“Sir Philip Devereux. He comes at a most inopportune moment!” Orbit groaned. “This poor girl—McCarty, there must be some rational explanation!”
“What did Ching Lee mean?” McCarty asked suddenly. “When he grabbed me outside in the street there he said Lucette had ‘breathed the breath of death.’ It didn’t seem only a Chinese way of expressing himself. Have you an idea what he could have been getting at?”
“Is that what he said?” Orbit walked quickly over to the nearest orchid and indicated the great distended purple bloom shot with angry streaks of livid orange-yellow. “There is what he meant, one of the rarest of my specimens and a hybrid, a cross between two of the least-known varieties of orchid in Central America. The natives down there regard it as poison and believe that to inhale its odor, which is rank and nauseous, means death. There is an old superstition among them that it is part vegetable and part animal life and that the curious vibration of its petals—so like pulsation, do you see it?—is the act of breathing; to smell it is to take its breath, to die. Ching Lee heard me telling this to some guests one evening and nothing could ever induce him to approach it since. There is nothing in the idea, however; the plant isn’t poisonous in any way, but I suppose that was the first thought that occurred to his mind when he saw Lucette lying dead.”
McCarty edged cautiously over toward it but footsteps sounded in the hall and Jean presented himself at the door.
“Madame Bellamy is not at home, but Snape took the little Maude to place in the care of one of the maids,” he reported. “He say that he will explain to Madame.—The docteur is not come?”
Before Orbit or McCarty could reply the doorbell rang and he hurried away to admit Dennis and the inspector. The latter had evidently been prepared by his companion, for he glanced hastily at the body and then turned to Orbit.
“How long has she been dead?” he asked.
“I don’t know; about twenty minutes I should say, inspector. It occurred while I was playing rather a lengthy movement on the organ and I wasn’t aware of it until I had finished.” Orbit started as the bell pealed again and added in relief: “That must be Doctor Allonby now!”
Jean ushered in a slender, dapper man who greeted Orbit by name, nodded with suddenly alert interest when the inspector and his deputies were introduced and then advanced to the body.
While he examined it the four grouped themselves about him, but Jean crept to the door and joined Ching Lee who was hovering just outside. They whispered together but the others waited in tense silence.