From Warsaw, he wrote to the Hotel Faucon, at Lausanne, to send all his letters to meet him at Berlin, where Jack Blunt had given him the address of the safest “fence” in all Kaiser Wilhelm’s broad domain. He had his own jewels valued there in Russia, but dared not sell them.
With a sudden inspiration, born of a growing fear for the stability of his house of cards, so flimsy in construction, he ran down to Jitomir, and the half-crazed adventurer only lingered an hour with the Intendant of Madame Alixe Delavigne’s grand old domain. He found the bird flown. Had he been duped? A permission to view the old chateau was courteously accorded, and then Alan Hawke soon realized that he was betrayed. For the fact that Madame was still absent, “traveling around the world,” and had not visited her Volhynian estate for a year, proved to him now that he had been doubly tricked. “Ah! By God! I have it!” he cried, as he set his teeth in a white rage. “That fool, Anstruther, is bewitched by her Polish wiles, the mongrel inheritance of La Grande Armee’s visit to Russia!” Straight as the crow flies, Alan Hawke then pressed on to Lemberg, and hastened to Berlin, having sent on his last official report to Captain Anstruther, at London. In Berlin, a letter from Jack Blunt decided his whole career. There was news of moment, which set his hot blood boiling in his veins.
“Simpson, the old body servant, has arrived from India,” wrote the disguised ex-convict. “And he’s mighty thick with your shy bird, too. There is some strange game going on here, which I can’t make out. The cute Yankee professor is furious, for old Fraser has temporarily given him the ‘dead cut.’ The American is totally neglected, for the old idiot spends half his time, now, shut up in his study with a visiting nigger prince from India, and the yellow fellow’s half-breed interpreter. I send you a dozen cuttings from the papers. The Prince, however, seems to be all O. K. He never even notices the shy bird. He probably buys his women at home. How could he, for he does not speak a single damned word of English. But I’ve caught sight of this Moonshee fellow trying to do the polite to the heiress. Old Simpson keenly watches the whole goings on, and I’ve tried to pull him on! No go! But he sneaks off himself, gets roaring full, down at Rozel Pier, with a little French peddler fellow, that he has picked up. And, I don’t like this French chap’s looks. Too fly, and far too free with his money. There’s no one else who has, as yet, showed up here. Not a woman, no other human being but a London lawyer. And I’m told now the guardian and niece are soon going over to London to deposit all the papers that Simpson brought home and to do ‘a turn’ at Doctor’s Commons. Now’s your very time—the dark of the moon. Better cut your job and come over to me at Granville; and why can we not turn the place up-while they are away? To do that, we must do Simpson ‘for fair,’ and I now know his nightly trail. Send money, plenty of it, and come on. I am ‘on the beachcomber’s lay,’ now, down at the Jersey Arms, Rozel Pier. Write or telegraph me a line, and I’ll instantly meet you at Granville, at the Cor d’Abondance.”
A loving letter from Justine Delande inclosed a notice of a registered letter waiting at the Agence du Credit Lyonnais, Geneva. It is marked “Tres Important,” she wrote, and then added: “I have received a letter from Nadine, who says that her guardian is now half crazy with excitement over the finishing of his ‘History of Thibet, and Memoir Upon the Lost Ten Tribes,’ for he has an Indian visitor of princely rank, and he even proposes to take this Prince Djiddin and his ‘Moonshee’ into the house, so as to shut the world out from the wonderful disclosures of the only visitor of rank who ever left Thibet.”
Alan Hawke’s brow was gloomy when he read the last letter, which was a brief note from Captain Anstruther, informing him that his final instructions would be forwarded “in a week.” The ominous silence of “Madame Berthe Louison,” the living lie of her pretended visit to Russia, the trick of the letters sent on from Jitomir to his Parisian address, now only confirmed his jealous rage.
“They are living in a fool’s paradise together, this dapper aide and the wily woman, hiding in England! One has betrayed me, and the other will now coldly abandon me! I’ll soon raise a hornets’ nest about their ears!” So, with a simple telegraphed word “coming,” dispatched to “Joseph Smith,” he sped on to Geneva from his “Leipsic defeat” at Berlin, but only to meet a ghastly “Waterloo” at the Grand Hotel National. He had ordered the letters from the Hotel Faucon to be sent on there to Miss Justine, and when he had freed himself from her clasping arms he read a curt official note from the Viceroy’s aid-de-camp which left him livid in a paroxysm of fury. On his way from the station he had only stopped long enough at the Agence du Credit Lyonnais to receive an official-looking document. “My accounts, I presume,” he had muttered, thrusting them in his pocket. But, when he had read Captain Anstruther’s formal note, he tore open the letter of the great French Banking Company. The two letters curtly illustrated the old saw, that “it never rains, but it pours!” With a fluttering heart poor Justine Delande watched her undeclared lover’s blackening face.
“Hell and furies!” he cried, “the whole world is leagued against me. I’ve got to go back to India now, Justine, and go alone. Luck is dead against me now.” And the whitening face of the woman who hung on his every glance made the infuriated man even more reckless. “Damn them, I’ll grind them all to powder!” he growled. For the tide was on the turn, and it was dead water again at Geneva, the tide fast receding, and the man who was “a devil for luck” was soon left on the rocks of a silent despair.
Alan Hawke’s eyes gleamed out with a murderous sheen as he scanned both letters carefully. “It is his work—the low dog—and he shall die. Wait till Jack Blunt and I get a hack at him,” he mused, with a sudden conviction that he dared not now show himself at St. Heliers, nor openly approach the Banker’s Folly. “I stand to lose all and win nothing. I must work in the dark. I cannot dare to brave this Anstruther. They would simply drive me from India. But, Simpson and Ram Lal shall pay! And, Berthe Louison—Ah! By God! I will strike her to the heart now! I see the way!”
The official words of Captain Anstruther were few but crushing in there stern brevity. And Alan Hawke’s heart sank as he read them over again. “By the orders of His Excellency, the Viceroy, I have the honor to inform you that he has withdrawn your temporary rank, and all powers heretofore delegated to you will cease on the receipt of this letter, which please acknowledge. On reporting to me in London in person, you will receive the payment of all your accounts with your back pay and transportation back to Calcutta, the place of your temporary appointment. All the Consuls in continental Europe have now been notified of the cessation of your powers, and you will therefore, in no way act in the future in regard to the confidential business once in your hands. The inquiry has been finally abandoned by the order of the Indian Government.
“Please do report as soon as possible, and deliver over all papers and vouchers now remaining in your hands. With assurance of my consideration, Yours,