



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