“The Sahib shall be obeyed!” said Ram Lal, salaaming to the ground, and he was happy at heart as he glided out of the garden. A ferocious smile of coming triumph gleamed in his dark face. “I have him now! He will never slip away in the night! But I must please him, and lie to him!” It was the chance for which he had vainly waited there many years, and Ram Lal prayed to great Bowaaee to aid him.
“Hawke!” said Johnstone, when his astounded listener heard all of Johnstone’s proposed infamy. “I have telegraphed to Allahabad and Calcutta. This strange woman has gone down there. Now, I want you to fall in with Abercromby. He will go down in a few days. Bring them together in any way you can. The General and the beauty. No fool like an old fool!” he grinned. “Watch them and post me! Abercromby is already well disposed to you. Make a play on him. He will get you a temporary rank from the Viceroy.
“Your matchless knowledge of the Himalayas and the whole northern frontier will earn you a regular rank. Coddle Anstruther, too, and cling to the Vice-roy! I’ll back you with any money you need. It’s the one chance of a life!”
“And what am I to do for you, Johnstone?” quietly said the delighted Hawke.
“Just stand by me about this baronetcy, and bamboozle this damned foolish woman, while I slip quietly away to Europe! She is mercurial and vain. Abercromby will get her into the fast Calcutta set, after one necessary appearance at the Viceroy’s! She is, after all, only a woman. You can catch them with a feather, if you can catch them at all! Once properly launched by Abercromby, you are a made man for life! He will not dare to ‘go back on you!’ as our Yankee cousins have it. The Viceroy will do anything for him!”
“By God! Johnstone! I’m your man! Count on me in life and death!” warmly cried Hawke. The two men clasped hands.
There was a clatter and a jingle. The old warrior was on his return. “Here he comes now! Fall in with his humor, and success to you at Calcutta,” whispered Johnstone. There was the very jolliest breakfast imaginable at the marble house that day, and that same afternoon Major. Alan Hawke rode all over Delhi as volunteer aide to General Abercromby.
Two nights later General Abercromby whispered to Hugh Johnstone, at a Grand Ball at Willoughby’s Headquarters: “I’ve just had a telegram from the Viceroy to return at once. Your matter is now all right. I leave the property with Willoughby here. I’ll go down in the morning, if you’ll fix me up.” And then, Johnstone signing to Major Alan Hawke, who had been the cynosure of all eyes, as he gracefully led Madame la Generale Willoughby through a lanciers, took the favorite of fortune aside.
“Make your adieux! Get out of here! Settle all your little affairs! Send all your traps over to my house! General Abercromby wants to slip away quietly in the morning! No one is to know! And you go with him, at his urgent request.”
And that very evening at Calcutta, Alixe Delavigne would have laughed in triumph to know of Hugh Johnstone’s strange eagerness to dispatch his amorous guest. For the lady—in the safe haven of the great banker’s home—had just returned from a captivated Viceroy, who had instantly recalled Abercromby by a dispatch to be “obeyed forthwith.”