"May we smoke?" Frobisher asked, as he closed the door behind Angela. "We are all enthusiasts, and we don't want any dilettantes here."
"You may do just as you please," Mrs. Benstein said. "Probably you would follow that course in any case. You are a bold man to keep the Cardinal Moth here."
"What do you know about it?" Frobisher asked.
There was a dry chuckle in his voice as he put the question. Mrs. Benstein looked up at the cloud of glorious blossoms over her head.
"I know a great deal," she replied. "I have lived with some strange people in my time and I have heard some strange things. There are certain quarters in the East End where they speak queer languages and where they know things that would startle the authorities. Amongst these people I was brought up. I learnt their ways and their methods. Ah, it was a good school for a girl who has a treacherous world to fight."
The speaker flung herself into a chair and hung her long white arms by her side. The light gleamed upon her sparkling jewels and the dark eyes that sparkled more brightly still. Frobisher watched her with something more than artistic admiration; his thin blood was stirred.
"You speak like a Sibyl," he laughed. "If you know all about the Cardinal Moth you also know all about the Blue Stone of Ghan, I presume?"
Frobisher's voice was low and hoarse and persuasive. He had flung down the challenge, and Isa Benstein was ready to receive it. She raised her large dark eyes slowly, and they seemed to float over the faces of her antagonists. She noted the leering grin on Frobisher's features, the truculent bullying expression of Lefroy's.
"I have heard of that also," she said in the same level tones. "The two are inseparable."
"Or ought to be," Frobisher went on. Evidently he was to be the spokesman. "But if the Moth has flown far, why not the sacred jewel? Have you ever seen it, fair lady?"