Fred Fred - The Cardinal Moth

"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.

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."