"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——" Koordstan bounced to his feet, anger and disappointment lived on his face.