"Streatham, did you say!" he cried. "There seems to be witchery about the business. Don’t tell me that you left the plant in care of a man called——" The Shan grabbed for an early edition of an evening paper which fluttered in his hand like a leaf in a breeze. He found what he wanted presently and began to read half aloud. "Yesterday evening Thomas Silverthorne, caretaker at the Lennox Nursery, Streatham—— Look here, Denvers, read it for yourself. At the Lennox nursery a man was found dead, murdered by having a rope placed round his neck, and held there till he was strangled. Silverthorne says there was a rare orchid or two in the house, and that one of them had been pulled down and probably stolen. Now if you tell me that your ’Moth’ was placed there, I shall want to murder you." Harold rose, his face was disturbed and uneasy. "It is as you imagine," he said. "I did place the ’Moth’ there the night before last. And I would have taken my oath that nobody knew that the plant was in England, I’ll go to Streatham at once; I’ll get to the bottom of this strange mystery." "Count Lefroy is sorry," murmured the soft-footed servant, as he looked in, "but he hopes your Highness will see him now as he can wait no longer." *CHAPTER V.* *AN INTERRUPTED FEAST.* To Frobisher’s _pêtit dîner_ the same evening of that eventful day ostensibly to meet the Shan of Koordstan, Lefroy came large and flamboyant, with a vivid riband across his dazzling expanse of shirt and a jewelled collar under his tie. There was an extra gloss on his black moustache, his swagger was a little more pronounced than usual. He looked like what he was—a strong man weighed down by not too many scruples. There were less than a dozen men altogether, a couple of well-known members of the Travellers’, a popular K.C., and a keen, hatchet-faced judge with a quiet manner and a marvellous faculty for telling dialect stories. The inevitable politician and fashionable doctor completed the party. As Lefroy and his secretary entered the drawing-room most of the men were admiring a portfolio of Morland’s drawings that Frobisher had picked up lately. Hafid stepped noiselessly across the floor with a telegram on a salver. Frobisher read it without the slightest sign of annoyance. "The Shan is not coming," he said. "Koordstan is indisposed." "So I gathered when I called professionally this afternoon," Dr. Brownsmith said dryly. "Champagne," Frobisher laughed whole-heartedly. "All right, Sir James. I won’t question you too far. So white is not going to mate in three moves this evening, Lefroy?" Lefroy shrugged his shoulders carelessly. The Shan of Koordstan was safe for the present. He had seen to that. Manfred had dropped quietly into a chair with just the suggestion of pain on his face. A smooth-voiced butler announced that dinner was served.