Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: "'The Cardinal Moth,' Frobisher said, hoarsely." (Chapter
I.)]
THE CARDINAL
MOTH
BY
FRED M. WHITE
Author of "The Crimson Blind," "The Weight of the Crown,"
"The Corner House," etc., etc.
WARD, LOCK, & CO., LIMITED
LONDON AND MELBOURNE
1905
Made and Printed in Great Britain by
WARD, LOCK & Co., LIMITED, LONDON.
*CONTENTS.*
CHAPTER
I.--FLOWERS OF BLOOD
II.--ANGELA
III.--CROSSED SWORDS
IV.--A DUSKY POTENTATE
V.--AN INTERRUPTED FEAST
VI.--BIT OF THE ROPE
VII.--A GRIP OF STEEL
VIII.--THE WEAKER VESSEL
IX.--A WORD TO THE WISE
X.--A WORD TO THE WISE.
XI.--BORROWED PLUMES
XII.--A MODEL HUSBAND
XIII.--THE QUEEN OF THE RUBIES
XIV.--"UNEASY LIES THE HEAD----"
XV.--HUNT THE SLIPPER
XVI.--DIPLOMACY
XVII.--A FRIEND IN NEED
XVIII.--A DEFENSIVE ALLIANCE
XIX.--WHAT DID SHE MEAN?
XX.--CHECK TO FROBISHER
XXI.--DENVERS LEARNS SOMETHING
XXII.--STRANDS OF THE ROPE
XXIII.--A LUNCH AT THE BELGRAVE
XXIV.--A WOMAN'S WAY
XXV.--A STRIKING LIKENESS
XXVI.--A BAD QUARTER OF AN HOUR
XXVII.--MRS. BENSTEIN INTERVENES
XXVIII.--NEMESIS
XXIX.--THE TIGHTENED CORD
*THE CARDINAL MOTH*
*CHAPTER I.*
*FLOWERS OF BLOOD.*
The purple darkness seemed to be filled with a nebulous suggestion of
things beautiful; long trails and ropes of blossoms hung like stars
reflected in a lake of blue. As the eye grew accustomed to the gloom
these blooms seemed to expand and beautify. There was a great orange
globe floating on a violet mist, a patch of pink swam against an opaque
window-pane like a flight of butterflies. Outside the throaty roar of
Piccadilly could be distinctly heard; inside was misty silence and the
coaxed and pampered atmosphere of the Orient. Then a long, slim hand--a
hand with jewels on it--was extended, and the whole vast dome was bathed
in brilliant light.
For once the electric globes had lost their garish pertinacity. There
were scores of lamps there, but every one of them was laced with
dripping flowers and foliage till their softness was like that of a
misty moon behind the tree-tops. And the blossoms hung
everywhere--thousands upon thousands of them, red, blue, orange, creamy
white, fantastic in shape and variegated in hue, with a diabolical
suggestiveness about them that orchids alone possess. Up in the roof,
out of a faint cloud of steam, other blossoms of purple and azure
peeped.
Complimented upon the amazing beauty of his orchid-house, Sir Clement
Frobisher cynically remarked that the folly had cost him from first to
last over a hundred thousand pounds. He passed for a man with no single
generous impulse or feeling of emotion; a love of flowers was the only
weakness that Providence had vouchsafed to him, and he held it cheap at
the money. You could rob Sir Clement Frobisher or cheat him or lie to
him, and he would continue to ask you to dinner, if you were a
sufficiently amusing or particularly rascally fellow, but if you
casually picked one of his priceless Cypripediums----!
He sat there in his bath of brilliant blossoms, smoking a clay pipe and
sipping some peculiarly thin and aggressive Rhine wine from a long,
thin-stemmed Bohemian glass. He had a fancy for that atrocious grape
juice and common ship's tobacco from a reeking clay. Otherwise he was
immaculate, and his velvet dinner-jacket was probably the best-cut
garment of its kind in London.
A small man, just over fifty, with a dome-like head absolutely devoid of
hair, and shiny like a billiard-ball, a ridiculously small nose
suggestive of the bill of a love-bird, a clean-shaven, humorous mouth
with a certain hard cruelty about it, a figure slight, but enormously
powerful. For the rest, Sir Clement was that rare bird amongst
high-born species--a man, poor originally, who had become rich. He was
popularly supposed to have been kicked out of the diplomatic service
after a brilliant operation connected with certain Turkish Bonds. The
scandal was an old one, and might have had no basis in fact, but the
same _Times_ that conveyed to an interested public the fact of Sir
Clement Frobisher's retirement from the _corps diplomatique_, announced
that the baronet in question had purchased the lease of 947, Piccadilly,
for the sum of ninety-five thousand pounds. And for seven years Society
refused to admit the existence of anybody called Sir Clement Frobisher.
But the man had his title, his family, and his million or so well
invested. Also he had an amazing audacity, and a moral courage beyond
belief. Also he married a lady whose social claims could not be
contested. Clement Frobisher went back to the fold again at a great
dinner given at Yorkshire House. There it was that Earl Beauregard, a
one-time chief of Frobisher's, roundly declared that, take him all in
all, Count Whyzed was the most finished and abandoned scoundrel in
Europe. Did not Frobisher think so? To which Frobisher replied that he
considered the decision to be a personal slight to himself, who had
worked so hard for that same distinction. Beauregard laughed, and the
rest of the party followed suit, and Frobisher did much as he liked,
ever after.
He was looking just a little bored now, and was debating whether he
should go to bed, though it was not long after eleven o'clock, and that
in the creamy month of the London season. Down below somewhere an
electric bell was purring impatiently. The butler, an Armenian with a
fez on his black, sleek head, looked in and inquired if Sir Clement
would see anybody.
"If it's a typical acquaintance, certainly not, Hafid," Frobisher said,
sleepily. "If it happens to be one of my picturesque rascals, send all
the other servants to bed. But it's sure to be some commonplace,
respectable caller."
Hafid bowed and withdrew. Down below the bell was purring again. A
door opened somewhere, letting in the strident roar of the streets like
a dirge, then the din shut down again as if a lid had been clapped on
it. From the dim shadow of the hall a figure emerged bearing a long
white paper cone, handled with the care and attention one would bestow
on a sick child.
"Paul Lopez to see you," Hafid said.
"Lopez!" Frobisher cried. "See how my virtue is rewarded. It is the
return for all the boredom I have endured lately. Respectability reeks
in my nostrils. I have been longing for a scoundrel--not necessarily a
star of the first magnitude, a rival to myself. Ho, ho, Lopez!"
The newcomer nodded and smiled. A small, dark man with restless eyes,
and hands that were never still. There was something catlike, sinuous,
about him, and in those restless eyes a look of profound, placid,
monumental contempt for Frobisher.
"You did not expect to see me?" he said.
"No," Frobisher chuckled. "I began to fear that you had been hanged,
friend Paul. Do you recollect the last time we were together? It
was----"
The voice trailed off with a muttered suggestion of wickedness beyond
words. Frobisher lay back in his chair with the tangled ropes of
blossoms about his sleek head; a great purple orchid with a living
orange eye broke from the cluster and hung as if listening. Lopez
looked round the bewildering beauty of it all with an artistic respect
for his surroundings.
"The devil has looked after his dear friend carefully," he said, with
the same calm contempt. Frobisher indicated it all with a comprehensive
hand. "Now you are jealous," he said. "Hafid, the other servants are
gone to bed? Good! Then you may sit in the library till I require you.
What have you got there, Paul?"
"I have a flower, an orchid. It is at your disposal, at a price."
"At a price, of course. What are you asking for it?"
Paul Lopez made no reply. He proceeded to remove the paper from the
long cone, and disclosed a lank, withered-looking stem with faded buds
apparently hanging thereto by attenuated threads. It might have been
nothing better than a dead clematis thrown by a gardener on the
dust-heap. The root, or what passed for it, was simply attached to a
slap of virgin cork by a couple of rusty nails. Frobisher watched Lopez
with half-closed eyes.
"Of course, I am going to be disappointed," he said. "How often have I
gone hunting the eagle and found it to be a tit? The rare sensation of
a new blossom has been denied me for years. Is it possible that my pets
are going to have a new and lovely sister?"
He caressed the purple bloom over his head tenderly. Lopez drew from
his pocket a great tangle of Manilla rope, yards of it, which he
proceeded to loop along one side of the orchid-house. Upon this he
twisted his faded stem, drawing it out until, with the dusty laterals,
there were some forty feet of it.
"Where is your steam-pipe?" he asked.
Frobisher indicated the steam-cock languidly. Ever and again the nozzle
worked automatically, half filling the orchid-house with the grateful
steam which was as life to the gorgeous flowers. Lopez turned the cock
full on; there was a hiss, a white cloud that fairly enveloped his
recent work.
"Now you shall see what you shall see," he said in his calm, cool voice.
"Oh, my friend, you will be with your arms about my neck presently!"
Already the masses of flowers were glistening with moisture. It filled
up the strands of the loose Manilla rope, and drew it up tight as a
fiddle-string. Through the dim cloud Frobisher could see the dry stalks
literally bursting into life.
"Aaron's rod," murmured Frobisher. "Do you know that for Aaron's rod,
properly verified, and in good working order, I would give quite a lot
of money?"
"You would cut it up for firewood to possess what I shall show you
presently," said Lopez. "See here."
He turned off the steam-cock and the thin, vapoury cloud rapidly
dispelled. And then behold a miracle! The twisted, withered stalk was
a shining, joyous green, from it burst a long glistening cluster of
great white flowers, pink fringed, and with just a touch of the deep
green sea in them. They ran along the stem like the foam on a summer
beach. And from them, suspended on stems so slender as to be
practically invisible to the eye, was a perfect fluttering cloud of
smaller blossoms of the deepest cardinal red. Even in that still
atmosphere they floated and trembled for all the world like a
palpitating cloud of butterflies hovering over a cluster of lilies.
Anything more chaste, more weird, and at the same time more
bewilderingly beautiful, it would be impossible to imagine.
Frobisher jumped to his feet with a hoarse cry of delight. Little beads
of perspiration stood on his sleek head. The man was quivering from
head to foot with intense excitement. With hesitating forefinger he
touched the taut Manilla rope and it hummed like a harp-string, each
strand drawn rigid with the moisture. And all the moths there leapt
with a new, hovering life.
"The Cardinal Moth," Frobisher said hoarsely. "Hafid, it is the Cardinal
Moth!"
Hafid came, from the darkness of the study with a cry something like
Frobisher's, but it was a cry of terror. His brown face had turned to a
ghastly, decayed green, those lovely flowers might have been a nest of
cobras from the terror of his eye.
"Chop it up, destroy it, burn it!" he yelled. "Put it in the fire and
scatter the ashes to the four winds. Trample on it, master; crush the
flower to pieces. He is mad, he has forgotten that dreadful night in
Stamboul!"
"Would you mind taking that tankard of iced water and pouring it over
Hafid's head?" said Frobisher. "You silly, superstitious fool! The
Stamboul affair was a mere coincidence. And so there was another
Cardinal Moth besides my unfortunate plant all the time! Oh, the
beauty, the gem, the auk amongst orchids! Where, where did you get it
from?"
"It came from quite a small collection near London."
"The greedy ruffian! Fancy the man having a Cardinal Moth and keeping
it to himself like that! The one I lost was a mere weed compared to
this. Name your price, Paul, and if it is too high, Hafid and I will
murder you between us and swear that you were a burglar shot in
self-defence."
Lopez laughed noiselessly--a strange, unpleasant laugh.
"You would do it without the slightest hesitation," he said. "But the
orchid is quite safe with you, seeing that the owner is dead, and that
his secret was all his own. And the price is a small one."
"Ah, you are modest, friend Paul! Name it."
"You are merely to tell a lie and to stick to it. I am in trouble, in
danger. And I hold that hanging is the worst use you can put a man to.
If anything happens, I came here last night at ten o'clock. I stayed
till nearly midnight. Hafid must remember the circumstances also."
"Hafid," Frobisher said slowly, "will forget or remember anything that I
ask him to."
Hafid nodded with his eyes still fixed in fascinated horror on the
palpitating, quivering, crimson floating over its bed of snow. He heard
and understood, but only by instinct.
"I was at home all the evening, and her ladyship is away," said
Frobisher. "I was expecting a mere commonplace rascal--not an artist
like yourself, Paul--and the others had gone to bed. And you were here
for the time you said. Is not that so, Hafid?"
"Oh, by the soul of my father, yes!" Hafid said in a frozen voice.
"Take it and burn it, and scatter it. What my lord says is the truth.
Take it and burn it, and scatter it."
"He'll be all right in the morning," Frobisher said. "Lopez, take the
big steps and festoon that lovely new daughter of mine across the roof.
You can fasten it to those hooks. To-morrow I will have an extra steam
valve for her ladyship. Let me see--if she gets her bath of steam every
night regularly she will require no more. Aphrodite, beautiful, your
bath shall be remembered."
He kissed his fingers gaily to the trembling flowers now hooked across
the roof. Already the loose Manilla rope was drying and hanging in
baggy folds that made a more artistic foil for the quivering red moths.
It was only when the steaming process was going on that the thin, strong
ropes drew it up humming and taut as harp-strings.
"Ah, that is like a new planet in a blue sky!" Frobisher cried. "Lopez,
I am obliged to you. Come again when I am less excited and I will
suitably reward you. To-night I am _tete montee_--I am not responsible
for my actions. And the lie shall be told for you, a veritable
_chef-d'oeuvre_ amongst lies. Sit down, and the best shall not be good
enough for you."
"I must go," Lopez said in the same even tones. "I have private business
elsewhere. I drink nothing and I smoke nothing till business is
finished. Good-night, prince of rascals, and fair dreams to you."
Lopez passed leisurely into the black throat of the library, Hafid
following. Frobisher nodded and chuckled, not in the least displeased.
He had not been so excited for years. The sight of those blossoms
filled him with unspeakable pleasure. For their sakes he would have
committed murder without the slightest hesitation. He had eyes for
nothing else, ears deaf to everything. He heeded not the purr of the
hall bell again, he was lost to his surroundings until Hafid shook him
soundly.
"Count Lefroy to see you, and Mr. Manfred," he said. "I told them you
were engaged, but they said that perhaps----"
Frobisher dropped into his chair with the air of a man satiated with a
plethora of good things.
"Now what have I done to deserve all this beatitude!" he cried. "An
unique find and a brother collector to triumph over, to watch, to prick
with the needle of jealousy. But stop, I must worship alone to-night.
Say that I shall particularly desire to see them at luncheon to-morrow."
*CHAPTER II.*
*ANGELA.*
Frobisher sat the following morning in the orchid-house chuckling to
himself and waiting the advent of his two guests to luncheon. Heaven
alone could follow the twists and turns of that cunning brain.
Frobisher was working out one of his most brilliant schemes now. He took
infinite pains to obtain by underground passages the things he might
have obtained openly and easily. But there was the delight of puzzling
other people.
He looked up presently, conscious of a presence beyond his own. In the
dark Frobisher could always tell if anybody came into the room. He
crooked his wicked head sideways with the air of a connoisseur, and in
sooth there was good cause for his admiration. Here was something equal
at least to his most beautiful and cherished orchids, a tall, graceful
girl with shining brown hair, and eyes of the deepest, purest blue. Her
complexion was like old ivory, and as pure, the nose a little short,
perhaps, but the sweet mouth was full of strength and character.
"I came for the flowers that you promised me, Sir Clement," she said.
"Call me uncle and you shall have the conservatory," Frobisher grinned.
"I am your uncle by marriage, you know, and your guardian by law.
Angela, you are looking lovely. With the exception of a peasant woman I
once met in Marenna, you are the most beautiful creature I ever saw."
Angela Lyne listened with absolute indifference. She was accustomed to
be studied like this by Sir Clement Frobisher, whom she loathed and
detested from the bottom of her heart. But Lady Frobisher was her aunt,
and Frobisher her guardian for the next year, until she came of age, in
fact.
"Give me the flowers," she said. "I am late as it is. I have sent my
things on, for I shall dine with Lady Marchgrave after the concert, and
come home alone. Hafid will let me in."
"Better take a latchkey," Frobisher suggested. "There! Let me pin them
in for you. I'll show you an orchid when you have time to examine it
that will move even you to admiration. But not now; she is too superb a
creature for passing admiration. Now I think you will do."
There was no question of Frobisher's taste or his feeling for arranging
flowers. The blossoms looked superb and yet so natural as they lay on
Angela's breast--white orchids shot with sulphur. They were the theme of
admiration an hour later at Lady Marchgrave's charity concert; they
gleamed again on Angela's corsage as she sat in the Grosvenor Square
drawing-room at dinner. Five-and-twenty people sat round the long table
with its shaded lights and feathery flowers. There were distinguished
guests present, for Lady Marchgrave was by way of being intellectual,
but Angela had eyes for one man only. He had come a little late, and
had slipped quietly into a chair at the bottom of the table--a tall man
with a strong face, not exactly handsome, but full of power. The
clean-shaven lips were very firm, but when the newcomer smiled his face
looked singularly young and sweet. Angela's dinner partner followed her
glance with his eyes.
"If it isn't that beast Denvers," he muttered. "I thought he had been
murdered in the wilds of Armenia or some such desirable spot. You ought
to be glad, Angela."
"I am glad, Mr. Arnott," Angela said coldly. "Permit me to remind you
again that I particularly dislike being called by my Christian name; at
least, at present."
The little man with the hooked nose and the shifting, moist eye, put
down his champagne glass savagely. For some deep, mysterious reason,
Sir Clement favoured George Arnott's designs upon Angela, and if nothing
interfered he was pretty sure to get his own way in the end. At present
Angela was coldly disdainful; she little dreamt of the power and cunning
of the man she was thwarting. She turned her head away, absently
waiting for Lady Marchgrave's signal. There was a flutter and rustle of
silken and lace draperies presently, and the chatter of high-bred voices
floating from the hall. A good many people had already assembled in the
suite of rooms beyond, for Lady Marchgrave's receptions were popular as
well as fashionable. Angela wandered on until she came to the balcony
overlooking the square. She leant over thoughtfully--her mind had gone
back to such a night a year or so before.
"Mine is a crescent star to-night," a quiet voice behind her said. "I
seemed to divine by instinct where you were. Angela, dear Angela, it is
good to be with you again."
The girl's face flushed, her blue eyes were full of tenderness. Most
people called her cold, but nobody could bring that accusation against
her now. Her two hands went out to Harold Denvers, and he held them
both. For a long while the brown eyes looked into the heavenly blue
ones.
"Still the same?" Denvers asked. "Nobody has taken what should be my
place, Angela?"
"Nobody has taken it, and nobody is ever likely to," Angela smiled.
"There is supposed to be nothing between us; you refused to bind me, and
you did not write or give me your address, but my heart is yours and you
know it. And if you changed I should never believe in anything again."
"If I should change! Dear heart, is it likely? If you only knew what I
felt when I caught sight of you to-night. My queen, my beautiful, white
queen! If I could only claim you before all the world!"
Angela bent her head back behind the screen of a fluttering, silken
curtain and kissed the speaker. He held her in his arms just for one
blissful moment.
"It seems just the same," he said, "as if the clock had been put back a
year, to that night when Sir Clement found us out. The son of the man
whom he had ruined and his rich and lovely ward! There was a dramatic
scene for you! But he only grinned in that diabolical way of his, and
shortly after that mission to Armenia was offered to me. I never
guessed then who procured it for me, but I know now as well as I know
that Sir Clement never intended me to come back."
"Harold! Do you really mean to say that--that----"
"You hesitate, of course. It is not a pretty thing to say. Life is
cheap out there, and if I was killed, what matter? Let us talk of other
and more pleasant things."
"Of your travels and adventures, for instance. Did you find any
wonderful flowers, like you did, for instance, in Borneo, Harold? Where
did you get that lovely orchid from?"
A single blossom flamed on the silk lapel of Denvers' coat--a whitish
bloom with a cloud of little flowers hovering over it like moths. It
was the Cardinal Moth again.
"Unique, is it not?" Harold said. "Thereby hangs a strange, romantic
tale which would take too long to tell at present. What would Sir
Clement give for it?"
"Let me have it before I go," asked Angela, eagerly. "I should like to
show it to Sir Clement. He has some wonderful flower that he wants me to
see, but I feel pretty sure that he has nothing like that. I shall
decline to say where I got the bloom from."
Denvers removed the exquisite bloom with its nodding scarlet moths and
dexterously attached it to Angela's own orchids. The thing might have
been growing there.
"It seems strange to see that bloom on your innocent breast," Harold
said. "It makes me feel quite creepy when I look at it. If you only
knew the sin and misery and shame and crime that surrounds the Cardinal
Moth you would hesitate to wear it."
Angela smiled; she did not possess the imaginative vein.
"You shall tell me that another time," she said. "Meanwhile you seem to
have dropped from the clouds.... Are your plans more promising for the
future?"
"A little nebulous for the present," Denvers admitted, "though the next
expedition, which is not connected with Sir Clement Frobisher, promises
well for the future. There is a lot to be done, however, and I am
likely to be in London for the next three weeks or so. And you?"
"We are here for the season, of course. My aunt is staying at Chaffers
Court till Friday, hence the fact that I am here alone. If you are very
good you shall take me as far as Piccadilly in a taxi. I must see a
good deal of you, Hal, for I have been very lonely."
There was a pathetic little droop in Angela's voice. Harold drew her a
little closer.
"I wish I could take you out of it, darling," he said. "For your sake,
we must try and make the next venture a success. If we can only start
the company fairly, I shall be able to reckon on a thousand a year. Do
you think you could manage on that, Angela?"
"Yes, or on a great deal less," Angela smiled. "I could be happy with
you anywhere. And you must not forget that I shall have a large fortune
of my own some day."
Other people were drifting towards the cool air of the balcony now,
George Arnott amongst the number. It was getting late, and Angela was
tired. She whispered Harold to procure her a cab, and that she would
say good-night to Lady Marchgrave and join him presently. The cab came,
and so did the lights of Piccadilly all too soon. Denvers lingered on
the steps just for a moment. He was going down to a big country house
on Saturday for the week-end. Would Angela come if he could procure her
an invitation? Angela's eyes replied for her. She was in the house at
length by the aid of her latchkey. The dining-room door opened for a
moment; there was a rattle of conversation and the smell of Egyptian
cigarettes. Evidently Sir Clement was giving one of his famous
impromptu dinner-parties. Angela took the spray of orchids from her
breast and passed hurriedly in the direction of the orchid-house. The
bloom would keep best there, she thought.
As she passed along the corridor the figure of a man preceded her. The
stranger crept along, looking furtively to the right and the left. From
his every gesture he was doing wrong here. Then he darted for the
orchid-house and Angela followed directly she had recovered herself.
She would corner the man in the conservatory and demand his business.
In the conservatory Angela looked about her. The man had vanished.
He had utterly gone--he was nowhere to be seen. Angela rubbed her eyes
in amazement. There was no other way out of the conservatory. She
stood therewith the Cardinal Moth in her hand, aware now that she was
looking into the scared face of Hafid.
"Take it and burn it, and destroy it," he said in a dazed kind of way.
"Take it and burn it at once. Dear lady, will you go to bed? Take it
and burn it--my head is all hot and confused. Dear lady, do not stay
here, the place is accursed. By the Prophet, I wish I had never been
born."
*CHAPTER III.*
*CROSSED SWORDS.*
Hafid came into the library and pulled to the big bronze gates of the
orchid-house like the portals of a floral paradise. There were flowers
here: stephanotis climbing round the carved mantel, ropes of orchids
dangling from the electroliers, in one corner a mass of maiden-hair fern
draped the wall. Even the pictures in their Florentine frames were
roped with blossoms.
Frobisher glanced beyond the carved and twisted gates with a peculiar
smile after Angela had departed. His luncheon guests were late. He
looked more like a mischievous bird than usual. There was an air of
pleased anticipation about him as of a man who is going to witness a
brilliant comedy.
There came to him a tall man with a heavy moustache and an unmistakable
military swagger. If Frobisher resembled a parrot, Lefroy was most
unmistakably a hawk. He passed in society generally as a cavalry
officer high in favour of his Majesty the Shan of Ganistan; more than
one brilliant expedition against the hill-tribes had been led by him.
But some of the hill-men could have told another tale.
"Well, Lefroy," Frobisher exclaimed, genially. "This is a pleasure, a
greater pleasure than you are aware of. Mr. Manfred, take a seat."
Lefroy's secretary bowed and sank into a deep chair. His face was
absolutely devoid of emotion, a blank wall of whiteness with two eyes as
expressionless as shuttered windows. Most people were disposed to
regard Manfred as an absolute fool. The hill-men at the back of
Ganistan muttered in their beards that he was, if possible, worse than
his master.
Lefroy reached for a cigar, lighted it, and looked around him. The
white-faced Manfred seemed to have lapsed into a kind of waking sleep. A
more utter indifference to his surroundings it would be hard to imagine.
Yet he was a kind of intellectual camera. He had never been in
Frobisher's library before. But a year hence he could have entered it
in the dark and found his way to any part of the room with absolute
certainty.
"I came to see you over that central Koordstan Railway business," Lefroy
said.
"Precisely," Frobisher smiled. "I might have guessed it. As an
Englishman--though you have so picturesque a name--you are anxious that
England should receive the concessions. In fact, you have already
promised it to our Government."
Lefroy made a motion as who should move a piece on a chess-board.
"That is one to you," he said. "Yes, you are quite right. Whereas
you?"
"Whereas I am interested on behalf of the Russian Government. I tried
our people here two years ago, but they refused to have anything to do
with me."
"Refused to trust you, in point of fact."
Frobisher laughed noiselessly. The wrinkled cunning of his face and the
noble expanse of his forehead looked strange together.
"Quite right," he said. "They refused to trust me. Any man who knows
my record would be a fool to do so. But in that instance I was
perfectly loyal, because it was my interest to be so. Still I bowed
with chastened resignation and--immediately offered my services to
Russia. Then you slipped in and spoilt my little game."
"There is half a million hanging to the thing, my dear fellow."
"Well, well! But you have not won yet. You can do nothing till you
have won the Shan of Koordstan to your side. Whichever way he throws
his influence the concession goes. And He of Koordstan and myself are
very friendly. He dines here to-night."
Lefroy started slightly. He glanced at Frobisher keenly under his
shaggy brows. The latter lay back smoking his filthy clay with dreamy
ecstasy.
"Yes," he went on, "He dines here to-night to see my orchids. My dear
fellow, if you and Manfred will join us, I shall be delighted."
Lefroy muttered something that sounded like acceptance. Manfred came
out of his waking dream, nodded, and slipped back into conscious
unconsciousness again.
"That picturesque and slightly drunken young rascal has a passion for
orchids," said Frobisher. "It is the one redeeming point in his
character. But you know that, of course. You haven't forgotten the
great coup so nearly made with the Cardinal Moth."
"The plant that was burnt at Ochiri," Lefroy said uneasily.
"The same. What a wax the old man was in, to be sure! Ah, my dear
Lefroy, we shall never, never see a Cardinal Moth again!"
"If I could," Lefroy said hoarsely. "Your chances with the Shan of
Koordstan wouldn't be worth a rap. With that orchid I could buy the man
body and soul. And the plant that was stolen from us at Turin is dead
long ago. It must be, such a find as that couldn't possibly have been
kept quiet."
"I'll bet you a thousand pounds that orchid is alive," Frobisher said
dryly.
Lefroy sat up straight as a ramrod. The waxed ends of his big moustache
quivered. He turned to Manfred, anxiety, anger, passion, blazing like a
brief torch in his eyes. Manfred seemed to divine rather than know that
he was under that black battery, and shook his head.
"I fail to see the point of the joke," Lefroy said.
Frobisher signed to Hafid to throw back the gates. Lefroy was on his
feet by this time. He breathed like one who has run fast and far.
Manfred followed him with the air of a man who is utterly without hope
or expectation.
"There!" Frobisher cried with a flourish of his hand. "What is that you
see beyond the third tier of ropes? Ah, my beauty, here comes another
lover for you!"
Lefroy's black eyes were turned up towards the high dome of the
orchid-house. Other tangled ropes and loops of blossoms met his gaze
and held it as he glanced in the direction indicated by Frobisher. And
there, high up above them all he could see the long, foamy, pink mass of
blooms with the red moths dancing and hovering about them like things of
life.
"The Cardinal Moth," he screamed. "Manfred, Manfred, curse you!"
He wheeled suddenly round in a whirl of delirious passion, and struck
Manfred a violent blow in the mouth. The secretary staggered back, a
thin stream of blood spurted from his split lip. But he said nothing,
manifested no feeling or emotion of any kind. With a handkerchief he
staunched the flow with the automatic action of a marionette.
"The Cardinal Moth," Frobisher said as genially as if nothing had
happened. "The gem has but recently come into my possession. It will
be a pleasant surprise for our friend the Shan to-night."
Just for an instant it looked as if Lefroy were about to transfer his
spleen from Manfred to his host. But Frobisher had been told enough
already. The cowardly blow said as plainly as words could speak that
Frobisher had obtained the very treasure that Lefroy was after. He
imagined that his secretary had played him false. And, moreover, he
knew that Frobisher knew this.
"You've got it," he said. He seemed to have a difficulty in swallowing
something. "But you could not bring yourself to part with it. You
couldn't do it."
"My good Lefroy, every man has his price, even you and I. My beloved
Moth may not be a very good trap, but I shall find it a wonderfully
efficient bait."
"I dare say," Lefroy returned moodily. "Can I examine the flower
closer?"
"Certainly. Hafid, bring the extending steps this way. Be careful of
those ropes and tangles. An active man like you could climb up the stays
and bracket to the roof."
Lefroy was a long time examining the flower. He was torn by envy and
admiration. When he came down again his face was pale and his hands
trembled.
"The real thing," he said, "the real, palpitating, beautiful thing. But
there is blood upon it."
"Born in blood and watered with the stream of life. No, I am not going
to tell you where I got it from. And now, my dear Lefroy, what will you
take for your Koordstan concessions?"
Lefroy said nothing, but there was a gleam in his downcast eyes. Then
presently he broke into a laugh that jarred on the decorous silence of
the place.
"The game is yours," he said. "White to play and mate in three moves.
Still there may be a way out. And, on the other hand, you must be very
sure of your game to show me that. Lord, I'd give twopence to have you
alone in a dark corner!"
He rose abruptly, turned on his heel, and made for the door, followed by
the white automaton with the bleeding lip. He could hear Frobisher's
diabolical chuckle as the big bronze gates closed behind him. It was
perhaps the most silent meal ever partaken of at Frobisher's. He was
glad at length to see the last of his luncheon guests.
Once in the streets Lefroy's manner changed. He looked uneasy and
downcast.
"I'm sorry I hit you, Manfred," he said. "But when I caught sight of
that infernal plant I felt sure that you had sold me. But even you
couldn't have carried the thing off quite so coolly as that. And
yet--and yet there can't be two Cardinal Moths in existence."
"There are not," Manfred said impatiently. "That is the same one I hoped
to have had in my possession to-night. Didn't Frobisher say it had
recently fallen into his hands?"
"I recollect that now. Manfred, I'm done. And yet I regarded it as a
certainty."
"You were a great fool to strike me just now," said Manfred,
thoughtfully, and without resentment. "Why? Because the blow told
Frobisher that he had gained possession of the very thing you were
after. It was as good as telling him that you thought I had betrayed
you. To-night when the Shan dines----"
Lefroy grasped Manfred's arm with crushing force.
"He isn't going to dine with Frobisher to-night," he whispered. "We
shall dine there, but his Majesty will be unfortunately detained owing
to sudden indisposition. In other words, he will be too drunk to leave
his hotel. Let's go into your lodgings and have a brandy and soda. I've
got a plan ready. There is just a chance yet that I may succeed."
Manfred let himself into a house just off Brook Street. In a modest
room upstairs, a box of cigars, some spirits, together with a silver jug
of water, and a box of sparklets were put out. On the round table lay
an early edition of an evening paper that Manfred opened somewhat
eagerly for him. He glanced over a late advertisement in the personal
column and shook his head.
"It is as I thought," he said. "See here. 'The butterflies have gone
away and cannot be found. My poor friend has broken his neck and I have
gone on a journey'--That is addressed to me, Lefroy. It is a message
from my man that somebody has stolen the Cardinal Moth, and that my
man's confederate has met with a fatal accident. Also it seems likely
that there will be a fuss over the business, so that my correspondent
has gone somewhere out of the way. We will look for some account of the
tragedy presently; it is sure to be in this paper. Now tell me what you
propose to do."
Lefroy poured a brandy and soda down his throat without a single
movement of his larynx.
"I'm in a devil of a mess," he said frankly. "I made certain of getting
the Cardinal Moth."
"So did I. But that is a detail. Go on."
"I wanted money badly. The concession seemed to be as good as mine.
With the Moth as a bribe for the Shan it would have been all Lombard
Street to a green gooseberry. So I lodged the charter with a notorious
money-lending Jew in Fenchurch Street, and got twenty thousand pounds on
account."
"My dear Lefroy, you hadn't got the concession to lodge!"
"No, but I had the man's letters, and I had the draft contract. So I
forged the Charter, hoping to exchange it for a more broad and liberal
one later on, and there you are!"
"And where will you be if you stay in the country forty-eight hours
longer?"
"I understand," Lefroy said grimly. "But there is a chance yet. The
Shan does not go to Frobisher's dinner this evening and we do. You are
suddenly indisposed and sit out. At a given signal I make a diversion.
Then you hurry into that orchid-house and steal the flower."
"The thing is absolutely impossible, my dear fellow!"
"Not at all. There is a much smaller Moth growing side by side with the
larger one. I found that out to-night. You have only to snap off a
small piece of cork and unwind the stems. Then you hurry off to my
place with it and put it amongst my orchids. The old man does not
expect anything beyond a small plant; those we had before were babies
compared to the one yonder. Then we get the Shan round the next day and
give him the vegetable. I shall have the concession ready. And it's
any money Frobisher never knows how he has been done."
"I'll make the attempt if you like," Manfred said without emotion. "We
can discuss the details in the morning. And now let me see what
happened to my man. There is sure to be an account in this paper."
Manfred came upon it at length:
"Mysterious Occurrence in Streatham.
"Yesterday evening Thomas Silverthorne, caretaker at Lennox Nursery,
Streatham, was aroused by hearing a noise in the greenhouse attached to
the house. Silverthorne had not gone to bed; indeed, only a few hours
before his employer had died, leaving him alone in the house. On
entering the greenhouse the caretaker discovered the body of a man lying
on the floor quite dead. Silverthorne thinks that it was the dull thud
of the body that aroused him. Some plants in the roof had been pulled
down--rare orchids, according to Silverthorne, who, however, is no
gardener--but there was no means to show how the unfortunate man got
there, as there is no exit from the greenhouse to the garden. The man
was quite dead, and subsequent medical examination showed that he had
been strangled by a coarse cloth twisted tightly round his throat;
indeed, the marks on the hempen-cloth were plainly to be seen. An
inquest will be held to-morrow."
"Well, what do you think of it?" Lefroy asked.
Manfred pitched the paper aside in a sudden flame of unreasoning
passion.
"Accursed thing!" he cried. "It is the curse that follows the pursuit
of the Cardinal Moth. It is ever the same, always blood, blood. If I
had my way----"
"Drop it," Lefroy said sternly. "Remember what you have got to do."
Manfred grew suddenly hard and wooden again.
"I have passed my word," he said. "And it shall be done, though I would
rather burn my hand off first."
*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 _epris_ 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----"