“We’ve the best vintages of London Docks,” grinned the happy host, as he sped away and left the two scoundrels alone.
“What are you doing now, Jack?” queried Hawke.
“Nothing,” sullenly replied the middle-aged star of the swell mob. “My eyes! you are in great form,” he admiringly commented.
“Can you leave town for a week or so, on a little job for me?” briskly continued the Major.
“Ready money?” said “Gentleman Jack” Blunt, stroking out a pair of glossy side whiskers.
“Yes, cash in plenty on hand, and lots more in sight,” imperatively replied the Major.
“Do I work with you, or alone?” asked Blunt.
“It’s a little private investigation,” replied Hawke, “and as I have to leave town to-night, and spend a couple of months on the Continent, you are the very man. I am afraid to appear in the thing myself, as I am well known to the other parties, and so I fear being followed over the Channel. I’m back again in the army.” Jack’s eyes grew larger in a trice.
“Here comes the grub,” gayly said Blunt. “You can trust the wine here. The crib is square, too. Now, my boy, fire away. We are alone, and no listeners here.” Before Jack Blunt had put away a pint of best “beeswing” sherry, he was aware of all Alan Hawke’s intentions. His keen brain was working all its “cylinders.”
“Give me just five minutes to think it over, Governor,” said the sparkling-eyed, dark-faced, swell cracksman. “I know Jersey like a book. I worked the ‘summer racket’ there once. The excursion boats, the farmers’ races, the Casino balls, the Military games, and the whole lay. I think I can cook up a plan. You don’t show up just yet. I am to do the ‘downy cove.’”
“Not till I can double on my track, and you have piped the whole situation off,” said Hawke. “The game is a queer one. I may want to come over later and show up and make a little society play on the girl. I may, however, join you and help you secretly, or I may have to stay away altogether. But I must act at once. There’s money in it. If you have to make the running yourself, you can get your own help.”
“And, you have the real stuff?” agnostically demanded Jack Blunt.
“What do you want for a starter as your pay for the report to be sent to me at the Hotel Faucon, Lausanne, Switzerland?” Hawke was eager and disposed to be liberal.
“Oh! A hundred sovs for the job, as you lay it out—and fifty for my little incidentals,” laughed Jack Blunt. “Of course, if it goes on to anything serious, you’ll have to put away the real ‘boodle,’ where I have something to run with, if I have to cut it. I might run up a dangerous plant!”
“Bah!” decisively said Hawke. “Only an old fool to dodge, who is over seventy—a dotard—and a foolish girl of eighteen—a simple boarding-school miss!”
“Yes, but she has a million, you say. There’s always some one to love a girl with that money! Love comes in by the door, and the window, too, you know!”
“She has never been five minutes alone with a man in her life!” cried Hawke. “You are safe—dead sure safe!” Blunt’s roving black eyes rested on Hawke’s eager face as he laughed.
“And you want to marry her, to keep others from her, or run her off at the worst, you say? That’s your little game.”
“I will have either the girl, or those jewels! By God! I will! I’ve got money to work with, plenty of it—not here,” cautiously said Hawke, “but there’s your hundred and fifty. Do you stand in?”
“To the death—if you do the handsome thing, my boy!” said the handsome ruffian, pocketing the notes. “When do I start?”
“Take the midnight train to Southampton, and go at work at once. I fear they may send some damned spies over there! Now, what’s your plan?” Major Hawke watched his old pal in a brown study.
Jack Blunt had smoked half his cigar, when he brought his white hand down with a whack. “I have it! A combination of gentleman artist and literary gent! ‘The Mansion Homes of Jersey,’ to illustrate a volume for the use of tourists—London and Southwestern Railway’s enterprise. I’ll sneak in and do the grand. You want a correct sketch and map of house and grounds, and the whole lay out?” Artist Blunt was delightfully interested in his Jersey tour now.
“Yes!” cried Alan Hawke, his eyes growing wolfish, and he leaned over to his companion and whispered for a few moments. “That’s the trick, Governor,” nodded Jack Blunt, “You work on the double event. And—I get my money—play or pay?”
“Yes. Put up in good notes—only you are not to bungle!”
“Do you think I would fool around with a ‘previous conviction’ against me? The next is a lifer, and I’ve got to use the knife or a barker, if I run up against trouble, for I’ll never wear the Queen’s jewelry again! I’ve sworn it!” The man’s eyes were gleaming now like burning coals, “I’ll do the grand, and then, take off my beard and change my garb! I look twenty years older in a stubble chin. I can watch them from the public at Rozel Pier. I used to do a neat little bit of cognac, silk, and cigar smuggling. I know every crag of Corbiere Rocks, every shady joint in St. Heliers, every nook of St. Aubin’s Bay. Oh! I’m fly to the whole game!”
“Could you not get a good boat’s crew there?” anxiously demanded Major Hawke.
“Ah! My boy! I am ‘king high’ with a set of daring fishermen, who can smell out every rock from Dover to Land’s End; and, from Calais to Brest, in the blackest night of the channel, if it pays.”
“Then, Jack, your fortune is made, if you stand in. We’ll pull it off, in one way or the other. You’ve got an easy job for a man of your ability. I’ll meet you at Granville! Now, get over to St. Heliers, and work the whole trick in your own way! Send me your secret address in Jersey at once to Hotel Faucon, Lausanne, and run over to the French coast at Granville and find a safe nest there for us. There we are within seventeen miles of each other, with two mails a day, and the telegraph. It’s a wonderful plant, so it is.”
“Yes, Governor! And old Etienne Garcia, at the ‘Cor d’Abondance’ in Granville, is the very slyest rogue in France. When you find a Crapaud who is dead to rights, he is always an out and outer. I’ll square you with my old pal, Etienne, who slyly makes ‘floaters’ and then gets the government cash reward for towing them in. He has always a half dozen pretty girls hanging around there, and many a good looking stranger has ended his ‘tour’ by a sudden drop through the flow of the drinking room over the wharf where Etienne keeps his ‘boats to let.’”
“How does he do it?” mused Alan Hawke. “It’s a risky game in France.”
Jack Blunt laughed.
“A few puffs of smoke in a cognac glass, and the subject is knocked out for an hour after drinking from the nicotine-filmed crystal, bless you,” laughed Blunt, “there’s never a mark on Etienne’s victims. He is too fine for that, only cases of plain, simple, ‘accidental drowning.’
“You may as well address me as ‘Joseph Smith, Jersey Arms, Rozel Pier, Jersey.’ I am solid with Mrs. Floyd, the landlady there,” said the scoundrel mobsman, anxious to spend some of his cash.
“All right, then, Jack! Go ahead!” cheerfully cried Major Hawke. “Don’t overgo my instructions a single hair! I’ll either join you in the grand stroke, or else meet you at Granville and there tell you what to do. Remember that I’ll settle all your Jersey bills, and I will send a post order for ten pounds extra to you at the ‘Jersey Arms,’ to give you a local standing with the postman.
“That you can spend on the underlings around the Banker’s Folly, but beware of an old body servant named Simpson—an old red-coat who may turn up any day now from India! He was Johnstone’s own man, and he hates me, at heart, I know! Now, if you can do the ‘artist act,’ you must find out where the old man keeps his stuff! I don’t know yet whether we want him first or the girl; or to crack the whole crib! If we ever do, then, Simpson must get the—” Hawke grimly smiled, as he drew his hand across his throat! “I must be off!” he hastily said as he noted the time.
On his way over to Folkestone, Major Alan Hawke mused over his great coup, as he lay at ease, wrapped up in a traveling rug, and now resplendent in a fur-trimmed top coat, befrogged and laced, which indicated the officer en retraite.
“I will first do up Holland, Belgium, and Denmark, and take a little preliminary look around Paris,” mused the Major, studying a list of the missing jewels which Captain Anstruther had artfully arranged. Sundry deductions and additions, with an admirable disorder in the items (judiciously divided and reclassified) served to guard against any old confidences exchanged between Ram Lal and his secret friend Hawke. The real list in the original was now in the private pocket-book of the Viceroy.
“Each of our Consuls at the cities you are to visit has this list,” said Anstruther to the Major, “and you can vary your travel as you choose, but visit all these jewel marts, and report to the local Consuls. If they have further orders for you, you will get them there, at first hands. Should you find that any of the jewels have been offered for sale, simply report the facts to the local Consul, and write under seal to me at the Junior United Service, then go on and examine further at once! You are to take no steps whatever to recover them, or to alarm the thieves! All your expenses and your pay will be advanced by me!” The acute schemer decided not to risk any suspicions by marketing his own jewels. “They might bounce me for the murder,” fearfully mused the Major. “I could show no honest title through Ram Lal. They might arrest him, and I need him to pay the protested drafts—later, when I go back on the Viceroy’s staff!” He smiled and wove his webs like a spider in his den.
On his arrival in Paris, from a run to the Low Countries, a week later, Major Alan Hawke betook himself at once to No. 9 Rue Berlioz. And there Marie Victor greeted him, handing him a letter which was dated from Jitomir, Volhynia. “How is your mistress?” he affably demanded.
“She is well, and will remain for several months longer in Russia!” politely answered Marie, bowing him out.
“By God, then, she has given up the chase! I see it all!” mused Hawke, as he pored over the letter on his way to the Hotel Binda. “The trump card she wished to play was to blast the old fellow’s hopes of a baronetcy. Death has struck down her prey, and, she will now wait till the girl is free! She is too sly to face old Fraser; his brother has warned him. But she says she will need me in the winter, on her return.”
The deceived scoundrel laughed. “The coast is left clear for me now! I’ll telegraph to Joseph Smith, run on to Geneva, deposit my own jewels there, in the agency of the Credit Lyonnais, and then return the notifications of protest of the Bills of Exchange to Ram Lal.
“I wonder if I can steal those jewels, get my Major’s rank as a reward from the Viceroy, and marry the girl? It would be the luck of a life!” he dreamed.
Two days later, on the terraces of Lausanne, he laughed over Jack Blunt’s cheeky campaign.
“The ‘artist dodge’ worked to a charm,” wrote Jack. “I used the Kodak, and I have a dozen good views of the house, and as many more of the grounds. My chapter on the ‘Artistic Homes of Jersey,’ will be a full one! I soon jollied a couple of the London maid servants into my confidence. By the way, send me, at once, another ‘tenner’ for expense, and some money for my own regular bills. I can make great play on the two frolicsome maids. They are up for a lark. The shy bird keeps her rooms; and there really seems to be no young man around. Devilish strange! A room is being got ready for the old body servant who is now on his way from India. He might fall over Rozel cliff some night, when half seas over! That’s a natural ending for him! Maps, sketches, and all will be ready for you at the place we agreed. It’s all lying ready to our hand, and ten minutes of a dark night is all I want. The old chap is always mooning alone in his study, till the midnight hours, over his books, and he has the whole ground floor to himself. The men are in the gardener’s house, ten rods away, and all the women sleep upstairs. He sees no one but a half crazy Yankee professor, who drops in of a morning. But, the shy bird keeps in her cage, and lives in great state, upstairs. More when you send the money.”
On his way to say adieu to Justine, before departing to Vienna, Alan Hawke smiled grimly. “I can strike now, when I will, and as I will! But, first to race around a little, and then, having fulfilled my mission, to get a couple of weeks’ furlough, to go about my own affairs. The coast is clear. Jack Blunt’s plan is right. Simpson must be first put out of the way. He would fight like a rat on general principles.”
At Rosebank Villa, Madame Alixe Delavigne was nightly busied now in official conferences with Major Harry Hardwicke, who had lingered in the concealment of Anstruther’s home. The Captain found abundant time to prosecute his “official business” with his lovely aid in the secret service. And he had learned all of Alixe Delavigne’s lessons now, save to acquire the patience to wait. But a growing album of newspaper clippings was daily augmented by Frank Hatton’s artfully disseminated items regarding “Prince Djiddin of Thibet,” the first visitor of rank from that land of shadows. The warring journals who wrangled over the rich young visitor’s “stern retirement” from all public intrusion referred to the political coup de main to be looked for in “the near future.” From various parts of the United Kingdom, the mysterious princely visitor’s trail was daily telegraphed, and a hearty laugh from all three of the conspirators of Rosebank Villa greeted the final article in the St. Heliers Messenger, stating that a learned Moonshee or Pundit, “the only Asiatic attendant of Prince Djiddin of Thibet” was arranging for a brief visit of a descendant of the Dalai-Lamas.
Anstruther and Hardwicke laughed merrily at Frank Halton’s last graceful touches. “A romantic gratitude to a retired British officer, who had once befriended the Prince’s august father, was the one impelling cause of a visit, in which the strictest retirement would be guarded by the dweller on the Roof of the World,” etc., etc. So read out Madame Delavigne, closing with the remark that the “Moonshee had already visited the Royal Victoria Hotel at St. Heliers to arrange for the coming of his friend, and to the regret of the authorities, the Prince would decline all the hospitality due to his exalted rank.”
“Captain Murray must be even now at work,” anxiously said the fair reader.
“We will hear at once,” said Anstruther. “Prince Djiddin, you must now materialize! For Murray’s letter tells me that he is already in full communication with Jules Victor at the Hotel Bellevue. So the ‘Moonshee’ has one faithful friend near at hand. If there is any shadowing of either of you, Jules Victor is an invincible avant garde. He knows the faces of all the dramatis personae. You see, Douglas Fraser is gone to India and old Andrew has never seen any of our ‘star actors.’ We are absolutely safe!”
“It seems that fortune favors us,” tremblingly said Alixe Delavigne. “This prying and curious Yankee, Professor Hobbs, also seems to have fallen at once into the trap! Captain Murray’s description of his ‘interview,’ at the Royal Victoria, with Alaric Hobbs, is a crystallized work of humorous art!”
“Of course the Yankee savant will write columns to the Waukesha Clarion, describing this Asiatic lion, Prince Djiddin, and exploit him in the States as an ‘original discovery’ of his own. His eagerness to arrange an interview between the Prince and Professor Fraser is most ludicrously fortunate for us,” said Captain Anstruther.
The entrance of the butler with a telegram disturbed “Prince Djiddin” and his lovely confidential staff officer. “An answer, please, Captain,” formally continued the household factotum.
“Hurrah!” cried Hardwicke, when the little conclave gathered around the red light. “Simpson has arrived, and now Nadine and I have some one whom we can both trust!” The further information that the “Moonshee” would arrive forthwith to conduct “Prince Djiddin” to the safe haven where that fascinating bride, Mrs. Flossie Murray, awaited her beloved truant, was a call to prompt action. “I am ready! I shall drop the Royal Engineers and live up to my ‘blue china’ as a Prince!” cried Hardwicke.
When Major Alan Hawke returned, three weeks later, to the Hotel Grand National, at Geneva, he was sorely wearied and dispirited. A round of inspection of all the principal jewel marts of the continent had been only a fruitless, solitary tourist promenade. And the ominous silence of Captain Anson Anstruther, A. D. C., boded no good to the military future of the adventurer. “Damn me, if I don’t think that I have been hoodwinked!” growled Major Hawke, on his re-turn from Moscow and St. Petersburg, whither he had been ordered, as a last resort, to see the Court jewelers.
From Warsaw, he wrote to the Hotel Faucon, at Lausanne, to send all his letters to meet him at Berlin, where Jack Blunt had given him the address of the safest “fence” in all Kaiser Wilhelm’s broad domain. He had his own jewels valued there in Russia, but dared not sell them.
With a sudden inspiration, born of a growing fear for the stability of his house of cards, so flimsy in construction, he ran down to Jitomir, and the half-crazed adventurer only lingered an hour with the Intendant of Madame Alixe Delavigne’s grand old domain. He found the bird flown. Had he been duped? A permission to view the old chateau was courteously accorded, and then Alan Hawke soon realized that he was betrayed. For the fact that Madame was still absent, “traveling around the world,” and had not visited her Volhynian estate for a year, proved to him now that he had been doubly tricked. “Ah! By God! I have it!” he cried, as he set his teeth in a white rage. “That fool, Anstruther, is bewitched by her Polish wiles, the mongrel inheritance of La Grande Armee’s visit to Russia!” Straight as the crow flies, Alan Hawke then pressed on to Lemberg, and hastened to Berlin, having sent on his last official report to Captain Anstruther, at London. In Berlin, a letter from Jack Blunt decided his whole career. There was news of moment, which set his hot blood boiling in his veins.
“Simpson, the old body servant, has arrived from India,” wrote the disguised ex-convict. “And he’s mighty thick with your shy bird, too. There is some strange game going on here, which I can’t make out. The cute Yankee professor is furious, for old Fraser has temporarily given him the ‘dead cut.’ The American is totally neglected, for the old idiot spends half his time, now, shut up in his study with a visiting nigger prince from India, and the yellow fellow’s half-breed interpreter. I send you a dozen cuttings from the papers. The Prince, however, seems to be all O. K. He never even notices the shy bird. He probably buys his women at home. How could he, for he does not speak a single damned word of English. But I’ve caught sight of this Moonshee fellow trying to do the polite to the heiress. Old Simpson keenly watches the whole goings on, and I’ve tried to pull him on! No go! But he sneaks off himself, gets roaring full, down at Rozel Pier, with a little French peddler fellow, that he has picked up. And, I don’t like this French chap’s looks. Too fly, and far too free with his money. There’s no one else who has, as yet, showed up here. Not a woman, no other human being but a London lawyer. And I’m told now the guardian and niece are soon going over to London to deposit all the papers that Simpson brought home and to do ‘a turn’ at Doctor’s Commons. Now’s your very time—the dark of the moon. Better cut your job and come over to me at Granville; and why can we not turn the place up-while they are away? To do that, we must do Simpson ‘for fair,’ and I now know his nightly trail. Send money, plenty of it, and come on. I am ‘on the beachcomber’s lay,’ now, down at the Jersey Arms, Rozel Pier. Write or telegraph me a line, and I’ll instantly meet you at Granville, at the Cor d’Abondance.”
A loving letter from Justine Delande inclosed a notice of a registered letter waiting at the Agence du Credit Lyonnais, Geneva. It is marked “Tres Important,” she wrote, and then added: “I have received a letter from Nadine, who says that her guardian is now half crazy with excitement over the finishing of his ‘History of Thibet, and Memoir Upon the Lost Ten Tribes,’ for he has an Indian visitor of princely rank, and he even proposes to take this Prince Djiddin and his ‘Moonshee’ into the house, so as to shut the world out from the wonderful disclosures of the only visitor of rank who ever left Thibet.”
Alan Hawke’s brow was gloomy when he read the last letter, which was a brief note from Captain Anstruther, informing him that his final instructions would be forwarded “in a week.” The ominous silence of “Madame Berthe Louison,” the living lie of her pretended visit to Russia, the trick of the letters sent on from Jitomir to his Parisian address, now only confirmed his jealous rage.
“They are living in a fool’s paradise together, this dapper aide and the wily woman, hiding in England! One has betrayed me, and the other will now coldly abandon me! I’ll soon raise a hornets’ nest about their ears!” So, with a simple telegraphed word “coming,” dispatched to “Joseph Smith,” he sped on to Geneva from his “Leipsic defeat” at Berlin, but only to meet a ghastly “Waterloo” at the Grand Hotel National. He had ordered the letters from the Hotel Faucon to be sent on there to Miss Justine, and when he had freed himself from her clasping arms he read a curt official note from the Viceroy’s aid-de-camp which left him livid in a paroxysm of fury. On his way from the station he had only stopped long enough at the Agence du Credit Lyonnais to receive an official-looking document. “My accounts, I presume,” he had muttered, thrusting them in his pocket. But, when he had read Captain Anstruther’s formal note, he tore open the letter of the great French Banking Company. The two letters curtly illustrated the old saw, that “it never rains, but it pours!” With a fluttering heart poor Justine Delande watched her undeclared lover’s blackening face.
“Hell and furies!” he cried, “the whole world is leagued against me. I’ve got to go back to India now, Justine, and go alone. Luck is dead against me now.” And the whitening face of the woman who hung on his every glance made the infuriated man even more reckless. “Damn them, I’ll grind them all to powder!” he growled. For the tide was on the turn, and it was dead water again at Geneva, the tide fast receding, and the man who was “a devil for luck” was soon left on the rocks of a silent despair.
Alan Hawke’s eyes gleamed out with a murderous sheen as he scanned both letters carefully. “It is his work—the low dog—and he shall die. Wait till Jack Blunt and I get a hack at him,” he mused, with a sudden conviction that he dared not now show himself at St. Heliers, nor openly approach the Banker’s Folly. “I stand to lose all and win nothing. I must work in the dark. I cannot dare to brave this Anstruther. They would simply drive me from India. But, Simpson and Ram Lal shall pay! And, Berthe Louison—Ah! By God! I will strike her to the heart now! I see the way!”
The official words of Captain Anstruther were few but crushing in there stern brevity. And Alan Hawke’s heart sank as he read them over again. “By the orders of His Excellency, the Viceroy, I have the honor to inform you that he has withdrawn your temporary rank, and all powers heretofore delegated to you will cease on the receipt of this letter, which please acknowledge. On reporting to me in London in person, you will receive the payment of all your accounts with your back pay and transportation back to Calcutta, the place of your temporary appointment. All the Consuls in continental Europe have now been notified of the cessation of your powers, and you will therefore, in no way act in the future in regard to the confidential business once in your hands. The inquiry has been finally abandoned by the order of the Indian Government.
“Please do report as soon as possible, and deliver over all papers and vouchers now remaining in your hands. With assurance of my consideration, Yours,
“ANSON ANSTRUTHER, Captain and A. D. C.”
“Official,
“Confidential.”
The letter of the Credit Lyonnais was even more menacing in its tone. The Direction Centrale referred to a formal letter of the solicitors of the estate of Hugh Fraser Johnstone, deceased, totally repudiating the four unaccepted drafts of five thousand pounds sterling each, and legally notifying the Direction of an intended suit to recover from the payee and the in-dorser, the first draft for five thousand pounds paid before Executor Andrew Fraser had filed his objections with Messrs. Glyn, Carr & Glyn. “The arrival from India of the papers of the deceased, and the testimony of his body servant Simpson, as well as the Calcutta Banker and solicitors, proves that no such considerable withdrawals as twenty-five thousand pounds were ever contemplated by the deceased, who had sent the most minute business instructions to his agent and later executor.”
“I shall have to throw this all back on Ram Lal.” mused Alan Hawke, who hastily bade Justine an adieu, until he could conjure up an explanation for the Geneva agents of the Credit Lyonnais. The closing words of the Paris Derection were semi-hostile. “Be pleased. Monsieur, to call at once upon our Geneva branch and explain these imputations. We are forced to withhold your present deposits to cover any reclamation and legal expenses, and we therefore beg you to discontinue the drawing of any drafts upon us until the solicitors of Messrs. Glyn, Carr & Glyn and the Executor notify us of the settlement of this distressing imputation upon the regularity of our actions as your business agents.”
“That leaves me only the jewels, and about a thousand pounds ready cash on hand, and that is due from Anstruther,” gloomily decided Alan Hawke, when he was safely locked in his rooms at the National.
“Tricked by this double-faced devil Louison-Delavigne, thrown out of my future rank, held for the five thousand pounds already advanced, and, with eleven thousand embargoed in that Paris pawnbroker shop of a Credit Lyonnais, I’ve but one course left to me now.”
He took counsel of the brandy bottle, and then, ignoring all else, he sent off a careful letter to Joseph Smith. “I’ll jolly poor Justine a bit, so as to leave one faithful friend to watch and get all my letters here. Jack can raise money on the jewels now for us both. I must tell these fellows of the French Bank here that I go to London to see my own lawyers. I’ll go over, settle with Anstruther, and then just quietly disappear. The next blow shall come out of the blackness of night, and I’ll strike them all at once!”
In the evening, Major Alan Hawke drove with Justine Delande to the restaurant garden, where, long months before, he had first learned the daring hardihood of his fair employer—the acute woman who had fooled him at every turn. His heart was saddened with all the fresh hopes which had failed him. He had frankly told Euphrosyne Delande that a return journey to India, and a long and bitter struggle now lay between him and the rank and competence which he would need to make her loving sister his wife.
Three hours later Justine Delande’s arms clung desparingly around the handsome outcast, as he was leaving her to be escorted home by the adroit Francois, already in waiting without the restaurant with a closed carriage. The presage of sorrow weighed upon her loving heart.
“Alan, My God, I can not let you go. You are the one brightness of my life. My heart of hearts. My very soul,” sobbed the wretched woman. “I have fears for you. They will kill you in that far land, these powerful enemies. That mysterious devil woman who bends all to her will will ruin you.” And then, really touched at heart, the desperate trickster drew off his finger a superb diamond, the nonpareil, the choicest stone of Ram Lal’s unwilling tribute. “Wear this always, and think of me, Justine,” he said. “You are the only woman who ever loved me, and, if I succeed, I swear you shall share my better fortunes—if not, then—” he crushed her to his breast and ran out of the room, before she could drag him back. “Go in, Francois, quickly to Miss Justine,” cried Hawke, thrusting a hundred-franc note in the butler’s open hand. The rattle of departing wheels was heard as Francois supported the half-fainting woman to her carriage.
“Now for London,” growled Major Hawke as the train dashed down the Rhone valley. “I’ve got a clear alibi here. All my letters sent to Justine will be forwarded to the Delhi Club. One day in London, then to Granville, and Jack Blunt. They will only get Justine’s story if they shadow me, and if I can only hit it off right, at Calcutta. Yes! there is the king luck of all. To give the whole thing away to the baffled Viceroy. Then denounce Ram Lal to him as the early confederate and later assassin of Hugh Fraser Johnstone! These jewels that I have ‘innocently received’ will connect old Ram Lal with Hugh Fraser’s betrayed trust. I will hold the murder business back at first.
“Ram Lal or his estate will be finally forced to cash my drafts. It is clear that Johnstone and Ram Lal have either divided or hidden the jewels. Yes! By God! I have it. If I can wring them out of the old professor, or find them, I will then hide them away and secretly report the whole affair to the Viceroy, in my chosen colors as a friend of the Crown, and they’ll give me a huge reward; my permanent army rank will soon follow. So, if Justine only holds to my alibi, by God! I will marry her, for she would be a badge of respectability. I’ll take no more chances after this—not another single chance! I’ve got money enough to satisfy Jack Blunt. He shall secretly sell the jewels for me—a small lot, here and there, a few at a time.”
“There is just one frightful risk to run,” he muttered, as he reached out for his brandy flask. “Ram Lal might go in to save his twenty-five thousand pounds, for the Johnstone estate will never pay these disputed claims which I cannot prove in law. Good in honor, but bad in law! And if he should denounce me privately to the Viceroy, as the real murderer of Hugh Fraser? He is there on the ground. I did not denounce him. I did not produce the dagger. I dare not to explain why I concealed the crime. An accessory! He might seek to turn Queen’s evidence, and even try to hang me. He is rich, sly, smart. By God! they may even now be shadowing me. Once on English soil, I am at Anstruther’s mercy.” He was still white-faced and unmanned as he took the Boulogne boat the next evening. “I must face Anstruther, get my money, and then telegraph to Justine my departure for India from London. I’ll wire the poor woman from here now. A few loving words will cheer her. Her true heart is the only jewel I have that I have not stolen. Poor girl! she will miss me sorely!” And the handsome blackguard sighed over the ruin he had wrought—an honest woman’s shattered peace of mind. It weighed heavily upon him now.
For there came back to him now strange shadowy glimpses of his own stormy past! Dashing on, to face unknown dangers, the dauntless adventurer, with a softened heart, recalled the days when he could gaze, without a secret shudder, upon the battle-torn colors of the regiment from which he had been chased by that suddenly discovered sin, once so sweet!
He “looked along life’s columned years, to see its riven fane—just where it fell.” And, sadly alone in life now, his heart gnawed with a growing remorse, he saw in the mirror of memory, once more, the bright faced boy who had “filled the cup, to toast his flag and land.” Alan Hawke, in all the bright promise of his youth, the darling of women, the envy of men!
Under the swiftly gliding current of his tortuous past, he plainly saw now the fanged reefs which had wrecked him! With a smothered groan, he recalled all that he had lost, and this bitter introspection brought up to him, among his deeds of passion, the one needless cruelty of his reckless life! “Poor Justine! There is such a thing as woman’s love after all!” he sighed, for he knew that the steadfast woman had poured out the wine of her life all in vain. “She loves me!” he cried!
Woman, born to be man’s sport and plaything, is doomed to be the unconscious avenger of her sex in every tragedy of the heart! The treason of some callous lover is repaid with vengeance meted out to some defenseless man who comes all unguarded “into the arid desert of Phryne’s life, where all is parched and hot.” And, Alan Hawke, the innocent Lancelot, had suffered for some recreant’s past crime!
Among the visions of the burning Lotos Land, the bright phantasmagoria of his unstained youth, there came back now to Alan Hawke all the glories of his first Durbar, the unforgotten day when he had fallen under the spell of the woman whose fatal touch had withered the “very rose and expectancy” of his brilliant promise. His mind strayed backward through all the misty years to that gorgeous scene of Oriental pomp. He closed his eyes and pictured again the brilliant pageant.
The huge masses of serried troops, the lines of stately elephants, the castled background of the temples of Aurungzebe. The blare of trumpets smote once more upon his ear, and hordes of jewel-decked Asiatics swept along before the pompous military representatives of the Empress, who wears the Crown of the Seas.
There was a quickening of “Love’s extinguished embers” as he lived over again the moment, when “side by side, with England’s pride,” he rode with his sword lowered in knightly salute before the clustered banners of the Imperial military throne. And the hour of his fate sounded when the eyes of a woman rested upon him in a mute appeal! Their glances told him all.
For, then and there, the young officer had seen the wonderful beauty of the woman who had lured him on and then, in after days, sold his unstained soul to shame! A fair-faced Lilith, her glowing beauty enshrined in all the borrowed splendor of majesty, a woman of gleaming golden hair, a later, all too willing, Guenevere! The soft subtle invitation of her eyes of sapphire blue had called him to her side, in that unspoken pact which needs no words! He was her slave from the first moment! With a last pang of his quivering heart, Hawke recalled the sly skill of the faithless wife who had drawn the young officer into her net, for the passing amusement of her idle hours! Too late he knew all the artful craft of his being bidden to the Grand Ball, of the “veiled interest” which had “detailed him, for special duty,” of the self-protecting maneuvers which had placed him on the staff of the faded valetudinarian general who had given his spotless name to the woman whose lava heart glowed under a snowy bosom. It was the wreck of a soul!
And then, with a gasp, he recalled his mad fever to win every honor under her glowing eyes. The forgotten deeds of desperate valor—all useless now, and stained forever with the bar sinister of his treason. He shuddered at the unforgotten delights of the hour when they had met in her seraglio bower of shaded luxury, and “the fairest of Laocoons” had answered his passionate whisper, “Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die,” with the faltered words: “Alan, you are all the world to me!”
Fondly blind, he had drifted along in a Fool’s Paradise, at her bidding, until the crash came! He never knew the military Sir Modred, who had betrayed the open secret, but his blood boiled when he recalled the cruel abandonment to the rage of a jealous and awakened spouse!
All in vain had been his manly sacrifice to save the woman whom he had loved more than life. He had cast away every protection for himself. Duped and tricked, he had remained mute before the storm of abuse heaped on him by the General, and his papers sent in, at a momentary summons, had carried him in dishonor out of the band of laureled soldier knights, to dream no more “the dream that martial music weaves!” And the smiling woman Judas tricked him to the very last!
How hollow her faith, how lying the mute pleading of her eyes, he knew now, for had he not paused at the door for one despairing glance of farewell, to hear her murmur to her placated lord: “After all your goodness to him, to dare to offer me insult! You have punished him rightly, but, he is a fascinating traitor, after all!” Deprived of his sword, shunned by his associates, and lingering near her in hopes of the last interview pledged him by her lying eyes, he had only been undeceived when he vainly tried to reach her carriage for a last farewell on a star-lit lonely drive.
The cold cutting accent of her voice smote him as the edge of a sword. “Drive on, Johnson!” she sharply cried. “These vagabond people must face the General himself.” Then came the insane self-sacrifice of his reckless downfall, but he had spared her to the very last.
He bowed his head in his hands, and a storm of agony swept over him as he recalled the word “traitor,” branded upon his brow as a badge of shame, and again he wandered along that devious path which had led him year by year downward. Too bitterly self-accusing to palliate his past, he only knew that in all the long years of social pariahhood he had learned to despise all men and to trust no woman! For had not Friendship been a lie to him, Love only a hollow cheat, and woman’s vows of deathless loyalty but writ in sand to be washed out by the next wave of passion?
And yet, stained with crime, there was one breath of truth which swept over his soul as fresh as the voice of the “pines of Ramoth Hill!” His eyes were misty and his breath choked in a sorrowing gasp of manly remorse, as the winsome face of the true-hearted Justine rose up before him in this hour of lonely agony! Her devotion had touched the wayworn wanderer, and, pure and unselfish, her love had been the one bright star of all these darkened years!
“By Jove! She is a royal soul! If I could only save her the shock of the awakening,” he murmured. His heart beat generously in a thrill of pride recalling Justine’s steadfast devotion to the motherless girl whom he had sought to entangle. “Far above rubies!” he cried, and the memory of the fond woman who was watching for him at Lausanne, swept over his stormy soul to bring unbidden tears to eyes which had never flinched before the red flash of the grim cannon.
“There are still good women in the world!” he muttered, “and, God bless you, you have taught me this, Justine!” Drawing her picture from his bosom, he gazed fondly at the face of the gentle-hearted daughter of the Alps. A vain and passionate regret racked his bosom—the last struggle of his wavering soul! “Shall I turn back?” he doubtfully cried. And then in the rush of his onward course, a dull hopeless feeling came over him. “Kismet!” he cried. “It is too late now. If they had only trusted me! If they had told me all and given my fighting soul a chance to redeem the lost promise once written on my brow. I have played a man’s part before! I might, perhaps, have won this girl’s gratitude and earned Justine’s love to be a shield and a buckler to me. But—” his head, overweaned with care, drooped down, and in the company of strange visions and and dreams of ominous import, the hunted soldier of fortune forgot alike the echoing voice of his better angel, and lost from view, the shadowy faces of both the woman who had lured him to a living death, and the tender-hearted one whose heart was glowing at Lausanne in all the fervor of her unrequited devotion. Over Alan Hawke, sleeping there, as he was swiftly borne away, hovered, in sad regret, his good angel, with sorrowing eyes, for the stern, self-accusing man had not sought, in the last hours of this sorrow, even the poor consolation that his life had been wrecked to feed the fires of vanity burning in the jaded heart of the beautiful Faustine, whose cold desertion had sold his youth to shame!
Twenty-four hours later Major Alan Hawke was again a stormy petrel on Life’s trackless ocean. The cold politeness of Captain Anson Anstruther at the brief interview at the Junior United Service Club in London at once decided the wanderer to make for India as soon as his “pressing engagements” would allow. There was no seeming menace, however, in Anstruther’s wearied air of perfunctory courtesy.
“The whole affair being officially dropped, Major Hawke,” said Anstruther, “I only ask for your personal receipt for my individual check. You will observe that this eleven hundred pounds is not in any way government funds. And, on behalf of the Viceroy himself, I thank you for your energy shown in the inquiry, which is now permanently abandoned.” To Major Hawke’s murmured request, Anstruther replied:
“Certainly! Drive around to Grindlay’s in Parliament Street with me and they will at once give you notes or their own circular check for this money.” In ten minutes, when Hawke had lightly announced his intention to return to India, the Captain observed: “I may not meet you for some years. If the Viceroy returns to England, my promotion will probably carry me with his Embassy to Paris as Major and Military Attache.” And then they parted as mere casual acquaintances.
“Damn his cool impertinence,” mused Alan Hawke, as he caught a passing cab, after telegraphing his greetings and intended departure to Justine Delande.
“Write one letter to Hotel Binda, Paris, then all to the P. & O. Agency, Brindisi; after that, to Delhi,” were the lying words which reached the Swiss woman, whose loving breast was now given over to a tumult of sighs.
Major Hawke was not free from secret apprehensions until he landed at Calais, upon the next morning. “Now for a last ‘throw off’ at Paris!” he exclaimed. “Damn England! I hope I shall never see it again!” he growled, unmindful of the pitiless Fates ever spinning the mysterious web of Destiny. “I’ll first show up at Berthe Louison’s, at No. 9 Rue Berlioz. They shall have my next address given to them as Delhi. The real Major Hawke dives under the troubled sea of Life at Paris, only to emerge at Calcutta! Ram Lal is like all his kind, a coward at heart! He has not denounced me, for, if he had, Captain Anstruther would have nabbed me in England. He acts by the Viceroy’s private cabled orders. No! The coast is all clear for my dash at the enemy’s works!”
Before the morning dawned on the sea-girt coast of La Manche, Marie Victor had duly telegraphed Major Hawke’s impending departure for India to the beautiful recluse who now cheered the lonely bride of “the Moonshee,” at the old Norman chateau, embowered in its splendid gardens, within a league of the Banker’s Folly.
Alan Hawke, closely shaven, and masquerading in a French commis-voyageur’s modest garb, was seated at ease in Etienne Garcin’s death-trap at the Cor d’Abundance, in foggy Granville. His darkened locks and nondescript garb thoroughly effaced the “officer and gentleman.” One of the old French villain’s wickedest and prettiest woman decoys was coquettishly serving Hawke’s breakfast as he read the burning words of Justine Delande’s message from the heart. The last greeting, tear-blotted, and promptly sent to the Hotel Binda.
“It’s a wild day, a wild-looking place, and a wild enough sea,” grumbled Major Hawke, gazing out of the grimy window at the rolling green surges breaking, white-capped, far out beyond the new pier, where the black cannon were drenched and crusted with the salty flying scud. Far away, a little side-wheel steamer was laboring along over the strait from the blue island of Jersey, rising and dipping half out of sight, with a trail of intermittent puffs of dense black smoke.
“There is the enemy’s stronghold, and now for Jack Blunt’s plan of campaign! I wonder if he’ll come over to-day, or to-morrow? He must have had my telegram last night!” Alan Hawke amused himself with the bold, black-eyed French girl’s vicious stories of olden deeds done there in Etienne Garcin’s gloomy spider’s den. He even laughed when the red-bodiced she-devil laughingly pointed down at the loosened floor-planks in the back room, underneath which mantrap the swish of the throbbing waves could be heard.
Then the sheeted, cold driving rain hid the promontory, with its heavy, lumpy-looking fort, the old gray granite parish church, and the clustered ships of the harbor, now dashing about and tugging wildly at their doubled moorings, soon to be left high and dry on the soft ooze when the thirty-foot tide receded. “There’s where we find our best customers,” laughed the French wanton, as Alan Hawke drew her to his knee, and they laughed merrily over the golden harvest of the sea, the price of the recovered dead. Through the narrow stone fanged streets lumbered along the heavy French hooded carts, driven by squatty men in oil skins and sou’westers, and laden down with the spoils of the whale, cod, and oyster fisheries. Stout women in huge blue aprons, with baskets on their rounded arms, gossiped at the protecting corners, while the shouts of Landlord Etienne Garcin’s drunken band of sea wolves now began to ring out in the smoky salle a boire.
It was two o’clock when the burly form of Etienne Garcin was propelled unceremoniously into Alan Hawke’s room. A grin of satisfaction spread over the bullet-headed old ruffian’s face, and his round gray pig eyes twinkled, as he noted the already established entente cordiale between Jack Blunt’s pal and the wanton spy who was the absent Jack’s own especial pet. But, Alan Hawke was temporarily blind to the universally offered charms of the soubrette as he read Joseph Smith’s careful report.
“That’s the talk!” joyously cried Hawke. His heart bounded in a fierce thrill. “By God! Simpson shall be ‘done up’ in short order. The drunken old dog. He cut off the payment of my drafts with his blabbing tongue!
“Yes, over the cliffs he goes, and we will make sure of him—forever—before he takes his last tumble! Jack! Jack! You are a hero!” he mused, as the triumphant words of Jack Blunt’s great discovery were read again and again. And then, he carefully burned the letter, before the astonished eyes of the tempting companion of his waiting hours. “These fools of employers!” cheerfully muttered Alan Hawke. “They always think that ‘Servant’s Hall’ has no eyes. That the maid in her cap and apron has not the same burning passions as idle Madame in her silks and laces. That the man has not his own easy-going vices just as alive and masterful as the base appetites of the swell master.”
While Alan Hawke thus exulted at Granville, there was gloom and jealousy in the heart of Prof. Alaric Hobbs, of Waukesha University, Wisconsin, U. S. A.
A tall, lank, bespectacled “Westerner,” nearly thirty-five years of age, the blue-eyed country boy had dragged himself up from the obscurity of a frontier American farm into the higher life. Uncouth, awkward, and yet resolute and untiring, he had justified his first instructor’s prediction:
“He has the head of a horse, and will make his mark!” Newspaper trainboy, chainman, assistant on Government frontier surveys, and frontier scout, he early saved his money so as to complete a sporadic university curriculum. A trip to Liberia, a dash down into Mexico, and a desert jaunt in Australia, had not satisfied his craving for adventure. With the results of two years of professional lectures, he was now imbibing continental experiences, and plotting a bicycle “scientific tour of the world.” Hard-headed, fearless, devoted, and sincere, he was a mad theorist in all his mental processes, and had tried, proved, and rejected free love, anarchy, Christian science, and a dozen other feverish fads, which for a time jangled his mental bells out of tune. A cranky tracing of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel down to the genial scalpers of the American plains had thrown him across the renowned Professor Andrew Fraser, who had, on his part, located these same long mourned Hebrews in Thibet, ignoring the fact that they are really dispersed in the United States of America as “eaters of other men’s hard-made ‘honey’” in the “drygoods,” clothing, and “shent per shent” line. For, a glance at the signs on Broadway will prove to any one that the “lost” have been found in Gotham.
Smoking his corncob pipe the Professor paced his rooms at the Royal Victoria, and mentally consigned Prince Djiddin and his indefatigable Moonshee to Eblis, the Inferno, Sheol, or some other ardent corner of Limbo. “How long will these two yellow fellows keep poor old Fraser enchanted?” mused the disgruntled American, mindful of his hotel bill running on. “The old man is crazy after the two Thibetans, and I can’t see his game. He does not wish me to publish my own volume first. That is why he has given me the ‘marble heart,’ and taken them into his house. Their wing of the Banker’s Folly is now an Eastern idolaters’ temple. If I could only hook on to the ‘Moonshee,’ I might make a ‘scoop’—a clean scoop—on old Fraser. God! how my book would sell if I could only get it out first. And yet I dare not offend this old scholar, Andrew Fraser. He must be true to me. He has read to me all the original manuscript of his own half-finished work. He must trust to me, and he has promised to give me a resume of their disclosures also after they leave. The Thibetan Prince will only be here two weeks longer.”
“Then old Fraser will take me to his heart again.” Alaric Hobbs reflected on his vain attempt to try the Tunguse, Chinook, Zuni, Apache, Sioux, and Esquimaux dialects on the handsome Prince Djiddin, whose Oriental magnificence was even now the despairing admiration of the two pretty housemaids.
“My august master cannot speak to any one but the great scholar whom he came here to see. He soon returns to his retirement in his palace in the Karakorum Mountains. And he never will emerge thence!” solemnly said the Moonshee, adding in a whisper: “He may, by the grace of Buddha, be re-incarnated as the Dalai-Lama. He springs from the loins of kings. I dare not break in upon his awful silence.” The Moonshee’s significant gesture of drawing a hand across his own brown throat had silenced the pushing American professor.
“By hokey!” he groaned, “it is hard to have to play second fiddle to this purblind old Scotchman.” Alaric Hobbs had been a reporter upon that dainty sheet, The New York Whorl, in one of his “emergent” periods, and so he writhed in agony at being left at the post. “I must be content to tap old Fraser when he comes back from London with that embarrassing lump of beauty, his millionaire niece. She would make a fitting spouse for this Prince Djiddin, for she never speaks a word—at least to me. And this swell Prince, who comes ‘only one in a box,’ gets the same ‘frozen hand.’ Funny girl, that. But I must yield to old Fraser’s moods.” Alaric Hobbs then descended to the tap-room and instructed the pretty barmaid in the manufacture of his own favorite “cocktail,” an American drink of surpassing fierceness and “innate power,” which had once caused “Bald-headed Wolf,” a Kiowa chieftain, to slay his favorite squaw, scalp a peace commissioner, and chase a fat army paymaster till he died of fright in his ambulance, after Alaric Hobbes had incautiously left a bottle of this “red-eye” mixture with his aboriginal host on one of the “exploring tours.” A powerful disturbing agent, the American cocktail!
But for all Miss Nadine Johnstone’s seeming aversion to men, and in spite of Prince Djiddin’s inability to utter a word of any jargon save ninety-five degree Thibetan, “far above proof,” on this very morning while the “Moonshee” was transcribing under the watchful eyes of the excited Andrew Fraser the disclosures of the evening before, the young millionairess was “getting on” very well in exhibiting the glories of the tropical garden to the august tourist from the lacustrine Himalayas.
Jules Victor adroitly busied the maid whom Janet Fairbarn had dispatched to “play propriety,” and the other London girl had quietly stolen away to her own last rendezvous with her mysterious London lover, “Mr. Joseph Smith,” otherwise “Jack Blunt, Esq., of the Swell Mob of the Thames.”
The whispers of the stately young Prince brought crimson blushes to the face of the glowing girl, whose answering murmurs were as low as the siren voice of Swinburne’s “small serpents, with soft, stretching throats.” They had a double secret to keep now. A momentous, a dangerous one; for in the depths of the Tropical Gardens of Rozel, the passionate hearted Alixe Delavigne was hidden, waiting this very morning to clasp again the beautiful orphan to a bosom throbbing in wildest love. Prince Djiddin, always on his guard, artfully turned back and busied the maid, when she was released from Jules Victor’s vociferous bar-gaining, with a half-hour’s choosing her “fairing,” out of the lively peddler’s pretty stock. The woman’s vanity made her an easy victim. The “descendant of Thibetan Kings” could not, of course, speak intelligibly, but the yellow sovereigns which he carried were the magic talisman which opened at once the pretty maid servant’s softened heart.
It was a long half hour before the happy Nadine Johnstone returned to join the kinsman of the Maharajah of Cashmere. Her eyes were gleaming in a tender, dawning lovelight, her lips still thrilling with Alixe Delavigne’s warm kisses. In her heart, there still rang out her mysterious visitor’s last words: “Wait, darling! My own darling! Before another month the secret Government agent will have officially visited Andrew Fraser. We are all ready to act with crushing power when the happy moment safely arrives. And you shall then hear all the story of the past on my breast. You shall know how near you have been to my loving heart in all these weary years. The story of your own dear mother’s life shall be my wedding present to you. Yet, a few days more of watchful patience,” softly sighed Alixe.
“For we must not let Andrew Fraser wake for a moment from his frenzy of Thibetan study until we can force from him the permission which we will demand to visit you, and to free you from his control.”
Prince Djiddin paced solemnly back toward the Banker’s Folly, leaving the overjoyed maid to bundle up all her many gifts. A grateful wink to Jules Victor from the Prince rewarded the disguised valet, as he gayly sped away to meet his mistress, and to obtain her orders for the next day. This artful game of mingled Literature and Love had so far been safely played, but Jules Victor had secretly warned Nadine Johnstone against any confidences with her pretty London sewing woman. “She has found a sweetheart here. He is a curious looking fellow, he has money and is liberal, and, so, what you tell her she will surely tell her sweetheart. Trust to no one but the other maid, who is devoted to me,” proudly said the dapper little Frenchman. Nearing the mansion, on this eventful morning, Prince Djiddin, at a hidden bend of a leafy path, whispered to his fair conductress, “For God’s sake, darling Nadine, do not betray yourself! Those sweetly shining eyes are tell-tale stars! Your heart happiness will struggle for expression. Go to your rooms at once. Pour out your happy heart in song, lift up your voice. But, watch over your very heart-throbs! Only a single fortnight more, darling, and we will clip the claws of this old Scottish lion who has you in his clutches!
“Anstruther will soon make his coup de main, for Hawke has at last gone back to India, and we will have a deadly grasp soon on the frightened Andrew Fraser. He must either give up his legal tyranny and yield you to us, or else face a future which would appall even a braver man. I dare not to tell you our secret yet. Only the Viceroy and Anstruther know it. And, now, darling, above all, be sure not to betray yourself, in London. Remember that Anstruther will have you secretly watched, from this gate to the very moment when you return to it! Any false play of old Fraser would lead to his detention by the authorities, and you would be freed at once by the law!”
In the three weeks of their long masquerade, neither Prince Djiddin, his scribe and interpreter, or else the two, as studious visitors, never left Andrew Fraser alone a single moment! The old scholar was thrilled at heart with Eric Murray’s solemn rehearsing of Frank Halton’s valuable notebooks and ingenious theories. He eagerly enforced Prince Djiddin’s request that no curious strangers should be allowed to force themselves on him, no matter of what lofty rank. Prince Djiddin was wrapped in the veil of a solemn personal seclusion.
And to this end Simpson, now the butler of the “Banker’s Folly,” was especially assigned to wait upon the austere “Prince Djiddin” as his “body servant.” Only one visit of state was exchanged between “Prince Djiddin” and General Wragge, Her Majesty’s Commander of the Channel Islands. The “Moonshee,” with a sober dignity, had interpreted for the British Commander of the Manche, and in due state, a return visite de ceremonie to General Wagge’s mansion and headquarters strangely found Captain Anson Anstruther, A.D.C. of the Viceroy of India, a pilgrim to St. Heliers, to arrange secretly for “Prince Djiddin’s” safe conduct and return to Thibet. The curious society crowd and St. Heliers’s beautiful women envied Captain Anstruther his three hours conference with the “Asiatic lion.”
By day, in the vaulted library, Andrew Fraser pored over the weird stories of Runjeet Singh, of Aurung zebe, of King Dharma, and the Cashmerian priest who came with Buddha’s first message to Thibet! The story of the marvelous royal babe found floating in the Ganges, in a copper box, a century before Christ, the tales of the “Konchogsum,” the “Buddha jewel,” the “doctrine jewel,” and the “priesthood jewel” fed the burning fever of old Fraser’s senile mind. He now felt that he lived but only in the past. At night, he labored alone till the wee sma’ hours, depositing his precious manuscript in a secret hiding-place, where he now scarcely glanced at the “insured packet,” which had been such a dangerous legacy of his dead brother. He had forgotten all his daily life and even his fears for the future in the fierce exultation of concealing his strangely gotten Thibetan lore from his rival, Alaric Hobbs.
“A remarkable mind,” growled old Fraser, “but a Yankee—and so untrustworthy.” At last, unwillingly, with a quaking heart, lest Prince Djiddin should decamp in his absence, he obeyed an imperative legal summons and proceeded to London with Nadine Johnstone, leaving his house under the charge of that sphinx-eyed Scottish spinster, Janet Fairbarn.
To the “Moonshee,” and to the rubicund veteran Simpson, the departing Andrew Fraser said solemnly, “The Prince is to be the master here until my return.” With a joyous heart the London sewing girl embarked as Miss Johnstone’s one personal attendant, forgetful of her devoted lover, Joseph Smith, who had temporarily disappeared, gone over to France “on business.” For she was herself going back to the dear delights of her beloved London, and her liberal lover had already given her his address at the Cor d’Abondance.
“You must telegraph to me, Mattie, where you are staying, and when you leave London to return. I may run over to Southampton and come back on the same boat with you. Write to me, my own girl, every day, and here’s a five-pound note to buy your stamps with.” On his sacred promise of honor to write to her himself every day, and to let no black Gallic eyes eclipse her “orbs of English blue,” Mattie Jones allowed her lover an extra liberal allowance of good-bye kisses.
While Professor Andrew Fraser, Miss Nadine Johnstone, and the lovelorn Mattie Jones, were escorted to London by a head clerk of the estate’s solicitors, Prince Djiddin and the “Moonshee” unbent their brows and rested from the nervous strain of the three weeks of continued deception.
While the happy “Moonshee” escaped to his own fair bride, Prince Djiddin, under Simpson’s guidance, examined minutely the superb modern castle, and even microscopically examined all the beautiful surroundings of Rozel Head. “It may come in handy some day,” mused Major Hardwicke, “especially if we have to aid Nadine Johnstone to escape.” The pseudo-Prince was glad to often steal out alone to the headland overlooking Rozel Pier, and there watch the French luggers beating to seaward sailing like fierce cormorants along the wild coast of St. Malo. He was glad to fill his lungs with the fresh, crisp, salt air, and to commune in safety at length with the faithful Simpson.
Securely hid in an angle of the cliff, they talked over all the mystery of Hugh Fraser’s bloody “taking off,” and of the dreary three years of Death in Life left before Nadine.
“As for the old master, he was an out and out hard ‘un,” stolidly said Simpson. “Who killed him, nobody knows and nobody cares. I’ve always suspicioned that there Ram Lal and yer fancy friend, this Major Alan Hawke.”
Hardwicke started in a sudden alarm. “Why so?” he demanded.
“I believe that they tried to blackmail him about some of his old Eurasian love affairs, or else some official secret they had spied out. You see the niggers in the marble house were all Ram Lal’s friends, and any one of them could have left the murderers alone to do their work and then let ‘em out of the house. I believe that Hawke did the job, and Ram Lal got away with some of the missing crown jewels. I’ll tell you, Major Harry, General Willoughby and the magistrates had me under fire there for many a day.”
“See here, Simpson,” said Major Hardwicke, “a man who would murder the father, would rob the daughter! I’ll give you a thousand pounds if you instantly notify me, if Hawke ever is found creeping around here. There may be some ugly old family secrets, you know.”
“I’m your man! Pay or no pay!” cried Simpson. “Only they think of giving me a three months’ leave on pay to visit my people.”
“Don’t go! Don’t go! till I tell you!” cried the Major.
“I am glad this fellow Hawke, whom you say has been dropped, is now on his way back to India,” said Simpson.
“Yes, but he might show up here devilish strangely,” mused Hardwicke. “He is just the fellow for a dirty fluke. Watch over Nadine, Simpson,” cried Hardwicke, “for I’ve sworn to make her my wife, within three months, uncle or no uncle!”
“I will,” growled Simpson. “I’ve an old grudge to settle with the Major, and I’ll tell you some day,” said the veteran. “Let us go in. There are some curious people here. I’ll tell you all when I’m your own man, and the young mistress is Mrs. Major Hardwicke!”
On this very evening, as the gray mists hid the Jersey outline from the windows of Etienne Garcin’s den, Jack Blunt and Major Alan Hawke were seated in the Major’s bedroom in the cabaret. They were cheerfully discussing two steaming “grogs,” but there was doubt and a shifty lack of thorough confidence between the two scoundrels as yet.
“So you think the boat will do?” flatly demanded Jack Blunt, offering some exceptional cigars.
“Just the thing,” carefully replied the Major. “And your terms for a two weeks charter?”
“Twenty-five hundred francs for the boat and outfit—the same sum for the gang, cash down. Two weeks, with the privilege of renewal for two more-at the same rate,” doggedly said Blunt. “Now, you’ve got to make up your mind soon, Hawke,” said Jack Blunt roughly. “I’ve told you the whole lay, and so far, have given you the worth of your money. If you can’t ‘come up,’ then I’m going to run a lugger load of brandy and ‘baccy over to the Irish coast. She’s a sixty tonner and by God! fit to cross the Atlantic! Old Garcin, too, is getting impatient. Our being here, stops his ‘regular business,’” gloomily said Blunt.
Hawke’s impassive face angered Jack Blunt as he continued: “And you say that I can trust Garcin’s brother Andre down at Isle Dial.”
“Yes. Even if we had to stow one or both of these fools away down there.”
“I am sure that Angelique and I could hide them away for a year or else safely forever there,” cried Jack Blunt, in a hoarse whisper. “It’s only a matter of money and damme if I believe you’ve got any! If you fool us, you’ll never get out of here alive!” Major Hawke only smiled, and dropped his hands lightly on the butts of two heavy bull-dog revolvers ready there in his velveteen trousers’ pockets.
“Jack! Don’t be an ass!” he said. “I play this game to win. Do you think that I would bring my ready money into this murder pen? Now, tell me what you will take in cash, to tell me where the old miser has hidden the stuff I want? And how much will you take to do the job? I want to know when they return, and I want your help and the aid of the gang. You are to crack the crib—alone—while they are away, and then we, perhaps, may meet them, on their way home. The lugger lying off in that cove to the north of Rozel Head, below the old martello tower.”
“Have you been over there?” amazedly cried Blunt.
“Oh! I know every inch of the place of old,” laughed Hawke, still with his hands on his revolvers.
“Well, Major,” said Jack, pouring out a cognac, “I’ll take, first, five hundred pounds cash for the information. Another five hundred for the job, with a quarter of what we get. And this second sum you can put up with Etienne Garcin. You can pay him now the two hundred for the men and the boat, out of that, and give me the rest of the odd change later. We’ll never lose sight of each other after we start. For the Hirondelle will not leave me in the lurch. I’ve sworn never to wear the widow’s jewelry again.” Jack Blunt’s eyes were devilish in their glare.
“So, it’s five hundred pounds down now, and I can order the expedition on, after the payment. You’ll give me on the instant all the news from Mattie Jones of the intended return, for I propose to have some fun with the Professor.”