The Cardinal Moth

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?"