Major Hawke surveyed the skillfully raised Bills of Exchange and carefully examined them in a dark room with a light, and also before the glaring sun rays. “A splendid job, Ram Lal,” he gayly said. “You must have given them a coat of size and then moistened and ironed them.” The old rascal gloomily accepted the professional compliment. “I observe that you have labored to protect your own indorsement,” sportively remarked the Major.
“And now you will return to me my jewels?” timidly demanded Ram Lal.
“Do you wish me to send the dagger of Mirzah Shah to General Willoughby? It is deposited here, with a sealed letter,” coldly sneered Hawke. “Should anything happen to me or, to these drafts, it would be sent to the General, and you would hang. No, I will keep the jewels.”
And then Major Hawke thrust the shivering wretch out, having liberally paid to him, through Grindlay, the balance due by Berthe Louison.
“I swear that I did not get a single jewel from—from him. He has hidden them,” pleaded Ram Lal.
“Ah! I must look to this” mused Hawke, when Ram Lal had been frightened away with a last stern injunction:
“Obey my slightest wishes or you will hang! I will have you watched till I return! There are eyes upon your path that never close in sleep!” Ram Lal shuddered in silence.
Delhi soon forgot the man whom the great stone now covered in the English cemetery, and only General Willoughby and the easy-going civil authorities knew of the cablegram: “Coming on with full power from Senior Executor.—Douglas Fraser, Junior Executor.” The cablegram was dated from Milan, for two keen Scottish brains were now busied with plans to save and care for the worldly gear so suddenly abandoned to their care by Hugh Johnstone. Though Delhi was swept as with a besom, no trace of the cowardly assassins was ever found, and only old Simpson, waiting, in final charge as household major domo for Douglas Fraser’s arrival, could enlighten the perturbed commanding General with certain vague suspicions. But Ram Lal slept now in a growing security.
“It is clear that the master was watched in his secret preparations for the voyage home,” said Simpson, “and some outsiders, with the help of some traitor among the blacks, paid off an old score. I could tell of many an old enemy which he gained in these twenty years.” sadly said Simpson. “I feel they only mussed up the room to give an appearance of robbery. The mahogany boxes were merely part of master’s old wedding outfit in London, and I know that they were only filled with toilet articles and little medical stores. They only lugged them off to make a show.”
And General Willoughby, following up Simpson’s clues, easily discovered a shady side of Johnstone’s past life, not compatible with the pompous panegyrics of the Indian press, the resolutions of a dozen clubs and societies, the minutes of the Bank of Bengal, and other mortuary literature of a complimentary nature. It was some old curse come down upon the defenseless man in his old age! And so no one ever sought for the solution of the mystery in the deep dejection of Ram Lal Singh, who vainly mourned for his lost jewels and money. Fear tied his hands, and his tongue was palsied by guilt. He vindictively, however, raised his customary “rate of usance,” and swore in his own hardened heart that the needy borrowers of Delhi should recoup him fully before a year. The one Star gleaming in the dark night of financial blackness was the vengeance upon the man who had tricked and despoiled a fellow-robber thirty years before.