"Now I want to give you half an hour," she said. "You will be in plenty of time to see Lord Rayfield afterwards. Did you read the account of the Streatham inquest in the Evening Standard as I asked you?"
"Read every word of it whilst I was dressing," Benstein said.
Mrs. Benstein smiled. From the way her husband was dressed, the paper in question had monopolized most of his attention. At any rate, he seemed to have grasped the case.
"What did you think of it?" she asked.
"Well, it's a queer business," Benstein said, thoughtfully. "Seems to me to be a lot of fuss to make about a paltry flower that any accident might destroy. Never could understand Frobisher wasting his money over that sort of trash."
"No, you wouldn't," Mrs. Benstein said, quietly. "But mind you, that flower is more or less of a sacred thing, and the Shan of Koordstan would have given his head to get it. He's Oriental through and through, despite his thin veneer of polish and his Western vices. I suppose those concessions that the Shan has to dispose of are valuable?"
Benstein's deep-set little eyes twinkled.
"Give a million for 'em and chance it," he said. "So you think that Frobisher——"
"Precisely. Much as he loves orchids, he didn't want the Cardinal Moth for keeping, as the Americans say. With that lever he meant to get hold of those concessions. Now I have discovered that it was young Harold Denvers who found the Cardinal Moth and brought it to England. He took it down to Streatham, thinking that it would be safe there. But Paul Lopez got to know about it, and so did another man, apparently—I mean the man who was murdered."
"You think that he was murdered by Lopez, Isa?"