“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 passions. “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 hell itself, but you chose to play the woman—the catlike toying with men! Damn 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!”