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!”