A Fascinating Traitor Part 22

He, of course, slyly claims to have only lately made this bungling accidental recovery. If the return is a really valuable one, then all you can officially do is to accept it. But be wary! I can give you some friendly aid here, when you get all the returned treasure. I'll give you a captain's guard here. Bring all here at once. We, you, and I, will seal it up, and I'll have old Ram Lal Singh secretly come here and value them. He's the best judge of gems in India, and he was once an official in the Royal Treasure Chamber of the old King of Oude. Less than fifty thousand pounds worth as a return would be a transparent humbug, and besides you can delay your signature for a day or so, till you and I, after listing the gems, see this old expert and have him examine them in our presence. No one need know of it but you and I, and His excellency, the Viceroy. As for Hugh Johnstone, he is simply capable of anything. I told the Viceroy's aid, Anstruther, so. And I'll be d.a.m.ned glad to get Johnstone out of my bailiwick, that I will."

With which vigorous "flea in the ear," General Willoughby dismissed his startled comrade to the society of his crafty old host. And, that night, strange dreams of unrest haunted the "modern Major General" in the marble house, while singularly gloomy misgivings weighed down the brave-hearted Berthe Louison, now heart-hungry for a sight of the doubly beloved child of the dead lady of Jitomir. She woke in the hot and clammy night to cry "No, no! He would never dare to! She is here! I shall go boldly and demand to see her to-morrow!" Her womanly intuition told her the lines were broken.

And so, robed in fashion's shining armor, Alixe Delavigne counted the moments, until at four o'clock of the next afternoon her carriage waited in the bower-decked oval of the marble house. A gloomy frown settled upon her face, as the impa.s.sive Hugh Johnstone approached her carriage, sun helmet in hand. She scented treachery now! There were a dozen brilliant young officers longingly gazing at this sweet apparition in the gloomy gardens. Even General Abercromby strutted out and displayed himself in the foreground, as Johnstone leaned over and gravely whispered to the pale-faced beauty:

"My daughter has been sent away from the city for her health! Her absence is indefinite. I will see you when General Abercromby leaves here in a week, and explain all. No, not before. It is impossible."

With a sudden motion of her hand to Jules, Alixe Delavigne leaned back, half fainting, upon her cushions. Her agitated heart was now beating in a wild tumult of rage and baffled hatred! "Home!" she cried, and then, as the marble house was lost to view, she harshly cried: "To Ram Lal's first! To the jewel store!"

There was a brooding death in her eyes when she sternly said to the merchant: "Send him to me at once! Send Hawke! Go! Waste not a moment!"

And then she swore an oath of vengeance, which would have made Hugh Fraser Johnstone shudder, as he sat drinking champagne cup with his guest. "One for you, my lady!" he had laughed, grimly, as the woman whom he had tricked drove swiftly away. And the grim fates laughed too, spinning at a shortening life web.

Major Alan Hawke was interrupted in his cosy nest at the Club by the hasty advent of Ram Lal. The old jeweler had for once abandoned all his Oriental calm, and he trembled as he muttered. "She demands you at once.

I brought my own carriage. Go to her quickly. There will be a great monsoon of quarrel now. But her face looks as if she was stricken to the death, and something will come of all this. You must watch like the crouching cheetah!"

"What has happened?" anxiously cried Hawke.

"She has just found out the women are gone! She went up to the marble house this afternoon, and saw the old Sahib Johnstone. He did not even bid her to leave her carriage. One of my men ran over at once and told me. She drove to the shop on her way homeward and sent me here." The black Son of Plutus scuttled away, as if in a mortal fear. "I do not dare to face her--in her angry mood," was Ram's last word. He was only accustomed to baby-faced Hindu women of the "langorous lily" type, who hung on his every word--the mute slaves of his jaded pa.s.sions. "This one is a tigress!" he sighed, as he fled from the Club.

"Ah! My lady is a bit rattled," mused Hawke as the carriage sped along.

"Now is the time to catch her off her guard." And so he made himself sleek and patient, with the surface varnish of his "society manner,"

when Jules Victor, with semi-hostile eyes, ushered him into the presence of Alixe Delavigne, still in her robes of "visitation splendor."

"What is this devil's work done in my absence? This spiriting away of Nadine!" cried Alixe, grasping Hawke's wrist with a nervous clasp, which made the strong man wince. "This juggling in my absence?" Her eyes were sternly fixed on him in dawning suspicions.

"Madame," calmly said Alan Hawke, "if you had trusted to me, this would not have happened. But you have chosen to make an enigma of yourself, from the first. I am not tired of your moods, but I am of your cold disdain, your contemptuous slighting of my useful mental powers. You left me with no orders. I warned you that he was capable of anything.

See how he has treated me," he continued, with a well-dissembled indignation. "He called me away to Allahabad to be bear-leader to Abercromby, and the brute has just shown me the door, to-day, openly saying that his daughter has gone to the Hills. I believe that he lies! I know that he does! If you had deigned to trust me, I would have followed on her track to h.e.l.l itself, but you chose to play the woman--the catlike toying with men! d.a.m.n him! I owe him one now! If he had openly entertained me in this brilliant visit, I might have re-entered the staff service--in a week. And, you threw all my experience away in not trusting to me."

Alixe Delavigne looked up, with one piercing glance, as she sealed a note. "Go openly to him--to Johnstone! Bring him back at once with you!

He dare not disobey this! I will denounce him, now, to-day! to both the generals, and go to the Viceroy myself! I care not what excuse he makes!

BRING HIM!"

"And so I cut the last tie that binds me to a future reinstatement for you, a callous employer, and am left adrift without an anchor out for the future! You know that this man is a director of the Bank of Bengal!

A multi-millionaire! He will chase me from India! I might trace the girl to her hiding-place for you! She has surely been sent home by sea!"

Alixe Delavigne was gliding up and down the room as noiselessly as a serpent. She abruptly stopped her march.

"I will find her in Europe! What do you require to follow my orders for three months? To wait here and then to take the road or to join me in Europe! I pay all expenses and incidentals. What will make you reasonably sure against fate--in advance?"

Alan Hawke dropped his eyes. Gentleman once, he was ashamed of the sordid implied threat of abandonment.

"Five thousand pounds!" he whispered. The stony-faced woman dashed off a check.

"Bring that man to me at once!" she cried, "and then go down to Grindlay's agency here, and get your money! Go openly!"

"Shall I come back with him?" demanded Hawke.

"No, bring him here, and then excuse yourself."

Alixe Delavigne watched the carriage dash away. Hawke was on his mettle at last, and he brutally enjoyed the little tableau, when Hugh Fraser Johnstone impatiently tore open "Madame Berthe Louison's" note. Hawke observed significantly that he had been shown into a small room, suited to semi-menial interviews. The additional slight maddened him. The clash of gla.s.ses and shouts of a gay crowd of military convives rose up in a merry chorus within. Across that banquet hall's draped doors the thin, invisible barrier of "Coventry" shut out the bold social renegade.

"She'll have to wait, Hawke!" roughly said Hugh Johnstone, moving toward the door.

"By G.o.d! she shall not wait a minute, you d.a.m.ned old moneybags!" cried the ruined soldier, who had long forfeited his caste--his cherished rank. "You treated her like a brute to-day! She is a lady, and you can't play fast and loose with her! You insulted me by closing your d.a.m.ned door and sending me your offensive letter. Go to her now! If you do not, I'll send my seconds to you, and if you don't fight, by Heaven, I'll horsewhip you like a drunken pandy!" and the fearless renegade barred the door.

"Don't be a fool, Hawke," faltered Johnstone. "She has taken the whole thing the wrong way. I'll join you in a moment. I've got these men on my hands. What did she tell you?"

"Nothing!" harshly cried Hawke, "and I wash my hands of you and her.

Settle your intrigues as you will!"

Not a word was spoken, as Alan Hawke gravely opened the door to Madame Berthe Louison's reception room. Hugh Johnstone's yellow face paled as the Major breaking the silence, coldly said: "Madame! I have broken a friendship of fifteen years to-day! Please do consider me a stranger to you both after today!" And then he walked firmly out of the house with a warning glance to Jules Victor, lingering in the long hall.

The quick Frenchman saw in Hawke's gesture the secret sign of a hidden friend, and he threw up his hand in a Parisian gesture of grat.i.tude and comprehension, and failed not to report to his mistress, who saw Hawke's fine method with a secret delight.

Hawke drove to Grindlay's agency, where, in a private room, he promptly cashed his check.

"I'll take it in Bank of England notes!" he quietly said as the clerk lifted inquiring eyes. "I am going to transact some business for the lady."

"Now, I can defy Fate!" he exulted, when he was safe out of the bank.

"She will trust me now, and old Johnstone will fear me. A case of vice versa!" And, as he drove to the Club, he murmured, "I will never leave this fight now! Damme! I'll just go in and get the girl! Just to spite the old coward!"

Within the dreaming shades of the gardens hiding the Silver Bungalow, there was no sign of clamor. The beautiful little jewel-box of a mansion was apparently deserted, but a duel to the death was going on within the great white parlor where Hugh Johnstone stood raging at bay. He leaped up in a mad outburst of pa.s.sion, when Alixe Delavigne cuttingly broke the silence. The old nabob knew that the desperate woman in her reckless mood feared nothing.--

"You have lied to me! You have tricked me! You have sent that girl away to Europe to hide her forever from me! I kept my pact, and, you deliberately lied!" She stood before him like an avenging fury, quivering in a pa.s.sion which appalled him. But secure in his skillfuly executed maneuver, he reached for his hat and stick.

"I defy you! I have no answer to your abuse! Draw off your fighting cur, Major Hawke, or I'll grind you and him in the dust!" The old man was frantic under the insult. He moved toward the door.

"Stop! You go to your ruin!" cried the irate woman. "Will you give me full access to your daughter?"

"Never! My Lady! Go and lord it over your whipped hounds in Poland--hide in your estates the price of the double shame of two most accommodating Frenchwomen!"

"By the G.o.d who made me" she hissed, "I will bar your Baronetcy forever!

I will find out that girl, and she shall learn to love me and despise your hated name and memory! It is open war now! and,--mark you--liar and hound, these two generals, the Viceroy, and, all India shall soon know what I know!" Then, with a clang of her silver bell, she called Jules Victor to her side. "Jules," she said, "If this person ever crosses the threshold of my door again, shoot him like the dog he is!"

And then the black-browed Frenchman, holding open the door, hissed "ALLEZ!" as Hugh Johnstone saw for the last time the marble face of the woman who had doomed him to shame.

"Go and send Ram Lal to me at once!" sternly said Berthe Louison. "Then to Major Hawke. Tell him that I want him to dine with me, and I shall need him all the evening. Order my carriage for five o'clock!"

Alan Hawke had played his best trump card, and played it well, for the woman who had doubted him, gloried in his courage and hardihood. "I can trust him now!" she murmured when she drove to the Delhi agency of Grindlays and, two hours later, astounded the local manager by the executive rapidity of her varied business actions.

"What's in the wind?" murmured the bank manager. "A sudden flitting!"

He had been ordered to detail two of his best men to accompany Madame Louison to Calcutta, in a special car leaving at midnight. "Telegraph to your head office in Calcutta of my arrival. Major Alan Hawke will represent me here, under written orders to be left with your Calcutta manager. Send this on in cipher." She handed him a long dispatch to his chief.

Madame Berthe Louison was seen in Delhi, in public, for the last time, as she gazed steadily at the brilliant throng on the lawns of the marble house. A fete Champetre had brought "all of Delhi" together, and the conspicuous absence of "the French Countess" was the reigning sensation.

The tall, bent form of Hugh Fraser Johnstone was prominent reigning as host, under a great marquee. Neither of the great generals were there, however, for Simpson had drawn Major Hardwicke aside to whisper: "A captain's guard came here to-day and took an enormous treasure in precious stones up to Willoughby's Headquarters!" and the two commanders were even then busied in listing the recovered loot, with a dozen yellow-faced Hindus and several confidential staff officers. "It's the last act, Captain darlin'," said Simpson. "Old Hugh has given me secret orders to get ready to go on to London. He only takes his personal articles. Young Douglas Fraser will come here and manage the Indian estates."

"Who's he?" eagerly cried Hardwicke.

"The fellow who carried the women away--the old man's only nephew."