BERTHE LOUISON.”
When the stars lit up the broad Hooghly that night, a swift Peninsular and Oriental Liner drew away down the river, with a smart steam-launch towing at her companionway. The woman who said adieu to the Viceroy’s aid and her grave-faced banker in her splendid rooms had read the brief words of Captain Anstruther, telling her that the electric Ariel was true to his trust. “All right. Both dispatches received. Welcome. Anstruther.” The official staterooms were a bower of floral beauty, and the gallant aid murmured: “I hope that nothing has been forgotten. The whole ship is at your disposal. The Commander has the Viceroy’s personal orders. And, I was to give you the letter and this package!” When the banker had exchanged the last words of counsel and advice, he said: “Trust me! I know Hawke of old! We will let him go up the ladder of life a little, while the other fellow comes down!”
When the little steam-launch was a black blur on the blue waters, then Alixe Delavigne, standing alone at the rail, smiled as she saw the lean, straggling shores sweep by. “I fear that General Abercromby will deem me discourteous! But time, tide, and the P. and O. steamers wait for no elderly beau, however fascinating!”
It is a matter of local history in Calcutta that General Abercromby’s remark: “Hawke! we have been a pair of damned fools! We are outwitted!” found its way at last into the clubs, and the attack of jaundice, followed up by a severe gout, which “laid out” the sighing lover for long months, proves, as of old, that stern Mars cannot cope with the bright and all-compelling Venus! But Major Alan Hawke, of the Provisional Staff, hearkened wisely to the banker’s words: “Don’t be fool enough to think that you can trifle with Madame Louison’s interests. The noble Viceroy has placed you on duty, at her own personal request, to give you a last chance to regain all the promise of your youth. One word from her, and—and you will be suspended or, dropped! You will get your military orders from the Viceroy and her wishes from me.”
Alan Hawke was paralyzed with astonishment the next day, when the Viceroy ordered him to proceed at once to Delhi, to report to General Willoughby, and to hasten to London, via Bombay, on completion of his secret service at Delhi.”
“I am a devil for luck!” muttered Hawke. “But even the tide of Fortune can drive along too fast!” He had lost his head, and forgotten all his pigmy plans. A stronger hand than his own was secretly guiding his onward path, upward to the old status of the “British officer!” “What the devil do they want of me in London?” he mused.
And, chuckling over how easily he had made the lovesick Abercromby help him into his “military seat” once more, Alan Hawke betook himself forthwith to Delhi, to report to General Willoughby for instant service. When he descended at Allahabad, his undress uniform of a major of the Staff Corps brought down on him a storm of congratulations from old friends gathered there. “Sly old boy you were!” the service men laughed, over their glasses, while wetting his new uniform. “A man must not tell all he knows!” patiently replied Major Hawke, with the sad, sweet smile of a man who had dropped into a good thing.
As he rolled along toward Delhi, he seriously cogitated “playing fair” in his new capacity. “Perhaps it will pay!” he mused. “But I will even up with that old hog, Johnstone!” He dared not contemplate now any substantial treason to Madame Alixe Delavigne. “She is a witch woman! She seems to have an untold backing! The Bankers, even, the Viceroy, and the French Consul-General, too. She could crush me! I must serve My Lady Disdain, and I will fight and die in her army!” Arriving at Delhi, Major Alan Hawke’s first visit was to Ram Lal Singh, as he prepared to “report forthwith,” in “full rig,” to the local Commander. There was a strange preoccupation in the old jeweler which baffled Hawke. Ram Lal only humbly begged to have all his lengthened accounts with Madame Berthe Louison arranged, and Alan Hawke, with a few words, calmed the Mussulman’s fears.
“I’ll have it all attended to, to-morrow, when I look it over,” said the Major, hastening away to the Club. “Ram has been at the hashish, or bhang, or the betel nut, or some of his recondite dissipations—perhaps he has enjoyed an opium bout in the Zenana,” mused the new appointee, as he gayly “begged off” from a cloud of eager congratulations by promising to “blow off” the whole Delhi Club. “Business first, pleasure afterwards” said the resplendent Major Hawke, as he clattered away, a handsome son of Mars, to report to General Willoughby.
Major Hawke was secretly delighted with his cordial reception. “Come to me to-morrow at ten, Major,” said the Commander, “I will have your first instructions, but remember absolute secrecy. This is a very grave affair to both of us—your coming employment.”
“The tide of life is bearing me on, with a devilish rapidity, with favoring gales,” the Major reflected. But beyond the clouds veiling the future he saw no farther shore.
In the dim watches of the night for a week past, Simpson, secretly busied with preparing Hugh Johnstone’s flitting, was perplexed at the sound of shuffling feet and whispered voices in the master’s rooms opening into the splendid gardens. “Who the devil has he there? Some woman!” mused the old veteran servant. Simpson had his own little “private life” to wind up, and so he was charitably inclined. It was his custom when all was still to slip away “to the quarter” where some lingering cords were now slowly snapping one by one. The old servant noted with surprise a dark form gliding on his trail in several of these goings and comings. Being of a practical nature, the man who had faced the mad rebels at Lucknow only belted on a heavy Adams revolver, and concluded at last that some others of the household were busied in secret dissipation or nocturnal lovemaking. “No one man has a controlling patent on being a fool,” mused Simpson. “Black and white, we’re all of a muchness.” And as he knew they might now leave at any moment he sped away to his last delightful nights in Delhi.
On the night when Alan Hawke returned from Calcutta, the inky blackness of an approaching storm wrapped dreaming Delhi in an impenetrable mantle. Under the huge camphor tree where the cobra had risen in its horrid menace before the frightened girl, a dark figure waited till a man glided to his side. His head was bent as the spy reported “Simpson is gone to the quarter. Two of our men have followed him, and, if he returns, he will be stopped on the way.” The only answer was an outstretched arm, and the whispered words, “Go, then, and watch.”
“It is the very night—the night of all nights!” muttered the watcher under the tree, and then, stealing forward, he tapped three times at the window where Hugh Johnstone stood with his heart beating high in all the pride of a coming triumph ready to open to the man who was settling his private affairs.
“No one shall know that I have stolen away,” he mused. “Forever and in the night.”
A light foot pressed the floor as the expected one glided over the low window sill. There was a night lamp burning dimly in a shaded corner. “Put out the light. I must tell you something. We are both watched and spied on!” whispered a well-known voice.
As Hugh Johnstone turned from the corner, in the darkness, there was a gurgling cry—a half-smothered groan—as Mirzah Shah’s poisoned dagger was driven to the hilt between his shoulders. His accounts were settled, at last!
An hour later, a dark form crept through the gardens toward the gate where Harry Hardwicke had rode in to the rescue. There was a silent struggle as two men wrestled in the darkness, and one fled away into the shadows of the night. It was the chance meeting of a spy and a murderer.
And then Major Alan Hawke stooped and picked up a heavy dagger lying at his feet. “I have the beggar’s knife,” he growled. And, with a sudden intention, he vanished toward the Club, for the knife of Mirzah Shah was reeking, and Hugh Johnstone had gone out on his darkened path alone. He had left Delhi—forever.