CHAPTER XI. “DO YOU SEE THIS DAGGER?”
Morning in Delhi! The fiery sun leaped up, gilding once more the far Himalayas and lighting the bloodstained plains of Oude. The golden shafts twinkled on the huge colonnade, the vast ruined arch, the crumbling walls, and the huge castled oval of Humayoon’s tomb. In the dark night, the monsoon winds wailed over the wreck of Hindu, Pathan, and Mogul magnificence. The dark demons of Bowanee rejoiced at a new sacrifice to the gloomy goddess; and the straggling jungle was alive again.
In the vacant caverns, whence the sons of Mohammed Bahadur were once dragged forth to die by daring Hodson’s smoking pistols, their slaughtered shades grinned over the ghastly vengeance of the barren years.
The huge dome of the mosque hung in air over the vacant palaces of the great Moguls, and the far windmill ridge, and the bastioned walls of Delhi were bathed in golden light, while Alan Hawke slept the sleep of exhaustion. And while Ram Lal Singh, secure in his zenana, calmly greeted the cool morning hour with a smiling face and a happy heart, in the lonely marble house, stern old Hugh Fraser Johnstone slept the sleep that knows no waking.
The Chandnee Chouk awoke to its busy daily chatter, and old Shahjehanabad sought its pleasures languidly again, or bowed its shoulders once more under the yoke of toil.
The faithful sought the Jumna Musjid for morning prayer, and the nonchalant British officials began to straggle into the vacant Hall of the Peacock Throne.
Far away, the Kootab Minar, rising three hundred feet in air, bore its mute witness to the splendor of the vanished rulers of Delhi, the peerless Ghori swordsmen of Khorassan. But, even as the soldiers of the old Pathan fort had marched out into the shadowless night of death to join Ghori and Baber and Nadir Shah, so the spirit of the lonely old miser nabob had sought the echoless shore.
When Simpson had unavailingly endeavored to awaken his master, the locked doors were burst in at last by the anxious servants, and they found only the tenantless shell of the mighty millionaire, as cold and rigid as the iron pillar which veils to-day its mystery of a forgotten past, when the jackals howl in the ruins of old Delhi.
Then rose up a wild outcry, and the sound of hurrying feet. The alert old veteran servitor, with instinctive military obedience, dispatched two messengers, on the run, to notify General Willoughby and Major Alan Hawke. And then, with quick wit, he forbade the gaping crowd to touch even a single article.
Not even the stiffened body, as it lay prone upon its face, was disturbed. Simpson stood there, pistol in hand, on guard until properly relieved, and as silent as a crouching rifleman on picket. The whole room bore the evidence of a thorough ransacking, and the disordered clothing of the nabob proved, too, that the body had been rifled. The mysterious nocturnal visits returned to Simpson’s mind. “Could it have been some once-wronged woman?” he mused while waiting for his “military superiors.” For the simple old soldier scorned all civilian control. His keen eye had caught the strange facts of the fastened windows, the disappearance of the two mahogany boxes, and the startling absence of the key of the chamber door.
“Whoever did this job knew what they came for and when to come!” mused Simpson. He gazed at the window sill. There was the mark of damp earth still upon it. “Just as I fancied!” growled Simp-son. “They came in at the window, and when their work was done, left by the door. There was more than one murderer in this job!” And, then, certain old stories of a mysterious Eurasian beauty returned to cloud the old man’s judgment. “Was it robbery, or vengeance?” he grumbled. “The black gang are in this, but their secrets are safe forever! They are a close corporation—these devils!”
With certain ideas of an endangered life pension, and a sudden yearning for the absent Hardwicke’s counsel, stern old Simpson awaited the coming of his betters. And, the ghastly news of Johnstone’s “taking-off” flew over Delhi to furnish a nine days’ wonder.
There was a great crowd gathered around the garden walls of the Marble House, as an officer of the guard galloped up with a platoon of cavalry. “The General will be here himself, soon! What’s all this terrible happening?” said the young officer, as he took post beside Simpson. “You have done well!” the soldier said, on a brief report. “Let nothing be touched. My guard will prevent any one leaving the grounds!” There was a sullen apathy as regarded the unloved old egoist.
Major Alan Hawke sprang to his feet, hastily, as the excited Club Steward, forgetting all his decorum, banged loudly upon the staff officer’s bedroom door. The young man was still in the dress of night, as the Steward excitedly exclaimed: “Here’s a fearful deed! Hugh Johnstone has been murdered in his bed, and—they’ve sent for you!”
Alan Hawke was staggered. “Get me a horse, at once! I must report to the General! When, where, how? Tell me all! Send off a man for the horse!” And, as Hawke hastily donned his uniform, he heard the Hindu servant’s story.
“Be off! Tell Simpson I go first to the General, and, then, I will come over to the house!”
As Major Hawke strode through the clubroom, a half-dozen half-dressed clubmen seized upon him. He waved off their inquiries, as an orderly dashed up to the door.
“General Willoughby’s compliments, Sir. You are to report to him instantly at the Marble House! You can take my horse, Major! I’ll bring yours on.” And so, lightly leaping into the saddle, the Major galloped away, with an approving nod. “There’ll be a devil of a racket over this thing!” he reflected, as he dashed along. And he chuckled with glee at his prudence in hiding away the dagger which he had picked up in the garden. For, a moonlight-eyed Eurasian girl, hidden in a little cottage, was the only human being in Delhi who knew of the hasty visit her secret lover had made in the night. The jeweled dagger of Mirzah Shah was now securely locked in a little chest where Alan Hawke kept a few articles hidden away in the humble home of the passive plaything of his idle hours. As he caught sight of the Marble House, with its gathered crowds, he saw the gleam of musket barrels, as a company of foot were picketing the vast garden inclosure, and forcing back the excited crowd.
A non-commissioned officer swung open the heavy gates which would only turn on their hinges once more for Hugh Johnstone going out on his last journey. “The General awaits you, Major,” said the sergeant, touching his cap. “He has already asked for you.” And as Hawke rode up to the front door he was suddenly reminded of his imperiled interests. “The drafts! They may be stopped now! By God! I must see Ram Lal! I need him now and he needs me.”
With an unruffled professional calm, however, Major Hawke reported to the visibly disturbed General commanding.
With a single warning gesture of silence, General Willoughby drew the Major aside. “I shall put you in entire charge here. I have seen all the civil authorities. This is your affair. It touches your mission. The Viceroy has been telegraphed, and you are to guard the whole property here till we have his pleasure. Now come with me and let us question Simpson. The rest are merely a lot of apes.”
And so Major Alan Hawke had ample time to arrange his private plan of campaign as he guarded a respectful silence during Simpson’s long relation, for his thoughts were now far away with Berthe Louison, and the lovely orphan, whose only confidante was his tender-hearted dupe Justine Delande. But the acute adventurer’s mind returned to fix itself upon Ram Lal Singh, now blandly smiling in his jewel shop, where the morning gossips babbled over Johnstone Sahib’s tragic death. “I must telegraph to Euphrosyne,” thought the Major, “and to 9 Rue Berlioz, Paris, for my will-o-the-wisp employer. But, Mr. Ram Lal Singh, you shall pay me for what ruin Mirzah Shah’s dagger has wrought!”
The mantle of silence had fallen forever over the last night’s rencontre in the garden. With dreaming eyes Hawke mused: “It would never do to tell any part of that story. What business had I there?” And, without a tremor, he stood by the General’s side as they gazed on the dead millionaire’s body still lying on the floor.
“I will now send for the civil authorities, and you, Major Hawke, will represent me in the investigation. Your military future hangs on this. Remember, now, that the Viceroy looks to you alone! I will return here after tiffin. I will have some personal instructions for you.” And Alan Hawke now saw the farther shore of his voyage of life gleaming out as General Willoughby left him to confer with the arriving magistrates and civil police. “I shall marry you, my veiled Rose of Delhi, and be master here yet, in this Marble House, and, by God, I’ll die a general, too!” he swore, with which pleasing prophecy Major Alan Hawke calmly took up the varied secret duties which joined a Viceroy’s secret orders to the will of the General commanding.
“I am a devil for luck!” he mused as he gazed down on the old man’s shrunken and withered dead face. “I will do the honors alone for you, my departed friend,” he sneered, “for I am the master here now.” The absence of all articles of value, the disappearance of Johnstone’s three superb ruby shirt-studs, and his magnificent single diamond cuff-buttons, told of the greed of the robbers, presumably familiar with his personal ornaments, while the terrific stab in the back showed that the heavy knife had been driven through the back up to its very hilt.
“We must find the dagger!” pompously said the civil magistrate. “Major Hawke, will you give orders to have the whole house and grounds searched?” And with a faint smile the Major politely rose and set all his myrmidons in motion.
Even then the telegraph was clicking away a message to Johnstone’s lawyer and bankers in Calcutta, and to his young relative, Douglas Fraser, of the great P. and O. steamship service. Before night the crafty Calcutta lawyer had notified Professor Andrew Fraser, in the far-away island of Jersey, and before Major Hawke himself received the Viceroy’s orders, through General Willoughby, Mademoiselle Euphrosyne Delande, of Geneva, and the household at No. 9 Rue Berlioz, Paris, both knew that the defiant old nabob had sailed the dark sea without a shore.
Most of all surprised was Captain Anson Anstruther in London, who pondered long at the United Service Club over an official message from the Viceroy, telling him of the startling murder. The young gallant’s heart beat in a strange agitation as he examined the previous dispatches of both Berthe Louison and the Viceroy.
“She had no hand in it, thank God!” mused the young aide-de-camp. “Perhaps he was paid off for some of his old Shylock transactions—some local intrigue, or the jealous lover of some Eurasian beauty, dragged to his lair, has finished all, and revenged the accumulated brutalities of thirty years.”
There was a loud outcry of horror and surprise sweeping on now from the social circles of Delhi to the clubs of Lucknow, Cawnpore, Allahabad, Benares, and Patna to Calcutta.
In a day or two, men from Lahore to Hyderabad, from Bombay to Nagpore and Madras, and in all the clubs from Calcutta to Simla, had paused over their brandy pawnee to murmur, “Well! The poor old beggar is gone, and now he’ll never get his Baronetcy! Some of the niggers did the trick neatly for him at last. They must have got a jolly lot of loot!”
In which general verdict the glittering-eyed Ram Lal, hidden in his zenana, did not share. For, when he had rifled and destroyed the two mahogany boxes he summed all up his pickings with baffled rage. “A couple of thousand pounds of notes, a few scattered jewels, the sly old dog has spirited away his vast stealings! My work was all in vain, save the vengeance!” And the oily Ram Lal, in the zenana, drew a willing beauty of Cashmere to his bosom, and hid his face from the chatterers of street and shop. He was safe from all prying eyes in the Harem.
But, while the triumphant English Mem-Sahibs, of Delhi, shuddered at the bloody details of old Hugh Johnstone’s taking off, they found abundant reason to point a moral and adorn a tale.
While the anxious Viceroy was busied at Calcutta, and General Willoughby and Hawke were engrossed with the pompous funeral preparations at Delhi, the ladies of the whole station unanimously condemned the departed. For a cold and brutal foe of womanhood had died unhonored in their midst, and none were left to mourn.
With much pretentious wagging of shapely heads, and much mysterious innuendo, they spoke lightly of the departed one, and failed not to mentally unroof the Silver Bungalow. The baffled ladies scented a social mystery!
Wild rumors of splendid orgies, strange tales of a wronged woman’s vengeance, lurid romances of the flight of the French Countess with a younger lover, after despoiling her aged admirer; all these things were “put in commission” and vigorously circulated.
The principal party interested in these slanders, was, however, now calmly gliding on toward Aden, while the dead millionaire was alike oblivious to the lovely daughter whom he had crushed as a bruised flower, the haughty woman who had defied him in his wrath, and the administration of the million sterling which was the golden monument over his yawning grave! The silk-petticoat Council of Notables in Delhi decided by a tidal-wave of womanly intuition, that the gallant and debonnair Major Alan Hawke would marry “the lovely and accomplished heiress,” and so the white-bosomed beauties of the capital of Oude turned again lazily to their respective sins of omission and commission, and to the glitter of their respective booths in Vanity Fair!
The club gossips waited in vain for the reappearance of Major Alan Hawke, whose entire personal effects were bundled hastily away to the marble house, where the adventurer now ruled pro tempore. It was late in the night when Major Hawke had achieved all the preparations for the funeral of the murdered man, upon the following day. Simpson and a squad of non-commissioned officers watched where the flickering lights gleamed down upon the dead nabob.
Making his last rounds for the night, Major Hawke, with a soldier’s cynical calmness, enjoyed a cheroot upon the veranda, as he bade his captain of the guard take charge until his return. The Major had most carefully examined the five bills of exchange which now occupied his attention, and his mind was now busied with the dead man’s golden store. He now contemplated a visit to a man whose conscience bothered him not, but whose bosom quaked in fear when Hawke’s letter, sent by a messenger, bade Ram Lal await him at midnight.
“Does he know?” gasped Ram Lal, with chattering teeth, and yet he dared not fly.
An early evening interview with General Willoughby had disclosed to the Major the inconvenient fact that the dead nabob had left a carefully drawn will, whereof Andrew Fraser, of St. Heliers, Jersey, and Douglas Fraser, of Calcutta, were executors. “There is a duplicate will here in the Bengal Bank,” so telegraphed the solicitor, “and I have now notified both the executors. I presume that Mr. Douglas Fraser will return here at once, as he is absent in Europe on leave. It may be a week or more until he receives the sad intelligence.”
Alan Hawke softly smiled at those touching words, “Sad intelligence.” It was only the perfunctory regret of the shark-like lawyer, and the secretly rejoicing heirs. “This is not a case where the one who goes is happier than the one that’s left behind,” mused Hawke. “I must settle matters rapidly with Ram Lal, for if the will leaves the property to Nadine, she must be mine at all costs!
“Shall I not send a well-armed man with you, Major?” asked the Captain. “It is very late!”
“Thanks, Jordan,” lightly said the Major. “I’ve a good revolver and my service sword—a priceless old wootz steel tulwar. I’m good for a dozen Pandies! I’m used to Thug—and Dacoit, to bandit and ruffian. I have a little private business to attend to, and I’ll come home in a trap!”
By a strange chance, Major Alan Hawke, the distinguished favorite of fortune, slunk along in byway and shadow till he reached the cottage, where a lovely woman, flower wreathed, with child-like face and timid, mournful eyes, anxiously awaited him. “I’ll be back in two or three hours,” he carelessly said, as he tossed her a roll of rupees. Then, with a long, slender package hidden in his bosom, he stole out after a long circuit and entered Ram Lal’s compound by the rear entrance, always at his use.
“It is just as well not to make any little mistake just now,” mused Hawke, as with cat-like tread he sped through the old jeweler’s garden. And the “prevention of mistakes” consisted in the heavy Adams revolver which he carried slung around his neck and shoulder by a heavy cord, in the handy Russian fashion.
His left hand steadied the peculiar parcel which he had so carefully hidden. An amused smile flitted over his face when old Ram Lal opened the door of the snuggery, where Justine had first listened to a lover’s sighs. “Poor girl! I wish she were here to-night!” tenderly mused the sentimental rascal, as he waved away Ram Lal’s bidding to a splendid little supper.
“I came here to talk business, Ram, to-night” sternly said Hawke, who had inwardly decided not to taste food or drink with the past master of villainy. “He might give me a gentle push into the Styx,” acutely reflected the Major. “Sit down right there where I can see you,” said Hawke, his hand firmly grasping the revolver, as he indicated a corner of the table, after satisfying himself that the shop door was locked. He then quickly locked the garden door and pocketed both the keys.
“What do you want of me?” murmured Ram Lal, who had noted the semi-hostile tone, and who clearly saw the butt of the revolver.
“I want to talk to you of this Johnstone matter,” said the soldier, ignoring all other reference to the “dear departed.” This coolness unsettled the wily jeweler, who trembled as Hawke laid a long red pocketbook down on the table before him.
The wily scoundrel shivered when the Major, with his left hand, pushed over to him five sets of Bills of Exchange for a thousand pounds each. Ram Lal’s eyes dropped under the brave villain’s steady gaze, and he slowly read the first paper. He well knew the drawer’s writing:
DELHI, August 15, 1890.