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,"
