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 back in his chair with the tangled ropes of blossoms about his sleek head; a great purple orchid with a living orange eye broke from the cluster and hung as if listening. Lopez looked round the bewildering beauty of it all with an artistic respect for his surroundings. "The devil has looked after his dear friend carefully," he said, with the same calm contempt. Frobisher indicated it all with a comprehensive hand. "Now you are jealous," he said. "Hafid, the other servants are gone to bed? Good! Then you may sit in the library till I require you. What have you got there, Paul?" "I have a flower, an orchid. It is at your disposal, at a price." "At a price, of course. What are you asking for it?" Paul Lopez made no reply. He proceeded to remove the paper from the long cone, and disclosed a lank, withered-looking stem with faded buds apparently hanging thereto by attenuated threads. It might have been nothing better than a dead clematis thrown by a gardener on the dust-heap. The root, or what passed for it, was simply attached to a slap of virgin cork by a couple of rusty nails. Frobisher watched Lopez with half-closed eyes.