Chapter 14

Morning in Delhi! The fiery sun leaped up, gilding once more the far Himalayas and lighting the bloodstained plains of Oude. The golden shafts twinkled on the huge colonnade, the vast ruined arch, the crumbling walls, and the huge castled oval of Humayoon’s tomb. In the dark night, the monsoon winds wailed over the wreck of Hindu, Pathan, and Mogul magnificence. The dark demons of Bowanee rejoiced at a new sacrifice to the gloomy goddess; and the straggling jungle was alive again.

In the vacant caverns, whence the sons of Mohammed Bahadur were once dragged forth to die by daring Hodson’s smoking pistols, their slaughtered shades grinned over the ghastly vengeance of the barren years.

The huge dome of the mosque hung in air over the vacant palaces of the great Moguls, and the far windmill ridge, and the bastioned walls of Delhi were bathed in golden light, while Alan Hawke slept the sleep of exhaustion. And while Ram Lal Singh, secure in his zenana, calmly greeted the cool morning hour with a smiling face and a happy heart, in the lonely marble house, stern old Hugh Fraser Johnstone slept the sleep that knows no waking.

The Chandnee Chouk awoke to its busy daily chatter, and old Shahjehanabad sought its pleasures languidly again, or bowed its shoulders once more under the yoke of toil.

The faithful sought the Jumna Musjid for morning prayer, and the nonchalant British officials began to straggle into the vacant Hall of the Peacock Throne.

Far away, the Kootab Minar, rising three hundred feet in air, bore its mute witness to the splendor of the vanished rulers of Delhi, the peerless Ghori swordsmen of Khorassan. But, even as the soldiers of the old Pathan fort had marched out into the shadowless night of death to join Ghori and Baber and Nadir Shah, so the spirit of the lonely old miser nabob had sought the echoless shore.

When Simpson had unavailingly endeavored to awaken his master, the locked doors were burst in at last by the anxious servants, and they found only the tenantless shell of the mighty millionaire, as cold and rigid as the iron pillar which veils to-day its mystery of a forgotten past, when the jackals howl in the ruins of old Delhi.

Then rose up a wild outcry, and the sound of hurrying feet. The alert old veteran servitor, with instinctive military obedience, dispatched two messengers, on the run, to notify General Willoughby and Major Alan Hawke. And then, with quick wit, he forbade the gaping crowd to touch even a single article.

Not even the stiffened body, as it lay prone upon its face, was disturbed. Simpson stood there, pistol in hand, on guard until properly relieved, and as silent as a crouching rifleman on picket. The whole room bore the evidence of a thorough ransacking, and the disordered clothing of the nabob proved, too, that the body had been rifled. The mysterious nocturnal visits returned to Simpson’s mind. “Could it have been some once-wronged woman?” he mused while waiting for his “military superiors.” For the simple old soldier scorned all civilian control. His keen eye had caught the strange facts of the fastened windows, the disappearance of the two mahogany boxes, and the startling absence of the key of the chamber door.

“Whoever did this job knew what they came for and when to come!” mused Simpson. He gazed at the window sill. There was the mark of damp earth still upon it. “Just as I fancied!” growled Simp-son. “They came in at the window, and when their work was done, left by the door. There was more than one murderer in this job!” And, then, certain old stories of a mysterious Eurasian beauty returned to cloud the old man’s judgment. “Was it robbery, or vengeance?” he grumbled. “The black gang are in this, but their secrets are safe forever! They are a close corporation--these devils!”

With certain ideas of an endangered life pension, and a sudden yearning for the absent Hardwicke’s counsel, stern old Simpson awaited the coming of his betters. And, the ghastly news of Johnstone’s “taking-off” flew over Delhi to furnish a nine days’ wonder.

There was a great crowd gathered around the garden walls of the Marble House, as an officer of the guard galloped up with a platoon of cavalry. “The General will be here himself, soon! What’s all this terrible happening?” said the young officer, as he took post beside Simpson. “You have done well!” the soldier said, on a brief report. “Let nothing be touched. My guard will prevent any one leaving the grounds!” There was a sullen apathy as regarded the unloved old egoist.

Major Alan Hawke sprang to his feet, hastily, as the excited Club Steward, forgetting all his decorum, banged loudly upon the staff officer’s bedroom door. The young man was still in the dress of night, as the Steward excitedly exclaimed: “Here’s a fearful deed! Hugh Johnstone has been murdered in his bed, and--they’ve sent for you!”

Alan Hawke was staggered. “Get me a horse, at once! I must report to the General! When, where, how? Tell me all! Send off a man for the horse!” And, as Hawke hastily donned his uniform, he heard the Hindu servant’s story.

“Be off! Tell Simpson I go first to the General, and, then, I will come over to the house!”

As Major Hawke strode through the clubroom, a half-dozen half-dressed clubmen seized upon him. He waved off their inquiries, as an orderly dashed up to the door.

“General Willoughby’s compliments, Sir. You are to report to him instantly at the Marble House! You can take my horse, Major! I’ll bring yours on.” And so, lightly leaping into the saddle, the Major galloped away, with an approving nod. “There’ll be a devil of a racket over this thing!” he reflected, as he dashed along. And he chuckled with glee at his prudence in hiding away the dagger which he had picked up in the garden. For, a moonlight-eyed Eurasian girl, hidden in a little cottage, was the only human being in Delhi who knew of the hasty visit her secret lover had made in the night. The jeweled dagger of Mirzah Shah was now securely locked in a little chest where Alan Hawke kept a few articles hidden away in the humble home of the passive plaything of his idle hours. As he caught sight of the Marble House, with its gathered crowds, he saw the gleam of musket barrels, as a company of foot were picketing the vast garden inclosure, and forcing back the excited crowd.

A non-commissioned officer swung open the heavy gates which would only turn on their hinges once more for Hugh Johnstone going out on his last journey. “The General awaits you, Major,” said the sergeant, touching his cap. “He has already asked for you.” And as Hawke rode up to the front door he was suddenly reminded of his imperiled interests. “The drafts! They may be stopped now! By God! I must see Ram Lal! I need him now and he needs me.”

With an unruffled professional calm, however, Major Hawke reported to the visibly disturbed General commanding.

With a single warning gesture of silence, General Willoughby drew the Major aside. “I shall put you in entire charge here. I have seen all the civil authorities. This is your affair. It touches your mission. The Viceroy has been telegraphed, and you are to guard the whole property here till we have his pleasure. Now come with me and let us question Simpson. The rest are merely a lot of apes.”

And so Major Alan Hawke had ample time to arrange his private plan of campaign as he guarded a respectful silence during Simpson’s long relation, for his thoughts were now far away with Berthe Louison, and the lovely orphan, whose only confidante was his tender-hearted dupe Justine Delande. But the acute adventurer’s mind returned to fix itself upon Ram Lal Singh, now blandly smiling in his jewel shop, where the morning gossips babbled over Johnstone Sahib’s tragic death. “I must telegraph to Euphrosyne,” thought the Major, “and to 9 Rue Berlioz, Paris, for my will-o-the-wisp employer. But, Mr. Ram Lal Singh, you shall pay me for what ruin Mirzah Shah’s dagger has wrought!”

The mantle of silence had fallen forever over the last night’s rencontre in the garden. With dreaming eyes Hawke mused: “It would never do to tell any part of that story. What business had I there?” And, without a tremor, he stood by the General’s side as they gazed on the dead millionaire’s body still lying on the floor.

“I will now send for the civil authorities, and you, Major Hawke, will represent me in the investigation. Your military future hangs on this. Remember, now, that the Viceroy looks to you alone! I will return here after tiffin. I will have some personal instructions for you.” And Alan Hawke now saw the farther shore of his voyage of life gleaming out as General Willoughby left him to confer with the arriving magistrates and civil police. “I shall marry you, my veiled Rose of Delhi, and be master here yet, in this Marble House, and, by God, I’ll die a general, too!” he swore, with which pleasing prophecy Major Alan Hawke calmly took up the varied secret duties which joined a Viceroy’s secret orders to the will of the General commanding.

“I am a devil for luck!” he mused as he gazed down on the old man’s shrunken and withered dead face. “I will do the honors alone for you, my departed friend,” he sneered, “for I am the master here now.” The absence of all articles of value, the disappearance of Johnstone’s three superb ruby shirt-studs, and his magnificent single diamond cuff-buttons, told of the greed of the robbers, presumably familiar with his personal ornaments, while the terrific stab in the back showed that the heavy knife had been driven through the back up to its very hilt.

“We must find the dagger!” pompously said the civil magistrate. “Major Hawke, will you give orders to have the whole house and grounds searched?” And with a faint smile the Major politely rose and set all his myrmidons in motion.

Even then the telegraph was clicking away a message to Johnstone’s lawyer and bankers in Calcutta, and to his young relative, Douglas Fraser, of the great P. and O. steamship service. Before night the crafty Calcutta lawyer had notified Professor Andrew Fraser, in the far-away island of Jersey, and before Major Hawke himself received the Viceroy’s orders, through General Willoughby, Mademoiselle Euphrosyne Delande, of Geneva, and the household at No. 9 Rue Berlioz, Paris, both knew that the defiant old nabob had sailed the dark sea without a shore.

Most of all surprised was Captain Anson Anstruther in London, who pondered long at the United Service Club over an official message from the Viceroy, telling him of the startling murder. The young gallant’s heart beat in a strange agitation as he examined the previous dispatches of both Berthe Louison and the Viceroy.

“She had no hand in it, thank God!” mused the young aide-de-camp. “Perhaps he was paid off for some of his old Shylock transactions--some local intrigue, or the jealous lover of some Eurasian beauty, dragged to his lair, has finished all, and revenged the accumulated brutalities of thirty years.”

There was a loud outcry of horror and surprise sweeping on now from the social circles of Delhi to the clubs of Lucknow, Cawnpore, Allahabad, Benares, and Patna to Calcutta.

In a day or two, men from Lahore to Hyderabad, from Bombay to Nagpore and Madras, and in all the clubs from Calcutta to Simla, had paused over their brandy pawnee to murmur, “Well! The poor old beggar is gone, and now he’ll never get his Baronetcy! Some of the niggers did the trick neatly for him at last. They must have got a jolly lot of loot!”

In which general verdict the glittering-eyed Ram Lal, hidden in his zenana, did not share. For, when he had rifled and destroyed the two mahogany boxes he summed all up his pickings with baffled rage. “A couple of thousand pounds of notes, a few scattered jewels, the sly old dog has spirited away his vast stealings! My work was all in vain, save the vengeance!” And the oily Ram Lal, in the zenana, drew a willing beauty of Cashmere to his bosom, and hid his face from the chatterers of street and shop. He was safe from all prying eyes in the Harem.

But, while the triumphant English Mem-Sahibs, of Delhi, shuddered at the bloody details of old Hugh Johnstone’s taking off, they found abundant reason to point a moral and adorn a tale.

While the anxious Viceroy was busied at Calcutta, and General Willoughby and Hawke were engrossed with the pompous funeral preparations at Delhi, the ladies of the whole station unanimously condemned the departed. For a cold and brutal foe of womanhood had died unhonored in their midst, and none were left to mourn.

With much pretentious wagging of shapely heads, and much mysterious innuendo, they spoke lightly of the departed one, and failed not to mentally unroof the Silver Bungalow. The baffled ladies scented a social mystery!

Wild rumors of splendid orgies, strange tales of a wronged woman’s vengeance, lurid romances of the flight of the French Countess with a younger lover, after despoiling her aged admirer; all these things were “put in commission” and vigorously circulated.

The principal party interested in these slanders, was, however, now calmly gliding on toward Aden, while the dead millionaire was alike oblivious to the lovely daughter whom he had crushed as a bruised flower, the haughty woman who had defied him in his wrath, and the administration of the million sterling which was the golden monument over his yawning grave! The silk-petticoat Council of Notables in Delhi decided by a tidal-wave of womanly intuition, that the gallant and debonnair Major Alan Hawke would marry “the lovely and accomplished heiress,” and so the white-bosomed beauties of the capital of Oude turned again lazily to their respective sins of omission and commission, and to the glitter of their respective booths in Vanity Fair!

The club gossips waited in vain for the reappearance of Major Alan Hawke, whose entire personal effects were bundled hastily away to the marble house, where the adventurer now ruled pro tempore. It was late in the night when Major Hawke had achieved all the preparations for the funeral of the murdered man, upon the following day. Simpson and a squad of non-commissioned officers watched where the flickering lights gleamed down upon the dead nabob.

Making his last rounds for the night, Major Hawke, with a soldier’s cynical calmness, enjoyed a cheroot upon the veranda, as he bade his captain of the guard take charge until his return. The Major had most carefully examined the five bills of exchange which now occupied his attention, and his mind was now busied with the dead man’s golden store. He now contemplated a visit to a man whose conscience bothered him not, but whose bosom quaked in fear when Hawke’s letter, sent by a messenger, bade Ram Lal await him at midnight.

“Does he know?” gasped Ram Lal, with chattering teeth, and yet he dared not fly.

An early evening interview with General Willoughby had disclosed to the Major the inconvenient fact that the dead nabob had left a carefully drawn will, whereof Andrew Fraser, of St. Heliers, Jersey, and Douglas Fraser, of Calcutta, were executors. “There is a duplicate will here in the Bengal Bank,” so telegraphed the solicitor, “and I have now notified both the executors. I presume that Mr. Douglas Fraser will return here at once, as he is absent in Europe on leave. It may be a week or more until he receives the sad intelligence.”

Alan Hawke softly smiled at those touching words, “Sad intelligence.” It was only the perfunctory regret of the shark-like lawyer, and the secretly rejoicing heirs. “This is not a case where the one who goes is happier than the one that’s left behind,” mused Hawke. “I must settle matters rapidly with Ram Lal, for if the will leaves the property to Nadine, she must be mine at all costs!

“Shall I not send a well-armed man with you, Major?” asked the Captain. “It is very late!”

“Thanks, Jordan,” lightly said the Major. “I’ve a good revolver and my service sword--a priceless old wootz steel tulwar. I’m good for a dozen Pandies! I’m used to Thug--and Dacoit, to bandit and ruffian. I have a little private business to attend to, and I’ll come home in a trap!”

By a strange chance, Major Alan Hawke, the distinguished favorite of fortune, slunk along in byway and shadow till he reached the cottage, where a lovely woman, flower wreathed, with child-like face and timid, mournful eyes, anxiously awaited him. “I’ll be back in two or three hours,” he carelessly said, as he tossed her a roll of rupees. Then, with a long, slender package hidden in his bosom, he stole out after a long circuit and entered Ram Lal’s compound by the rear entrance, always at his use.

“It is just as well not to make any little mistake just now,” mused Hawke, as with cat-like tread he sped through the old jeweler’s garden. And the “prevention of mistakes” consisted in the heavy Adams revolver which he carried slung around his neck and shoulder by a heavy cord, in the handy Russian fashion.

His left hand steadied the peculiar parcel which he had so carefully hidden. An amused smile flitted over his face when old Ram Lal opened the door of the snuggery, where Justine had first listened to a lover’s sighs. “Poor girl! I wish she were here to-night!” tenderly mused the sentimental rascal, as he waved away Ram Lal’s bidding to a splendid little supper.

“I came here to talk business, Ram, to-night” sternly said Hawke, who had inwardly decided not to taste food or drink with the past master of villainy. “He might give me a gentle push into the Styx,” acutely reflected the Major. “Sit down right there where I can see you,” said Hawke, his hand firmly grasping the revolver, as he indicated a corner of the table, after satisfying himself that the shop door was locked. He then quickly locked the garden door and pocketed both the keys.

“What do you want of me?” murmured Ram Lal, who had noted the semi-hostile tone, and who clearly saw the butt of the revolver.

“I want to talk to you of this Johnstone matter,” said the soldier, ignoring all other reference to the “dear departed.” This coolness unsettled the wily jeweler, who trembled as Hawke laid a long red pocketbook down on the table before him.

The wily scoundrel shivered when the Major, with his left hand, pushed over to him five sets of Bills of Exchange for a thousand pounds each. Ram Lal’s eyes dropped under the brave villain’s steady gaze, and he slowly read the first paper. He well knew the drawer’s writing:

DELHI, August 15, 1890.

L 1,000.

Thirty days after sight of this first of exchange (second and third unpaid), pay to the order of Alan Hawke one thousand pounds sterling, value received.

HUGH FRASER JOHNSTONE.

To Messrs. Glyn, Carr and Glyn, London.

“What do you wish me to do, Sahib?” tremblingly faltered the old usurer, as he carefully noted the fifteen papers. A sinking at the heart told him that he was in the power of the one man in India whom he knew to be as merciless as himself, for a kindred spirit had fled when the drawer of the Bills of Exchange died alone in the dark, his bubbling shriek stopped by his heart’s blood. The Major sternly said in an icy voice, as he fixed his eyes full on his victim:

“I wish you to indorse, every one of those papers. I wish you to make each one of them read five thousand pounds. You have done that trick very neatly before, and to put the additional Crown duty stamps upon them.” Ram Lal had started up, but he sank back appalled as he looked down the barrel of Hawke’s revolver.

“Keep silence or I’ll put a ball through your shoulder, and then drag you up to General Willoughby. He will hang you in chains if I say the word.” Alan Hawke was tiger-like now in his rapacity.

“I will leave the first set with you, and you will now give me your check on the Oriental Bank for five thousand pounds. The other drafts you will have all ready for me to-morrow and bring them to me at the Marble House.”

The jeweler groaned and swayed to and fro upon his seat in a mute agony. “I cannot do it. I have not the money,” he babbled.

“You old lying wretch. You have screwed a quarter of a million pounds out of Christian, Hindu, and Mohammedan here,” mercilessly said the torturer.

“I will not! I cannot! I dare not!” cried Ram Lal, dropping on the floor and trying to bow his head at Hawke’s feet.

“Get up! You old beast!” commanded Hawke. “By God! I’ll shoot and disable you now and then arrest you! Tell me! Do you know that dagger?” With a quick motion, still covering the cowering wretch with his pistol, Hawke drew out the package from his bosom, clumsily tearing off a silk neck scarf-wrapper with his left hand. He laid down on the table the blood-incrusted dagger of Mirzah Shah. The golden haft, the jeweled fretwork and the broad blade were all covered with the life tide of the great man whom no one mourned in Delhi.

“Mercy! Mercy!” hoarsely whispered Ram Lal, with his hands clasped, as in prayer.

“I know whose it is!” pitilessly continued the tormentor. “You dropped it, you fool, when you ran against me in the garden in your mad haste to get away! One single rebellious word and I will march you to the nearest guard post! Now, will you do what I wish?”

“Anything, anything, Sahib!” begged the cowering wretch. “Put it away, put it away!”

“Now, quick!” said the Major. “First, give me the check! Then indorse all these drafts right here in my presence. I will negotiate the others myself. You can send on the first one through your bankers. Your name on all of them will make them go without question.” The alert adventurer watched Ram’s trembling fingers achieve the work. “Do not dare to leave your own inclosure till you come directly to me to-morrow, when you have altered all those drafts to read five thousand pounds each. I have charge of the estate of the man whom you butchered like a dog. I have a guard of two companies of soldiers, and you will be arrested as a murderer if you attempt to leave, save to come directly to me with these papers.”

Alan Hawke lit a cigar and then took a refreshing draught from a pocket flask.

“Now open your strong box and show me your jewels! I want some of them!” The sobbing wretch at his feet demurred until the cold nozzle of the pistol was pressed against his forehead. “I will make the English bankers pay the other four bills; but, you brute, did you think that I would let you off with a poor five thousand pounds? Harken! I go to England in a week! Then you are safe forever! Bring out all your jewels! You got fifty thousand pounds from the old man! I know it!”

Begging and beseeching in vain, Ram Lal crawled to his great iron strong box studded over with huge knobs, and, after a half an hour’s critical selection, Alan Hawke had concealed on his person four little bags, in which he had made the shivering wretch place the choicest of his treasures.

“Call up your man now. Do not stir for an instant from my side! If the drafts are not with me before sundown to-morrow, you will be hung in chains, and the ravens will finish what the hangman leaves! Remember--my boy! The rail and telegraph will cut off any little tricks of yours! And,” he laughed, “you will not run away; you have too much here to leave. It would be a fat haul for the Crown authorities. I will keep my eye on you, near or far. I will be with you always. We have our own little secret, now!”

“I will obey--only save me! Save me, Hawke Sahib. I will do all upon my head, I will!” pleaded Ram Lal, whose vast fortune was indeed at the mercy of the law.

“Call up your servants. Get out the carriage. Go back to your women. Make merry. You are perfectly safe, but only if you obey me!” was the last mandate of the triumphant bravo. When he stepped out of the house, attended by the frightened murderer, Alan Hawke whispered from the carriage: “Your house is under a close watch--even now. Remember--I give you till sundown, and if you fail, I will come with the guard! I shall seal up the dagger and leave it here with a message to the General Willoughby Sahib to be given to him, at once, by one who knows you! So, I can trust you. Nothing must happen to your dear friend, you know!” he smilingly said in adieu, as Ram Lal groaned in anguish.

Alan Hawke had closely examined the vehicle, and he sat with his drawn revolver ready as he drove down the still lit-up Chandnee Chouk. In a storm of remorse and agony, the plundered jeweler was now doubly locked up in his room. “I must do this devil’s bidding!” he murmured. “Bowanee! Bowanee! You have betrayed your servant!” was his cry as he sought the safety of the Zenana.

Major Hawke tasted all the sweets of a great secret triumph as he cast up his accounts. “The five thousand pounds frightened from this old wretch, Ram Lal, really squares me with the estate of the ‘dear departed.’ The jewels are worth twice as much more, and, with Ram Lal’s indorsement all the other drafts on Glyn’s bank are as good as gold. There is twenty thousand clear profit. I will send them on now for acceptance, openly, through the Credit Lyonnaise when I get to Paris. For Berthe Louison will give me, also, a good character. Old Ram’s indorsements make them perfectly good anywhere. I had better hide the details of this windfall, out here. And, now, thank Heaven, I am ‘fixed for life,’ and I can go in boldly and play the Prince Charming to Miss Moneybags, the fair Nadine.” He tossed a double rupee to the driver, as the sentry swung the gate, but, hastily called him back as Captain Jordan said, hastening from the house:

“Orders are waiting for you now, with the General. Let me give you a trusty Sergeant. Drive right up there, Major. The General sent word that he awaits you.” And so the Major sped away to his chief.

No human being in Delhi ever knew the purport of the orders which General Willoughby handed to Major Hawke, on this eventful evening, but much marveled all Delhi that the favorite of fortune was absent from the funeral of the late Hugh Fraser Johnstone, Esq., of Delhi and Calcutta. He had vanished, with no P.P.C. calls, and a hundred-pound note tossed to the poor little Eurasian girl in the cottage was her whole fortune in life now.

But a grave-faced civilian public official, with Major Williamson, of the Viceroy’s general staff (a late arrival from Calcutta), ruled over the marble house in place of Major Alan Hawke “absent upon special duty.” Only Ram Lal knew of the real destination of the lucky man, who was only free from care when he had sailed from Bombay direct for Brindisi, on the fleet steamer Ramchunder.

“I am safe now,” laughed Alan Hawke, who rejoiced in the easy tour of duty before him. “To repair to London and to report to Captain Anson Anstruther, A.D.C., for special duty.” Such were the Viceroy’s secret orders. It was General Willoughby who had absolutely invoked secrecy. “Wear a plain military undress, and you must avoid most men, and all women. Keep your mouth shut and you may find your provisional rank confirmed.”

To Berthe Louison’s secret agents, the Grindlay Bank at Delhi, Major Hawke had delivered a sealed envelope. “Use this only at your sorest need. I will see Madame Louison probably before she has any orders for me, as to her private affairs.” When the envelope was opened the words “Major Alan Hawke, Hotel Faucon, Lausanne, Switzerland,” gave the only address which the adventurer dared to leave. And it was that which the cowering Ram Lal Singh copied when he brought to Alan Hawke the four sets of altered Bills of Exchange, and the Bank of England notes for the check of five thousand pounds.

Major Hawke surveyed the skillfully raised Bills of Exchange and carefully examined them in a dark room with a light, and also before the glaring sun rays. “A splendid job, Ram Lal,” he gayly said. “You must have given them a coat of size and then moistened and ironed them.” The old rascal gloomily accepted the professional compliment. “I observe that you have labored to protect your own indorsement,” sportively remarked the Major.

“And now you will return to me my jewels?” timidly demanded Ram Lal.

“Do you wish me to send the dagger of Mirzah Shah to General Willoughby? It is deposited here, with a sealed letter,” coldly sneered Hawke. “Should anything happen to me or, to these drafts, it would be sent to the General, and you would hang. No, I will keep the jewels.”

And then Major Hawke thrust the shivering wretch out, having liberally paid to him, through Grindlay, the balance due by Berthe Louison.

“I swear that I did not get a single jewel from--from him. He has hidden them,” pleaded Ram Lal.

“Ah! I must look to this” mused Hawke, when Ram Lal had been frightened away with a last stern injunction:

“Obey my slightest wishes or you will hang! I will have you watched till I return! There are eyes upon your path that never close in sleep!” Ram Lal shuddered in silence.

Delhi soon forgot the man whom the great stone now covered in the English cemetery, and only General Willoughby and the easy-going civil authorities knew of the cablegram: “Coming on with full power from Senior Executor.--Douglas Fraser, Junior Executor.” The cablegram was dated from Milan, for two keen Scottish brains were now busied with plans to save and care for the worldly gear so suddenly abandoned to their care by Hugh Johnstone. Though Delhi was swept as with a besom, no trace of the cowardly assassins was ever found, and only old Simpson, waiting, in final charge as household major domo for Douglas Fraser’s arrival, could enlighten the perturbed commanding General with certain vague suspicions. But Ram Lal slept now in a growing security.

“It is clear that the master was watched in his secret preparations for the voyage home,” said Simpson, “and some outsiders, with the help of some traitor among the blacks, paid off an old score. I could tell of many an old enemy which he gained in these twenty years.” sadly said Simpson. “I feel they only mussed up the room to give an appearance of robbery. The mahogany boxes were merely part of master’s old wedding outfit in London, and I know that they were only filled with toilet articles and little medical stores. They only lugged them off to make a show.”

And General Willoughby, following up Simpson’s clues, easily discovered a shady side of Johnstone’s past life, not compatible with the pompous panegyrics of the Indian press, the resolutions of a dozen clubs and societies, the minutes of the Bank of Bengal, and other mortuary literature of a complimentary nature. It was some old curse come down upon the defenseless man in his old age! And so no one ever sought for the solution of the mystery in the deep dejection of Ram Lal Singh, who vainly mourned for his lost jewels and money. Fear tied his hands, and his tongue was palsied by guilt. He vindictively, however, raised his customary “rate of usance,” and swore in his own hardened heart that the needy borrowers of Delhi should recoup him fully before a year. The one Star gleaming in the dark night of financial blackness was the vengeance upon the man who had tricked and despoiled a fellow-robber thirty years before.

Major Hawke on his homeward way counted up a goodly store of twelve thousand pounds in money, jewels of nearly the same value, and the skillfully raised and properly indorsed drafts on London for twenty thousand more. “If I can only get these passed by the executors I am a made man for life,” mused the Major as the Ramchunder sped over the blue Arabian sea. “If I discover the secret of the stolen jewels, they must yield, to save both family honor and money; if I don’t, then, Ram Lal must save his life and protect the drafts. I will negotiate them with the Credit Lyonnais, in Paris, and force Berthe to help me. No one shall rob me now,” somewhat illogically mused the brilliant adventurer, proud of his life-work.

At Calcutta, the noble Viceroy had already given to Major Harry Hardwicke and Capt. Eric Murray his orders for their performance of a delicate duty.

“You will find Captain Anstruther to be my personal as well as official representative in London, and Her Majesty’s service demands prudence in this grave affair. So but one set of confidential cipher dispatches have been sent on, and Captain Anstruther will have charge of the whole delicate affair. Should either of you meet Major Alan Hawke in London, or out of India, your commissions will depend on guarding an absolute silence as to the whole Johnstone affair. You are trusted, and not watched, gentlemen,” said the great noble, “and he is watched, and not trusted. Now, I have done all I can for you, as this duty takes you home and brings you back at the expense of her Majesty’s government. You will not fail to communicate with me from Aden, Suez, and Port Said, as well as Brindisi, and to report if Madame Louison has received at each place her telegrams and proceeded on her journey in safety. Her Majesty’s consuls will, in each place, aid you in every way. Should I decide to drop or quash the whole affair, my young kinsman, Anstruther, represents me, personally as well as officially.”

And so the gay young bridegroom-to-be sailed from Calcutta light-hearted, while Harry Hardwicke counted each day’s reckoning as bringing him, by leaps and bounds, nearer to the dark-eyed girl now left alone in the world. “There shall nothing come between us now, my darling one!” was the young Major’s fond vow confided to the evening star, glowing in its trembling silver radiance over the spicy Indian Ocean.

Alixe Delavigne was still “Madame Berthe Louison” to the glittering circle of passengers who envied her the state in which she traveled, the slavish obeisance of the ship’s officers, and the deft ministrations of those admirable servants, Jules Victor and Marie. “A great personage incognito,” was the general verdict, and so the luckless swains hovering around fell off one by one, as the beautiful woman seemed to be always wrapped in an unbroken reverie. There was an anxious gleam in the lady’s eyes, for she felt that she was going home to the sternest battle of her life, and she brooded now only upon the trials of the future. She never knew how near the dark angel’s wing had swooped over her own defenseless head.

For the gray head now lying low had been secretly busied with plans for a huge bribe to Ram Lal which should buy him to the doing of a dark deed without a name. Only Berthe’s determined attack on the granting of the baronetcy in London, and her own “lightning disappearance” had saved her from Ram Lal’s cupidity. Master of the secrets of a dozen Eastern poisons, the artful confederate of her dark retinue in the silver bungalow, Ram Lal would have gladly worked Hugh Johnstone’s will for his red gold. But the fierce quarrel and the precipitate flight of Berthe Louison had balked Johnstone, who fell by the very hand of the sly wretch whom he had designed to buy, as the murderer of another. The engineer hoist by his own petard. But, steadfastly looking to Valerie’s child alone, she knew not the dangers which she had escaped.

“I was afraid they would kill you, Madame. Thank God, we are now safe at sea!” said Jules Victor.

“Who?” cried the startled woman.

“Why, that old wretch; he had money, and his spies were all around you,” said Jules.

“Yes! Thank God! We are safe now!” mused Berthe Louison, and she bade a long adieu to the strange scenes of her pilgrimage. “I shall never see India again!” she reflected, when she passed, in a mental review, Calcutta, holy Benares, smoky Patna, brisk Allahabad, Cawnpore, where the white-winged angel broods over the innocent dead, heroic Lucknow, and crime-haunted Delhi--all these rose up in a weird panorama of the mind. Strange tales of wild adventure told by Alan Hawke returned to her now--the mysteries of Thibet, the weird ferocity of Bhotan, the quaint tales of the polyandrous Todas, and the strange story of Vijaynagar, the desecrated city whose streets are peopled but ten days in the year! A lotos land where crime broods, where the cobra hides under the painted blossoms of Death!

Glittering palaces of Agra, gloomy caves of Elephanta, the light and lovely Mohammedan architecture, the dark haunts of Kali and Bowanee, the thronged Ghats of the sacred rivers, the color medleys of the vast cities, all these busied her as she passed her days alone in study over the secretly gathered up collection of polychrome views which had taken her from the Neilgherries to Cape Comorin. Her dreams of all her subtle plans to counteract all of Johnstone’s schemes, her tender intrigues to silently entrap Nadine Johnstone’s girlish heart, her carefully plotted line of future action, all of these things vanished in a moment, at Aden, when a government launch steamed out, and an officer of the vessel led up Her Majesty’s Consul to address the mysterious lady passenger.

There was a rush of volunteers when the woman, always brave in sorrow and ever fate defying, fainted away in a deathly trance as her eyes eagerly scanned the brief dispatch of the Viceroy. They were underway again when she realized the fearful decrees of a merciless fate! She read with a shudder, the lines again and again, whispering: “Can it be?”

“Hugh Johnstone murdered by persons--unknown at Delhi? Hasten on to London. Anstruther will have full details. Please acknowledge!”

And it was half an hour before the beautiful Nemesis who had clouded Hugh Johnstone’s life had penned her simple answer. Only at night, on the voyage afterward, did she ever leave her splendid staterooms, and when Brindisi was reached she vanished with her loyal servants so quickly that even the veriest fortune hunter could not follow on her trail. “Some terrible row--some sad family happening,” was the general smoking-room verdict! But, with a heart strangely yearning to the orphaned child, Berthe Louison hastened, without stopping, by Venice to lovely Munich and on to gay Paris. “She shall be mine now--mine to love, to cherish, my poor darling!” vowed the woman whose eyes shown out in an infinite pity! The cup of vengeance was dashed away from her lips for, behind the arras, the waiting headsman of Fate had struck in the night and laid low the man who would have compassed her death!

Madame Alixe Delavigne was only a gracious memory to the sympathetic men passengers who hastened on to London via Mont Cenis, but the chattering gossips of the Rue Berlioz noted, with an eager Gallic curiosity, the return of the mysterious occupant of No. 9. Jules Victor and his wife were seen, however, for only one day, busied about their usual household avocations, and then the returning travelers vanished once more to baffle the chatterers. “Diantre! Comme ils sont des voyageurs!” cried the coachman who took the wanderers to the Gare St. Lazare. There was need of haste now, for Madame Louison had received three foreign dispatches, besides a letter from Captain Anstruther, now waiting impatiently at London, and chafing over his unsuccessful queries at Morley’s Hotel. The gallant Captain’s letter was pregnant with governmental mysteries, and yet the beautiful woman sighed as she saw the vein of personal interest but too clearly evident in the long communication. A single glance at her tell-tale mirror reassured her, and she blushed, as she murmured:

“He believes me younger than I am!” But her brow was grave as she revolved the situation. “There will be a long struggle, a fight of love against craft and and greed! Who will win?” The fact that the Government Secret Service had already traced the delivery of the heavily insured shipment, “ex. Str. Lord Roberts,” to Professor Andrew Fraser, was a first victory for the enemy! “If the old nabob wrote directly via Brindisi to his brother, then the acute old Scotch Professor may be on his guard now! And--the will?--the will? What does it provide for Nadine’s future? If he had already taken the alarm-then I may have yet to fight my way to my darling’s side! The black curtain of the past shall never be lifted by my hand unless--unless Andrew Fraser forces me to strike hard at his dead brother’s paper card house of honorable deeds!”

As Madame Louison watched the rich moonlight silvering the broken wake of the channel steamer, she pondered over the telegrams. “Major Hardwicke and Alan Hawke are both en route to London, charged with different missions. And I am to beware of Hawke. They have only sent him away, perhaps, to veil the official game of the Indian authorities. And Alan Hawke truthfully warns me of his coming by private dispatch. Is he trying to regain his lost status? Douglas Fraser, the second executor, on his way back to India. He has passed Brindisi already. Ah! The sorrows for the dead are quickly assuaged when the ‘property interests’ furnish a fat picking to solicitors and the holders of dead men’s gear.

“Nadine is only eighteen--she has three years to remain under legal tutelage. Perhaps Andrew Fraser may have been already coached upon his course by his unrelenting kinsman. And there is a fortune waiting for father and son in the perquisites.” Madame Louison fell asleep in a vain quandary as to the precise age when men ceased to value wealth and to sell their souls for gold. That question was still undecided when the steamer Sparrow Hawk sped into Dover harbor.

The beautiful wanderer was now clearly resolved as to her future treatment of Alan Hawke. “My foe dead, the theater of war is transferred to Great Britain. He is not necessary to my own campaign, but, in watching him, I may be able to shield Nadine from his crafty plots. If he should try to secretly make friends with the Frasers, and to return to India, to aid the nephew, he might assist in robbing Valerie’s child of this mountain of miserably gotten wealth.

“Thank God, I can make her rich. But Captain Anstruther will know the Viceroy’s whole mind, and I can trust to him.” But her cheeks were rosy red and her dancing dark eyes dropped in a sudden confusion, as the handsome aid-de-camp leaped aboard the steamer at Dover Pier.

“I did not expect you!” she murmured.

“I knew, of course, from your dispatch when you would arrive, and so I came down to further the Viceroy’s business!” the soldier said in a sudden confusion. In an hour, the two who had met in such strange manner at Geneva were seated alone in a first-class compartment, and were merrily whirling on to Lud’s town. Captain Anstruther’s ten shillings to the guard secured them from annoying intrusion. In another compartment, Jules and Marie Victor sagely exchanged their lightning glances of Parisian acuteness.

“C’est un homme magnifique!” murmured Marie, and Jules gravely nodded, “Peut-etre, notre maitresse l’a connu longtemps. II est tres tendre!” The staff-officer “furthered the Viceroy’s business” by clasping both of Alixe Delavigne’s prettily-gloved hands. Her bosom heaved in a soft alarm, but she repulsed him not.

“Why did you deceive me at Geneva?” he eagerly demanded, with a trembling voice. And Alixe Delavigne’s eyes were downcast and dreamy, as she whispered:

“Because I was only a poor pilgrim of Love--a lonely woman, heart hungry for the tidings of the girl whom you have brought back to me!” The young officer gazed out of the window, and in his heart, he already pardoned her.

“To those who love much, much shall be forgiven!” he reflected, with a compassion growing momentarily, for he saw the shadow of tears in the beautiful dark brown eyes. And he forbore to question her as he gazed at her glowing face.

With a sudden lifting of her stately head, the woman sitting there, her heart throbbing in a strange unrest, laid her hand lightly upon his arm.

“Listen to the strange story of a woman’s life!” she said slowly. “I promised His Excellency, the Viceroy, that you should know why I left the defensive lines of my sex at Geneva! For he has trusted to me, and I wish you to know--to know that--” and the sentence was never finished, for Captain Anstruther bent over her trembling hands.

“I know that you are what I would have you ever be!” he simply said. And, with softly shining eyes, she told the soldier of her strange life path.

It was strange that they had neared London before the whole story was concluded, and their voices had sunk into softened whispers. “You may rely upon me to the death! You may depend upon me whenever you may wish to call upon me!” he said, as the train rolled into Charing Cross station. “Major Hardwicke, of the Engineers, will be my chosen ally, and I alone am to trace out this mystery of the vanished jewels. You shall conquer! I will aid you! Amor omnia vincit! You are the only heart in the world now throbbing for that sweet girl.”

But when they drove to Morley’s Hotel, far away on the sea, Harry Hardwicke’s heart was beating fondly in all a lover’s expectancy for the same friendless Rose of Delhi, and the debonnair Alan Hawke, in sight of Brindisi, mused in his deck-pacings: “I will placate Euphrosyne Delande. Justine, too, shall do my bidding, and my employer shall give me the key to this girl’s heart. For I will marry Nadme Johnstone! I am a devil for luck.”