But unfortunately for you, Lefroy and his set are after those concessions, and in some way Lefroy has discovered that the precious old jewel is no longer in my possession."

"So that is the way in which he is putting the pressure on you?"

"That's it," the Shan said with a dangerous gleam in his eyes. "Mind you, he is too good a diplomat to say out and out that he has made that important discovery. The Blue Stone is engraved on one side, and that side is used as a seal for sealing important state documents. Lefroy is desolate, but his people will do nothing until they get from me a wax impression of the seal; he told me that here. And he smiled. It was very near to the last time he smiled at anybody. If we had not been in London!"

Koordstan checked himself and paced up and down the small conservatory as like a caged tiger as a human being could be.

"Your answer to that was easy," Harold said. "You might have declined on the grounds that it would have been too easy to forge a die from that waxen impression."

"Good Lord, and I never thought of it!" Koordstan cried. "By Jove, that opens up a fine field for me! But it will take time. In the meantime a smiling face and a few of those previous subterfuges that men for want of a better name call diplomacy. You shall have your concessions yet."

Harold muttered something that might have been thanks, but he had his doubts. The Shan was favourably disposed towards him, but he would not have trusted the latter a yard so far as money was concerned. But there was another and better card yet to play.

"I have not forgotten your promise," he said. "When I showed you the Cardinal Moth."

"Afterwards subsequently destroyed. Ah, that we shall never see again. If you could give me that, you could make any terms with me. By heaven, I would have all Koordstan back at my feet if I could show them the 'Moth'! Denvers, you don't mean to say that you have come here with the information——"

He paused as if breath had suddenly failed him. The yellow face was quite ashy.

"Indeed I have," Harold said quietly. "That was one of the reasons why I came home. I got scent of the thing on the far side of the Ural mountains. My adventures would fill a big book. But I came home with the 'Moth' packed up in a quarter-pound tin of navy cut tobacco."

"You have kept this entirely to yourself?" the Shan asked hoarsely.

"Well, rather. I meant to have brought you a bloom as a guarantee of good faith. The plant is at present hidden away in the obscure conservatory at a nursery in the suburbs. If you would like——"

Harold paused as a soft-footed servant came in with a card on a tray. The Shan glanced at it and grinned.

"Tell him to come again in half an hour," he said. "Denvers, you had better depart by the Green Street door; it's Lefroy, and it would be as well for him not to know that you had been here. Go on."

"If you would like to see the 'Moth' I can make arrangements for you to do so. Only not one word of this to anybody. We can steal away down to Streatham and——"

Koordstan bounced to his feet, anger and disappointment lived on his face.

"Streatham, did you say!" he cried. "There seems to be witchery about the business. Don't tell me that you left the plant in care of a man called——"

The Shan grabbed for an early edition of an evening paper which fluttered in his hand like a leaf in a breeze. He found what he wanted presently and began to read half aloud.

"Yesterday evening Thomas Silverthorne, caretaker at the Lennox Nursery, Streatham—— Look here, Denvers, read it for yourself. At the Lennox nursery a man was found dead, murdered by having a rope placed round his neck, and held there till he was strangled. Silverthorne says there was a rare orchid or two in the house, and that one of them had been pulled down and probably stolen. Now if you tell me that your 'Moth' was placed there, I shall want to murder you."

Harold rose, his face was disturbed and uneasy.

"It is as you imagine," he said. "I did place the 'Moth' there the night before last. And I would have taken my oath that nobody knew that the plant was in England, I'll go to Streatham at once; I'll get to the bottom of this strange mystery."

"Count Lefroy is sorry," murmured the soft-footed servant, as he looked in, "but he hopes your Highness will see him now as he can wait no longer."

CHAPTER V.

AN INTERRUPTED FEAST.

To Frobisher's pêtit dîner the same evening of that eventful day ostensibly to meet the Shan of Koordstan, Lefroy came large and flamboyant, with a vivid riband across his dazzling expanse of shirt and a jewelled collar under his tie. There was an extra gloss on his black moustache, his swagger was a little more pronounced than usual. He looked like what he was—a strong man weighed down by not too many scruples.

There were less than a dozen men altogether, a couple of well-known members of the Travellers', a popular K.C., and a keen, hatchet-faced judge with a quiet manner and a marvellous faculty for telling dialect stories. The inevitable politician and fashionable doctor completed the party. As Lefroy and his secretary entered the drawing-room most of the men were admiring a portfolio of Morland's drawings that Frobisher had picked up lately.

Hafid stepped noiselessly across the floor with a telegram on a salver. Frobisher read it without the slightest sign of annoyance.

"The Shan is not coming," he said. "Koordstan is indisposed."

"So I gathered when I called professionally this afternoon," Dr. Brownsmith said dryly.

"Champagne," Frobisher laughed whole-heartedly. "All right, Sir James. I won't question you too far. So white is not going to mate in three moves this evening, Lefroy?"

Lefroy shrugged his shoulders carelessly. The Shan of Koordstan was safe for the present. He had seen to that. Manfred had dropped quietly into a chair with just the suggestion of pain on his face. A smooth-voiced butler announced that dinner was served.

"Where does Frobisher get his servants from, Jessop?" Sir James Brownsmith asked the judge, as the two strolled across the hall together. "Now there's a model of a butler for you. His voice has a flavour of old, nutty sherry about it. By Jove, what are those flowers?"

There were flowers everywhere, mostly arranged by Frobisher himself. In the centre was a rough handful of green twigs bound together with a silver cord, and the whole surmounted by a coil of the pinky-white orchid with its fringe of trembling red moths.

"Orchids," said the politician. "Something fresh, Frobisher? What do you call it?"

"The specimen is not named at present," Lefroy said meaningly.

Frobisher glanced at the speaker and smiled.

"Lefroy is quite right," he said. "The specimen lacks a name. It came in the first place from Koordstan, and there were three spines of the original plant. It is a freak, there never was anything like it before, and there will probably never be one like it again. That self-same orchid was very near to being the price of a kingdom once upon a time."

"Only it is unfortunately impossible to tell the story," Lefroy remarked.

Once again Frobisher glanced at the speaker and smiled. Most of the guests by this time were busy over their soup. They were not the class of men to waste valuable sentiment over flowers. It was only Frobisher who glanced from time to time lovingly at the Cardinal Moth. Manfred seemed to avoid it altogether. He sat at the table eating nothing and obviously out of sorts with his food.

"I've a bilious headache, Sir Clement," he explained. "The mere sight of food and smell of cooking makes me sick to the soul. Would you mind if I sat in the drawing-room in the dark for a little time? I am confident that the attack will pass off presently."

"Anything you please, my dear fellow," Frobisher cried hospitably. "A strong cup of tea! A glass of champagne and a dry biscuit? No? If you ring the bell Hafid will attend to you."

Hafid salaamed as he dexterously caught a meaning glance from Frobisher. Lefroy brutally proclaimed aloud that a good dinner was utterly wasted upon Manfred. Brownsmith with his mouth full of aspic was understood to say something anent the virtues of bromide. So the dinner proceeded with pink lakes of light on the table, the flowers and the cut glass and quaint silver. And there were blossoms, blossoms everywhere, thousands of them. Frobisher might have been a great scoundrel—that he was a man of exquisite taste was beyond question. The elaborate dinner dragged smoothly along, two hours passed, a silver chime proclaimed eleven o'clock.

The cloth was drawn at length, as the host's whim was, the decanters and glittering glass stood on a brown glistening lake of polished oak, with here and there a dash of fruit to give a more vivid touch of colour. Hafid handed round a silver cigarette-box, a cedar cigar cabinette on wheels was pushed along the table. Over the shaded electric lights a blue wrack of smoke hung. The silver chime struck twelve.

"Hafid; you have made Mr. Manfred comfortable?" Frobisher asked.

Hafid replied that he had done all that a man could do. Mr. Manfred was reclining in the dark near an open window. All the other servants but himself had retired. The butler had seen that everything necessary was laid out in the smoking-room.

"Always send the servants to bed as soon as possible," Frobisher explained. "What with the spread of modern journalism, I find it necessary. You never know nowadays how far one's butler is interested in the same stock that you are deeply dipped in. And a long-eared footman has changed the course of diplomacy before now."

"If everybody pursued the same policy, George," Baron Jessop murmured, "I and my learned friends of the Bench would have more or less of a sinecure."

"And Lord Saltaur, yonder would not have lost a beautiful wife," Lefroy said loudly.

A sudden hush seemed to smite the table. Lord Saltaur whitened to his lips under his tan; his long, lean hands gripped the edge of the table passionately. His own domestic scandal had been so new, so painful, that the whole party stood aghast at the brutality of the insult.

"Frobisher," Saltaur said, hoarsely. "It is not pleasant to be insulted by a blackguard——"

"What was that word?" Lefroy asked quite sweetly. "My hearing may be a trifle deficient, but I fancied his lordship said something about a blackguard."

Frobisher interfered as in duty bound. As a matter of fact he was enjoying the situation. Lefroy had drunk deeply, but then he had seen Lefroy's amazing prowess in that direction too many times for any fears as to his ultimate equilibrium. No, Lefroy was playing some deep game. As yet only the first card had been laid upon the table.

"I think that the apology lies with you, Count," Frobisher said tentatively.

"A mere jest," Lefroy said, airily. "A jeu d'esprit. Lord Saltaur's wife."

"You hound!" Saltaur cried passionately. "Whatever I have been, you might leave the name of a pure woman out of your filthy conversation. If you don't apologise at once, I'll thrust your words down your throat for you."

A contemptuous reply came from Lefroy. There was a flash of crystal and a glass shattered on the Count's dark face, leaving a star-shaped wound on his cheek. A moment later and he and Saltaur were struggling together like wild animals. Frobisher had so far forgotten himself as to lean back in his chair as if this were a mere exhibition got up for his entertainment.

"Is this part of the evening's amusement, Sir Clement?" the judge asked coldly.

Frobisher realised his responsibilities with a sigh for his interrupted pleasure. His civilisation was the thinnest possible veneer, a shoddy thing like Tottenham Court Road furniture.

"Come, you chaps must drop it," he cried. "I can't have you fighting over my Smyrna carpet. Saltaur, you shall have your apology. Lefroy, do you hear me?"

Strong arms interfered, and the two men were dragged apart. Lefroy's teeth glistened in a ghastly grin; there was a speck of blood on his white shirt front. Saltaur's laboured breathing could be heard all over the room.

"I take you all to witness that it was no seeking of mine," he cried. "I was foully insulted. In a few days all the world will know that I have been made the victim of a discharged servant's perjury. Frobisher, I am still waiting for my apology."

Lefroy paused and passed his handkerchief across his face. He seemed to have wiped the leering expression from it. He looked a perfect picture of puzzled bewilderment.

"What have I done?" he asked. "What on earth have I said?"

"Beautiful," Frobisher murmured. "Artistic to a fault. What is he driving at?"

Baron Jessop explained clearly and judiciously. He was glad to have an opportunity of doing so. Viewing the thing dispassionately, he was bound to say that Count Lefroy had been guilty of a grave breach of good taste. But he was quite sure that under the circumstances——

"On my honour, I haven't the slightest recollection of it," Lefroy cried. "If there is one lady of my acquaintance I honour and respect it is Lady —— the charming woman whom Lord Saltaur calls his wife. A sudden fit of mental aberration, my lord. An old wound in the head followed by a spell in the sunshine. This is the third time the thing has happened. The last time in Serbia nearly cost me my life. My dear Saltaur, I am sorry from the bottom of my heart."

"Funniest case I ever heard of," the puzzled Saltaur murmured. "All the same, I'm deuced sorry I threw that wine glass at you."

"Oh, so you chucked a wine glass at me! Laid my cheek open, too. Well, I should have done exactly the same thing under the same circumstances. From this night I touch nothing stronger than claret. If I'd stuck to that, this wouldn't have happened."

The good-humoured Saltaur muttered something in reply, the threads of the dropped conversation were taken up again. Hafid, who had watched the sudden quarrel with Oriental indifference, had gone off to the conservatory for hot water to bathe Lefroy's damaged face. There was just a lull for a moment in the conversation, a sudden silence, and then the smash of a crystal vessel on a tiled floor and a strangled cry of terror from Hafid. He came headlong into the room, his eyes starting, his whole frame quivering with an ungovernable terror.

"Mr. Manfred," he yelled. "Lying on the floor in the conservatory, dead. Take it and burn it, and destroy it. Take it and burn it, and destroy it. Take it——"

Frobisher pounced upon the wailing speaker and clutched him by the throat. As the first hoarse words came from Hafid the rest of the party had rushed headlong into the orchid-house. Frobisher shook his servant like a reed is shaken by a storm.

"Silence, you fool!" he whispered. "You didn't kill the man, and I didn't kill the man. If he is dead he has not been murdered. And it is no fault of yours."

"Allah knows better," Hafid muttered, sulkily. "You didn't kill him, and I didn't kill him, but he is dead, and Allah will punish the guilty. Take it and burn it, and——"

"Idiot! Son of a pig, be silent. And mind, you are to know nothing. You went to get the hot water from the orchid-house and saw Mr. Manfred lying there. As soon as you did so you rushed in to tell us. Now come along."

The limp body of Manfred had been partly raised, and his head rested on Sir James Brownsmith's knee. The others stood waiting for the verdict.

"The fellow is dead," the great doctor said. "Murdered, I should say, undoubtedly. He has been strangled by a coarse cloth twisted about his throat—precisely the same way as that poor fellow was murdered at Streatham the night before last."

A solemn silence fell upon the group. Hafid stood behind, his lips moving in silent speech:

"Take it and burn it, and destroy it. Take it and burn it, and destroy it, for there is blood upon it now and ever."

The drama was none the less moving because of its decorous silence. The great surgeon knelt on the white marble floor of the orchid-house with Manfred's head on his knee. Though Sir James Brownsmith's hand was quite steady, his face was white as his own hair, or the face of the dead man staring dumbly up to the tangle of ropes and blossoms overhead. There the Cardinal Moth was dancing and quivering as if exulting over the crime. A long trail of it had broken away, and one tiny cloud of blossom danced near the surgeon's ear, as if trying to tell him the tragedy and its story.

"A ghastly business," the judge murmured. "How did the murderer get in here?"

"How did he get out?" Frobisher suggested. "There is no exit from here at all. All the servants have been in bed long ago, and the front door is generally secured, at least the latch is always down."

"But what brought poor Manfred in here?" Saltaur asked. "I understood from Hafid that he was lying down in the drawing-room. Oh, Hafid! Wake up, man!"

"Take it and burn it, and destroy it," Hafid said mechanically.

Frobisher shook him savagely, shook the dreamy horror off him like a garment. He was sorry, he said, but he could tell the excellent company nothing. A quarter of an hour before and Mr. Manfred had appeared to be asleep on the drawing-room sofa. Hafid had asked him if he needed anything, and he had made no reply.

"Very strange," Sir James murmured, still diagnosing the cruel stranded pattern about the dead man's throat. "Perhaps Count Lefroy—where is the Count?"

"He went back into the dining-room," said Saltaur.

Frobisher brought his teeth together with a click. For the moment he had quite forgotten Count Lefroy. He passed from the library and into the dining-room. Lefroy stood by the great shining table close against the fluttering pyramid of red moths, a thin-bladed knife in his hands.

"And what might you be doing?" Frobisher asked softly.

Lefroy smiled somewhat bitterly. He was perfectly self-possessed with the grip of the man who knows how to hold himself in hand. And he smiled none the less easily because there was murder raging in his heart.

"I am cutting my nails," he said.

"Oh, I'll cut your claws for you!" Frobisher said. "Don't do that, what will your manicure artist say? And a social superiority (feminine) tells me that you have the finest hand of any man in London. You are unhinged, my dear Count. This little affair——"

"This cold-blooded murder you mean. Oh, you scoundrel!"

Lefroy had dropped the mask for a moment. There was contempt, loathing, horror in the last few words. Frobisher, counting the nodding swarm of crimson moths, merely smiled.

"Twenty-seven, thirty-one, thirty-nine," he said. "You haven't stolen any of my flowers yet. Not a bad idea of yours to purloin a cluster, and send it to our tin Solomon yonder, as an earnest of good intentions later on. And why do you call me scoundrel?"

"You are the most infernal villain that ever breathed."

"Well, perhaps I am. It is very good of you to admit my superior claims, dear Lefroy. But I am getting old, and you may live to take my place some day. Why——"

"Why did you kill Manfred?"

"My dear fellow, I didn't kill Manfred. You think he has been murdered in the ordinary sense of the word. Manfred has not been murdered, and nobody will ever be hanged for the crime. That you may take my word for. It is the vengeance of the Crimson Moth, death by visitation of God; call it what you will. And it might have been yourself."

Frobisher's whole manner had changed, his eyes were gleaming evilly as he hissed the last words warningly in Lefroy's ear. The latter changed colour slightly.

"I don't understand what you mean," he stammered.

"And yet you are not usually slow at understanding. I repeat that it might have been yourself. If you had attempted the raid of the Cardinal Moth, instead of Manfred, you would have been lying at the present moment with your head on Brownsmith's knees, and the mark of the beast about your throat."

"And if I tell those fellows yonder what you say?"

"You are at liberty to say anything you please. But you are not going to say anything, my dear Lefroy; you are too fine a player for that. You are going to wait patiently for your next innings. Come back to the others. And perhaps I had better lock this door."

Lefroy, like a wise man, accepted the inevitable. But the rest of the party were no longer in the orchid-house. They had carried the dead man to the back dining-room, where they had laid him out on a couch. Frobisher rang up the nearest police-station on the telephone with the request that an inspector should be sent for at once.

"By gad, this is a dreadful thing, don't you know!" Saltaur said with a shudder. "Fancy that poor fellow being murdered whilst we were wrangling in the dining-room. I suppose there is no doubt that it is murder, doctor?"

"Not the shadow of a doubt about it," Sir James replied. "Poor Manfred must have been admiring the flowers when the assassin stepped behind him and threw that coarse cloth over his head. A knee could be inserted on his spine, and the head forced backwards. The cloth must have been twisted with tremendous force. It is quite a novel kind of murder for England."

"Oh, then you have heard of something of the same kind before?" Frobisher asked.

"In India, frequently. I had a chance to examine more than one victim of Thugee, yonder. You remember what a scourge Thugism used to be in India some years ago. A Thug killed Manfred, I have not the slightest doubt about it."

"But there are no Thugs in England," the judge protested.

"My dear fellow, I have had an unfortunate demonstration to the contrary. And this crime is not necessarily the work of a native. Thugee is not dead in India yet, and some white scoundrel might have learnt the trick. Your own servant, Hafid——"

"A robust bluebottle would make a formidable antagonist for Hafid," Frobisher interrupted. "Hafid, somebody is ringing the bell. If it's a policeman, ask him in."

Inspector Townsend came in, small, quiet, soft of manner, and undoubtedly dressed in Bond Street. He listened gravely to all that Frobisher and Brownsmith had to say, and then he asked permission to view the body, and subsequently examine the premises.

A close search of the house only served to deepen the mystery. All the servants slept on the top floor, and that part of the house was bolted off every night after the domestic staff had retired. This was a whim of Sir Clement's, a whim likely to increase his unpopularity in case of fire, but at present that was a secondary consideration. There was no exit from the orchid-house, no windows had been left open, and despite the fact that there were guests in the house, the front-door latch had been dropped quite early in the evening. A rigid cross-examination of Hafid led to no satisfactory result. The man was almost congealed with terror and shock, but it was quite obvious that he knew nothing whatever about the mystery.

"There will be an inquest to-morrow at twelve, Sir Clement," Townsend said. "It will probably be a mere formal affair at which you gentlemen will be present. Good night, sirs."

"We had better follow the inspector's example," Lefroy cried. "Good night, Frobisher."

"My dear fellow, I wish you a cordial adieu," Frobisher cried. "And I can only regret that our pleasant evening has had so tragic a termination. Townsend, you have locked up the back dining-room and taken the key? Good! I want no extra responsibility."

The big hall-door closed behind the last of them. Frobisher took Hafid firmly by the collar and led him into the orchid-house.

"Now, you rascal," he asked, "what on earth do you mean by it?"

"Take it and destroy it, and burn it," Hafid wailed, with a wriggling of his body. He seemed to be trying to shake off something loathsome. "Oh, master, what is to become of us?"

"You grovelling, superstitious fool," Frobisher said lightly. "Nothing will become of us. Nobody knows anything, nobody will ever know anything as long as you remain silent. We haven't murdered anybody!"

"Allah looking down from Paradise knows better than that, master!"

"Well, he is not likely to be called in as a witness," Frobisher muttered grimly. "I tell you nothing has happened that the law can take the least cognisance of. Mind you, I didn't know that things would go quite so far. When I rang up the curtain it was comedy I looked for, not tragedy. Take the key and go into the dining-room. Remove those orchids and burn them, taking care that you destroy thirty-nine of the red flowers. Then you can go to bed."

Hafid recoiled with unutterable loathing on his face.

"I couldn't do it," he whispered. "I couldn't touch one of those accursed blossoms. Beat me, torture me, turn me into the street to starve, but don't ask me to do that, master. I dare not."

He cowered abjectly at Frobisher's feet. With good-humoured contempt the latter kicked him aside. "Go to bed," he said. "You are a greater coward than even I imagined. Put the lights out, and I'll go to bed also."

The lights were carefully put out, except in the smoking-room, where Frobisher sat pondering over the strange events of the evening. He was not in the least put out or alarmed or distressed; on the contrary, he looked like a man who had been considerably pleased with an interesting entertainment. For Manfred he felt neither sorrow nor sympathy.

He did not look fearfully round the room as if half expecting to see the shadow of Manfred's assassin creeping upon him. But he smiled in his own peculiar fashion as the door opened and a white-robed figure came in. It was Angela with her fine hair about her shoulders and a look of horror in her eyes.

"So you've found out all about it," Sir Clement said. "I'm sorry, because it will spoil your rest. How did you come to make the discovery?"

"I had just come in," Angela explained. "I let myself in with my latchkey. I did not come near you because I could hear that you were entertaining company, so I went straight to bed. Then I heard Hafid's cry, and I came to the head of the stairs where I could hear everything."

"You mean to say that you stood there and listened?"

"I couldn't help it. So far as I could judge there was an assassin in the house. Just for the moment I was far too frightened to move. That raving madman might have come for me next."

"Well, you can make your mind quite easy on that score. As you know, the whole house has been most thoroughly searched from top to bottom, and there is nobody here but the servants and ourselves now. If I were you I should keep out of it. Go to bed."

Sir Clement barked out the last few words, but Angela did not move.

"There will be an inquest, of course?" she asked.

"Oh, Lord, yes! The papers will reek of it, and half the reporters in London will look upon the place as a kind of public-house for the next week. Take my advice and keep out of it. You know nothing and you want to continue to know nothing, so to speak."

"But I am afraid that I know a great deal," Angela said slowly. "When I came in I was going into the conservatory to place a flower that I had given me to-night. It is a flower that I am likely to be interested in another time. And there I saw a strange man walking swiftly the same way. From his air and manner he was obviously doing wrong. My idea was to follow and stop him. And when I reached the conservatory, to my intense surprise, he was nowhere to be seen."

Frobisher bent down to fill his pipe. There was an evil, diabolical grin, so malignant, and yet so gleeful, as to render the face almost inhuman.

"It may be of importance later on," he said. "Meanwhile, I should keep the information to myself. Now go to bed and lock your door. I'm going to finish my pipe in my dressing-room."

Frobisher snapped out the lights, leaving the house in darkness. For once in her life Angela did lock her door. She could not sleep; she had no desire for bed and yet her eyes were heavy and tired. She pulled up the blind and opened the window; out beyond, the garden was flooded with moonlight. As Angela stood there she seemed to see a figure creeping from one bush to another.

"It is my fancy," she told herself. "I could imagine anything to-night. And yet I could have been certain that I saw the figure of a man."

Angela paused; it was no fancy. A man crept over the grass and looked up at the window as if he were doing something strictly on the lines of conventionality. To her amazement Angela saw that the intruder was in evening dress, and that it was Harold Denvers.

"Harold," she whispered. "Whatever are you doing there?"

"I came on the chance," was the reply. "I have heard strange things to-night, and there is something that I must know at once. I was going to try and rouse you with some pebbles. Dare you go down to the garden-room window and let me in? Darling, it is a matter of life or death, or I would not ask."

Angela slipped down the stairs noiselessly, and opened the window.

CHAPTER VI.

A BIT OF THE ROPE.

Sir James Brownsmith thought that on the whole he would walk home from Piccadilly to Harley Street. The chauffeur touched his hat, and the car moved on. The eminent surgeon had ample food for reflection; it seemed to him that he was on the verge of a great discovery. Somebody accosted him two or three times before he came back to earth again.

"That you, Townsend?" he asked, abruptly. "You want to speak to me? Certainly. Only as I am rather tired to-night if you will cut it as short as possible, I shall be glad."

"I am afraid I can't, Sir James," Inspector Townsend replied. "Indeed I was going to suggest that I walked as far as your house and had a chat over matters."

Sir James shrugged his shoulders, and Harley Street was reached almost in silence. In the small consulting-room the surgeon switched on a brilliant light and handed over cigars and whisky and soda.

"Now go on," he said. "It's all about to-night's business, I suppose?"

"Precisely, sir. You've helped us a good many times with your wonderful scientific knowledge, and I dare say you will again. This Piccadilly mystery is a queer business altogether. Do you feel quite sure that the poor fellow was really murdered, after all?"

Brownsmith looked fixedly at the speaker. He had considerable respect for Townsend, whose intellect was decidedly above the usual Scotland Yard level. Townsend was a man of imagination and a master of theory. He went beyond motive and a cast of a footmark—he was no rule-of-thumb workman.

"On the face of it I should say there can be no possible doubt," said Sir James.

"Murdered by strangulation, sir? The same as that man at Streatham. As you have made a careful examination of both bodies you ought to know?"

"Is there any form of murder unknown to me, Townsend?" Sir James asked. "Is there any trick of the assassin's trade that I have not mastered?"

"Oh, I admit your special knowledge, sir! But it's a trick of mine to be always planning new crimes. I could give you three ways of committing murder that are absolutely original. And I've got a theory about this business that I don't care to disclose yet. Still, we can discuss the matter up to a certain point. Both those men were destroyed—or lost their lives—in the same way."

"Both strangled, in fact. It's the Indian Thug dodge. But you know all about that, Townsend?"

"We'll admit for the moment that both victims have been destroyed by Thugee. But isn't it rather strange that both bodies were found in close juxtaposition to valuable orchids? We know, of course, that Sir Clement's orchids are almost priceless. The Streatham witness, Silverthorne, says that a very rare orchid was recently placed in the Lennox conservatory. Now, isn't it fair to argue that both murdered men lost their lives in pursuit of those orchids?"

Sir James nodded thoughtfully. He had forgotten the Cardinal Moth for the moment.

"I see you have pushed your investigations a long way in this direction," he said. "This being so, have you ascertained for a fact that the Lennox nursery really contained nothing out of the common in the way of Orchidacæ? You know what I mean."

"Quite so, sir. That I have not been able to ascertain because the proprietor of the Lennox nursery has no special knowledge of his trade. His great line is cheap ferns for the London market. But he says a gentleman whom he could easily recognise left him an orchid to look after—a poor dried-up stick it seemed to be—with instructions to keep it in a house not too warm, where it might remain at a small rent till wanted."

"Oh, indeed! You are interesting me, Townsend. Pray go on."

"Well, Sir James, I wanted to see the flowers after the murder, not that I expected it to lead to anything at that time. Seeing what has happened this evening, it becomes more interesting. Would you believe it, sir, that the flower in question was gone?"

"You mean that it had been stolen? Really, Townsend, we seem to be on the track of something important."

"Yes, Sir James, the flower had gone. Now, what I want to know is this—has Sir Clement Frobisher added anything special to his collection lately?"

Sir James shot an admiring glance at his questioner. Seeing that he was working almost entirely in the dark, Townsend had developed his theory with amazing cleverness.

"It's a treat to work with you," the great surgeon said. "As a matter of fact, Sir Clement had got hold of something that struck me as absolutely unique. It's a flower called the Cardinal Moth. A flower on a flower, so to speak; a large cluster of whitey-pink blossoms with little red blooms hovering over like a cloud of scarlet moths. Sir Clement is very pleased about it."

"From what you say I gather that he has not had it long, sir?"

"Oh, I should say quite recently! But you are not going to tell me that you suspect Frobisher?"

"At present, I don't suspect anybody, though Sir Clement is an unmitigated rascal who would not stop at any crime to serve his own ends. I don't go so far as to say that he had a hand in the business, but I do say that he could tell us exactly how the tragedy took place."

Sir James shot an admiring glance in the direction of the speaker. Frobisher's elfish interest in the crime, and his amazing sang-froid under the circumstances, had struck the surgeon unpleasantly. Townsend looked reflectively into the mahogany depths of his whisky and soda.

"It's one thing to know that, and quite another to make a man like Sir Clement speak," he said. "I am more or less with you, sir, over the Thugee business, but was the crime committed with a rope? I shall not be surprised to find that it was done with a bramble, something like honeysuckle or the like. But at the same time as you seemed so certain about the rope, why——"

Townsend waved his hand significantly. Sir James rose and unlocked a safe from which he produced an envelope with some fibrous brown strands in it. These he placed under a powerful microscope.

"Now, these I took from the throat of the poor fellow who was killed at Streatham," he explained. "I was rather bored by the case when you called me in first, and even up to the time I gave my evidence at the inquest. After the inquest was over I examined the body over again, and I confess that my interest increased as I proceeded. After what you have just told me I am completely fascinated. I made a most careful examination of the dead man's neck once, and had discovered that he had died of strangulation, and bit by bit I collected these. They are fibres of the rope with which the crime was done."

Townsend nodded so far as Sir James had proved his case.

"Have you done as much with the poor fellow at Sir Clement's residence?" he asked.

"No, but I shall do so in the morning. This is a curious sort of stuff, Townsend, and certainly not made in England. It is not rope or cord in our commercial sense of the word, but a strong Manilla twist of native fibre. Thus we are going to introduce a foreign element into the solution."

Townsend smiled as he produced a little packet from his pocket and laid it on the table.

"You are building up my theory for me, wonderfully, sir," he said. "I also have something of the same sort here, only I have more than you seem to have collected. Here is the same sort of fibre from Mr. Manfred's collar-stud, so that he must have been strangled over his collar, which means a powerful pressure. I didn't think it possible for human hands to put a pressure like that, but there it is."

"My word, we've got a powerful assassin to look for!" Sir James exclaimed. "Like you, I should not have deemed it possible. Did you find all that on Manfred's collar-stud?"

"Not all of it, sir. The collar-stud was bent up as if it had been a bit of tinfoil. But I found the bulk of this under the dead man's finger-nails. They are long nails, and doubtless in the agony of strangulation they clutched frantically at the cord. I am quite sure that you will find this fibre to be identical with that which you took from the neck of the Streatham victim."

"And this caretaker you speak of. Is he a respectable man? Silverthorne you said his name was, I fancy."

"That's the man, sir. He has been in his present employ for one-and-twenty years, a hard-working, saving man, with a big family. Oh, I should take his word for most things that he told me!"

Sir James revolved the problem slowly in his mind, as he inhaled his cigarette smoke. If the Lennox nursery had been deliberately made the centre of a puzzling murder mystery, it was quite sure that neither the nursery proprietor nor his man knew anything whatever about it. And yet it had been necessary, for some reason, that a glass-house should play an important part, for both murders had taken place under glass, and both suggested that the orchid was at the bottom of it. Again, Townsend was not the kind of man to make reckless statements, and when he boldly averred that Sir Clement Frobisher could tell all about it if he liked, he had assuredly some very strong evidence to go upon. A great deal depended upon the analysis of the red, liquid stain on the fibre taken by Townsend from the body of Manfred.

"If these little bits of stuff could speak what tales they could tell," Sir James said, as he carefully locked up both packets of fibre. I'll get up an hour earlier in the morning and have a dig at these, Townsend. And meanwhile as my days are busy ones, and it's past one o clock, I shall have to get you to finish your drink and give me your room instead of your company.

Townsend took the hint and his hat and retired. But though Sir James had expressed his intention of retiring almost immediately, he stretched out his hand for another cigarette and lighted it thoughtfully. Was it possible, he wondered, if Sir Clement Frobisher really could solve the mystery? And had he anything to do with it? Not directly, Sir James felt sure; Frobisher was not that kind of man. He was much more likely to get the thing done for him. He was secretive, too, over the Cardinal Moth; he had behaved so queerly over that business of Count Lefroy and his insult of Frobisher's guest. Brownsmith pitched his cigarette into the grate, and switched off the electric light impatiently.

"Why should I worry my head about it?" he muttered. "I'll go to bed."