A Fascinating Traitor Part 15

"Is he better?" demanded Justine, with guilty qualms.

"He is resting now, but he will not be quieted till he sees this strange man," answered the disconsolate girl.

"How beautiful she is," mused the Swiss woman, as Nadine Johnstone sat with parted lips relating the excitements of the morning. The wooing Indian climate was fast ripening the exquisite loveliness of eighteen.

Her dark eyes gleamed with earnestness, and the rich brown locks crowned her stately head as with a coronal of golden bronze. The roses on her cheeks were not yet faded by the insidious climate of burning India, and a thrilling earnestness accented the music of her voice.

"What can we do, Nadine?" murmured Justine Delande.

"Nothing," sighed the motherless girl. "But when this Major Hawke comes, you must, for my sake, find out all you can. Ah! To leave India forever!" she sighed. Her marble prison was only a place of sorrow and lamentation.

Major Hawke's flying steeds reached the marble house, after a circuit to Ram Lal's jewel mart. Without leaving his carriage, he called out the obsequious old Hindu. The dusk of evening favored Ram Lal in his adroit lying.

He gave a brief account of Hugh Johnstone's strange morning seizure, forgetting to divulge to Hawke that the old nabob had already bribed him heavily to watch the inmate of the Silver Bungalow, and report to him her every movement. Nor, did the Hindu divulge his secret report to Madame Berthe Louison, after her ostentatious public carriage promenade.

He further hid the fact that Madame Louison had deftly pressed a hundred pounds upon him, in return for a daily report of the secret life of the marble house. But he smiled blandly, when Major Hawke hastily said "Will he die?"

"No; he is all right! He was over there with the Mem-Sahib this morning, and something must have happened."

"What happened?" imperiously demanded Hawke.

"I don't know," slowly answered Ram Lal.

"Don't lie to me, Ram Lal," fiercely said the Major. "I have a fifty-pound note if you will find out."

"He is going there to-morrow," slowly said Ram.

"All right, watch them both. I'll be back here. Wait for me." And then at a nod the horses sprang away.

"Fools! Fools all!" glowered Ram Lal, as he straightened up from his low salaam. "I'll have those stolen jewels yet. Now is the time to gain his confidence. He is an old man, and weak, and, cowardly."

When Major Hawke entered the great doors of the marble house, he was gravely received by Mademoiselle Justine Delande. "He has been asking every ten minutes for you," she said. "I am to show you at once to his rooms."

"Now, what's this? what's all this?" cheerfully cried the Major as he entered the vast sleeping-room of the Anglo-Indian. Old Johnstone feebly pointed to the door, and motioned to his attendants to leave the room.

He was worn and gaunt, and his ashen cheeks and sunken eyes told of some great inward convulsion. He had aged ten years since the pompous tiffin.

"I'm not well, Hawke! Come here! Near to me!" he huskily cried. And then, the hunter and the hunted gazed mutely into each other's eyes.

"What's gone wrong?" frankly demanded the Major. The old man scowled in silence for a moment.

"I have no one I dare trust but you," he unwillingly said. "You know something of my position, my future. I want to know if you have ever met this woman who has taken the Silver Bungalow--a kind of a French woman.

There's her card." Old Johnstone's haggard eyes followed Hawke, as he silently studied the bit of pasteboard.

"Madams Berthe Louison," he gravely read. And, then, with a magnificent audacity, he lied successfully. "Never even heard the name," he murmured.

"Fellows at the Club speaking of some such woman today. Pretty woman, I supppose a decla.s.ste." Hawke, lifted his eyebrows.

"No, a she-devil!" almost shouted old Hugh. "Now, I want you to watch her and find out who her backers are. She is trying to annoy me. Be prudent, and I'll make it a year's pay to you." Hawke's greedy eyes lightened as he bowed. "But never mention my name. Come here as often as you will. Go now and look up what you can. I'll see you to-morrow, in the afternoon. Don't sc.r.a.pe acquaintance with her. Just watch her. I'm going there to-morrow morning myself."

"You?" said Hawke.

"Yes," half groaned the old man, turning his face to the wall. "Come to-morrow afternoon. Spare no money. I'll make it right. Don't linger a minute now."

Major Alan Hawke was gayly buoyant as the horses trotted back to Ram Lal Singh's, where he proposed to await the hour of ten o'clock. "I fancy, my lady, that you, too, will pay toll, as well as Hugh Johnstone,"

he murmured. "You shall pay for all you get, and pay as you go."

He cheerfully dined alone in Ram Lal's little business sanctum, and listened to the measured disclosures of the Hindu in return for the fifty-pound note.

"It's to-morrow's interview that I want to know about," quietly directed the major, whereat Ram Lal modestly said:

"I'll find a way to let you know all."

"That's more than she will, the sly devil," said Hawke, in his heart, as he leaned back in the consciousness of "duty well done."

In the Silver Bungalow, Alixe Delavigne sat in her splendid dining-room, under the ministrations of her Gallic body-guard. Her eyes were very dreamy as she recalled all the fearful incidents of the annee terrible.

The flight from Paris after their father's death, the escape to England, the refuge at a Brighton hotel--the sudden projecture of Hugh Fraser athwart their humble lives. When the returned Indian functionary abandoned all other pursuits and plainly showed his mad craving to follow Valerie Delavigne everywhere, then the younger sister had learned of his rank, of his long leave and wealth and future prospects. The man was most personable then. He was of a solid rank and a brilliant civil position, and the penniless daughters of the dead Colonel Delavigne were now reduced to a few hundred francs. The hand of Misery was upon them, poor and friendless. Alixe, with a shudder, recalled the two years of silence, since the ardent Pierre Troubetskoi had whispered to beautiful Valerie Delavigne in Paris: "I go to Russia, but I will soon return and you must wait for me!"

Day by day, when the skies grew darker, Valerie Delavigne had gazed with a haunting sorrow in her eyes, at her helpless sister. Some strange possessing desire had urged Hugh Fraser on to woo and win the helpless French beauty, whom an adverse fate had stranded in England. The mute sacrifice of the wedding was followed by the two years of Valerie's loveless marriage. It was an existence for the two sisters, bought by the sacrifice of one and Troubetskoi never had written!

Sitting alone, waiting for the morrow, to face Hugh Fraser once more, Alixe Delavigne recalled, with a vow of vengeance, that sad past, the slow breaking of the b.u.t.terfly, the revelation of all Hugh Fraser's cold-hearted tyranny, the sway of his demoniac jealousy--jealous, even, of a sister's innocent love. And that last miserable scene, on the eve of their projected voyage to India, when the maddened tyrant discovered Pierre Troubetskoi's long-belated letter, returned once more to madden her. Fraser had simply raged in a demoniac pa.s.sion.

For the mistake of a life was at last revealed when that one letter came! The letter addressed to the wife as Valerie Delavigne, which had followed them slowly upon their travels, and, by a devil's decree, had fallen, by a spy-servant's trick, into Hugh Fraser's hands. It mattered not that the coming lover was even yet ignorant of the miserable marriage. The envelope, with its address, was missing, when the long pages of burning tenderness were read by the infuriated husband. "I have been buried a year in the snows of Siberia," wrote Pierre, "upon the secret service of the Czar. I was ill of a fever for long months upon my return, and now I am coming to take you to my heart, never to be parted any more." The address of his banker in Paris, all the plans for their voyage to Russia, even the tender messages to the sister of his love--all these were the last goad to a maddened man, whose raging invective and brutal violence drove a weeping woman out into the cheerless night. He deemed her the Russian's cherished mistress. With a shudder Alixe Delavigne recalled the white face of the discarded mother, whose babe slumbered in peace, while the half-demented woman fled away to the shelter of the house of an old French nurse.

The morrow, when Hugh Fraser bade her also leave his house forever, was pictured again in her mind, and the insolent gift of the hundred-pound note, with the words, "Go and find your sister! Never darken my door again!" She had taken that money and used it to save her sister's life.

The darkened sick-chamber, the flight across the channel, and the rugged path which led Valerie, at last, to die in peace in Pierre Troubetskoi's arms--all this returned to the resolute avenger of a sister who had died, dreaming of the little childish face hidden from her forever, "He shall pay the price of his safety to the uttermost farthing, to the last little humiliation," she cried, starting up as Alan Hawke stood before her, for the hour of ten had stolen upon her. "Nadine shall love her mother, and that love shall bridge the silent gulf of Death!"

"You have been agitated?" he gently said, for there were tell-tale tears upon her lashes. "Tell me, is it victory or defeat?"

"I shall see my sister's child, to-morrow," the Lady of Jitomir bravely said. "And he--the man of the iron heart--shall conduct me to his house in honor." There was that shining on her transfigured face which made Alan Hawke murmur:

"There is a great love here--greater than the hate which demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

He waited, abashed and silent, for his strange employer's orders of the day.

"Is there anything I can do for you to-morrow?" said Alan Hawke. "Do you find your arrangements convenient for you here in every way?" The respectful tone of his manner touched Berthe Louison's heart. He was beginning to win his way to her regard by judiciously effacing himself.

"I am entirely at home, thanks to your thoughtful provision," she smiled. "There is nothing to-night. Have you seen Johnstone?" Her dark eyes were steadfastly fixed upon him now.

"Yes; he sent for me. He is very much agitated and, I should say, he is almost at your mercy. But beware of an apparent surrender on his part.

He is--capable of anything!"

"I know it. I am on my guard," slowly replied Berthe Louison. She saw that Alan Hawke had spoken the truth to her--even with some mental reservations. "To-morrow morning will determine my public relations with Hugh Johnstone. Come to me to-morrow night, and do not be surprised if we meet as guests at Hugh Johnstone's table. You must only meet me as a stranger. I may leave here for a few days, and then I will place you in charge of my interests in my absence."

The Major gravely replied:

"You may depend upon me wherever you may wish to call upon me."

"Strange mutability of womanhood," he mused a half hour later as he left the lady's side. "There is a woman whom I should not care to face tomorrow morning if I were in Hugh Johnstone's shoes." It was the renegade's last verdict as he slept the sleep of the prosperous. The Willoughby dinner and his own feast now occupied his attention, for his mysterious employer had bade him to eat, drink, and be merry.

At ten o'clock the next day the "gilded youth" of the Delhi Club all knew that Hugh Johnstone had betaken himself to the Silver Bungalow, in the carriage of the woman whose beauty was now an accepted fact. Hugely delighted, these unG.o.dly youth winked in merry surmises as to the relationship between the budding Baronet and the hidden Venus. Even bets as to discreetly "distant relationship," or a forthcoming crop of late orange blossoms were the order of the day. But silent among the merry throng, the handsome Major, making his due call of ceremony upon General Willoughby, denied all knowledge of the designs of either of the high contracting parties.

In due state, escorted by the alert Jules Victor, Hugh Johnstone entered the Silver Bungalow, to find his Ca.s.sandra silently awaiting him. There was no memory of the happenings of the day before in her unconstrained greeting. The door of the strategic cabinet was ajar, but the tottering visitor had no fears of an ambush. For Madame Alixe Delavigne calmly said: "Jules, you may remain within call, in the hall."