“Go, then!” cried Willoughby. “Seal this in your breast! Speak to no one or you’ll die in jail, wearing irons! Here!” A hundred-pound note was thrust into his hand, and he was whirled away to his shop.
“Ah! The gray devil! he has stolen and hidden the best! I will watch him like a ghoul of Bowanee, and they shall be mine! He would turn tail now and steal away!” Ram Lal laughed an oily laugh, and going to an old cabinet, took out a heavy kreese. “The poisoned dagger of Mirzah Shah!” he smiled. “After many years!” It was Hugh Johnstone himself who sought Ram Lal in his pagoda that afternoon, and, after making some heavy purchases, finally drew out a list of jewels.
“I wish you to certify, Ram Lal,” he cautiously said, “that these are all the jewels of Mirzah Shah, that you handled as ‘Keeper of the Prince’s Treasure,’ before the Meerut mutineers rushed down upon us.” Slowly peering over the paper, the crafty Ram Lal said:
“You forget, Sahib, that I was sent away to Lucknow and Cawnpore, by Mirzah Shah, with letters to Nana Sahib and Tantia Topee. I was shut out of Delhi till after the British were camped on the Windmill Ridge, and for months I never saw the royal jewels! Every moon the list was made anew. The mollahs and moonshees and treasurers took jewels for the Zenana every moon, and for the gifts of the princes. I could not testify to this!” The old man was on his guard.
“I will pay you well, Ram Lal. It is my last little matter to settle with the authorities! Then my accounts are closed forever! As Treasurer you could do this!” Old Hugh Fraser Johnstone was ignorant of the veiled scrutiny of his stewardship.
Ram Lal raised his head, at last, with something like defiance. “The better half is gone—the rarest—the richest! True, the princes may have divided them, they may have bribed their mutineer officers with some, but, a true list may be in the hands of these Crown officers here. They captured all the Palace papers. Now, I did not open them at Humayoon’s Tomb. You know,” he faltered, “how they passed through your hands!”
Hugh Johnstone, for the last time tried to threaten and bully. “I will have you punished. I paid you well—you must lie for me! We both lied then.”
“Then the curse of Allah be upon the liar who lies now,” solemnly said Ram Lal Singh. “I will not sign! I have the savings of years to guard. You will go away and the Crown will come upon me for the missing gems. I was absent five months from the Palace when you were in Brigadier Wilson’s Camp! I will offer my head to these generals, but I will not sign! The Kaisar-I-Hind is just, and I will tell all!” With an oath of smothered rage, Hugh Johnstone strode away.
“I must try and make a royal present to Willoughby’s wife,—a timely one—and lose a half a lac of rupees to Abercromby. They may find a way to pass the matter over.” He dared not press Ram Lal to a public exposition of all the wanderings of Mirzah Shah’s jewels. “If I had not told them that fairy tale, I might hedge; but it’s too late now. I will go down to Calcutta, see the Viceroy, and then clear out for good. And I must placate Alan Hawke. I was a fool to ignore him. But, to make an enemy of him, on account of that damned woman, would be ruin. He chums with Ram Lal. He might cable to Anstruther.”
In fact Alan Hawke’s bold social revolt had imposed on Johnstone. “He might help to cover all up if I induced Abercromby to get him back on the staff once more. I was a fool to slight him.” Hugh Fraser Johnstone was dimly conscious that his own line of battle was wavering, and that his flanks were unguarded—his rear unprotected. “I will only trust my homeward pathway to Simpson, and my health is a good excuse for clearing out for good. I can easily locate on the Continent—in Belgium, or Switzerland—and out of reach of any little trouble to come. They’ve no proof. This fellow has no list, thank Heaven. I’ll slip down to Ceylon and catch the first boat there to Suez. Then ho for Geneva!”