"And altogether I have no doubt that you are a most remarkable young man," Sir James said. "Pray come in. I ought to be in bed, but I have not the faintest inclination for sleep. Come in."
Brilliant lights gleamed in Brownsmith's cosy study, where books and scientific instruments made up the bulk of the furniture. The famous surgeon proffered cigarettes what time he looked keenly into the face of his younger companion. He lighted one of the thin paper tubes himself.
"I am just from Mrs. Benstein's house," he explained. "I saw her alone, her husband knows nothing; it is her great desire that he should know nothing, that the matter should be kept a profound secret, in fact."
"It must be," Harold exclaimed. "Not a word of it must leak out. You made a certain examination of the wound. What did you find? Was there any blood?"
"I'm not quite sure. When I came to wash the arm there was no blood there. But there were the fibres of the rope, and they seemed to be impregnated with blood the same as those from the throat of Manfred, and the body of that poor fellow who was strangled at Streatham."
"Are you quite sure that it is blood, Sir James?"
"Well, I could hazard the suggestion, though I have not made a careful analysis yet. No blood on the victim, but blood on the strands of the rope. Strange, isn't it?"
"If it were true, yes," Harold said, dryly. "But it isn't. Look here, Sir James."
From the vest-pocket of his dress-clothes Harold took one wilted bloom of the Cardinal Moth. He crushed it between his fingers, and immediately they were covered with a rosy sticky bright red substance exactly like blood. No paint or pigment of any kind could have counterfeited the original so well.
"Well, that's interesting," Sir James cried. "I see your meaning. When the victim was strangled one or two of those amazing blooms must have been twisted round the rope."