"My dear fellow, I wish you a cordial adieu," Frobisher cried. "And I can only regret that our pleasant evening has had so tragic a termination. Townsend, you have locked up the back dining-room and taken the key? Good! I want no extra responsibility." The big hall-door closed behind the last of them. Frobisher took Hafid firmly by the collar and led him into the orchid-house. "Now, you rascal," he asked, "what on earth do you mean by it?" "Take it and destroy it, and burn it," Hafid wailed, with a wriggling of his body. He seemed to be trying to shake off something loathsome. "Oh, master, what is to become of us?" "You grovelling, superstitious fool," Frobisher said lightly. "Nothing will become of us. Nobody knows anything, nobody will ever know anything as long as you remain silent. We haven’t murdered anybody!" "Allah looking down from Paradise knows better than that, master!" "Well, he is not likely to be called in as a witness," Frobisher muttered grimly. "I tell you nothing has happened that the law can take the least cognisance of. Mind you, I didn’t know that things would go quite so far. When I rang up the curtain it was comedy I looked for, not tragedy. Take the key and go into the dining-room. Remove those orchids and burn them, taking care that you destroy thirty-nine of the red flowers. Then you can go to bed." Hafid recoiled with unutterable loathing on his face. "I couldn’t do it," he whispered. "I couldn’t touch one of those accursed blossoms. Beat me, torture me, turn me into the street to starve, but don’t ask me to do that, master. I dare not." He cowered abjectly at Frobisher’s feet. With good-humoured contempt the latter kicked him aside. "Go to bed," he said. "You are a greater coward than even I imagined. Put the lights out, and I’ll go to bed also." The lights were carefully put out, except in the smoking-room, where Frobisher sat pondering over the strange events of the evening. He was not in the least put out or alarmed or distressed; on the contrary, he looked like a man who had been considerably pleased with an interesting entertainment. For Manfred he felt neither sorrow nor sympathy. He did not look fearfully round the room as if half expecting to see the shadow of Manfred’s assassin creeping upon him. But he smiled in his own peculiar fashion as the door opened and a white-robed figure came in. It was Angela with her fine hair about her shoulders and a look of horror in her eyes. "So you’ve found out all about it," Sir Clement said. "I’m sorry, because it will spoil your rest. How did you come to make the discovery?" "I had just come in," Angela explained. "I let myself in with my latchkey. I did not come near you because I could hear that you were entertaining company, so I went straight to bed. Then I heard Hafid’s cry, and I came to the head of the stairs where I could hear everything." "You mean to say that you stood there and listened?"