“My august master cannot speak to any one but the great scholar whom he came here to see. He soon returns to his retirement in his palace in the Karakorum Mountains. And he never will emerge thence!” solemnly said the Moonshee, adding in a whisper: “He may, by the grace of Buddha, be re-incarnated as the Dalai-Lama. He springs from the loins of kings. I dare not break in upon his awful silence.” The Moonshee’s significant gesture of drawing a hand across his own brown throat had silenced the pushing American professor.
“By hokey!” he groaned, “it is hard to have to play second fiddle to this purblind old Scotchman.” Alaric Hobbs had been a reporter upon that dainty sheet, The New York Whorl, in one of his “emergent” periods, and so he writhed in agony at being left at the post. “I must be content to tap old Fraser when he comes back from London with that embarrassing lump of beauty, his millionaire niece. She would make a fitting spouse for this Prince Djiddin, for she never speaks a word—at least to me. And this swell Prince, who comes ‘only one in a box,’ gets the same ‘frozen hand.’ Funny girl, that. But I must yield to old Fraser’s moods.” Alaric Hobbs then descended to the tap-room and instructed the pretty barmaid in the manufacture of his own favorite “cocktail,” an American drink of surpassing fierceness and “innate power,” which had once caused “Bald-headed Wolf,” a Kiowa chieftain, to slay his favorite squaw, scalp a peace commissioner, and chase a fat army paymaster till he died of fright in his ambulance, after Alaric Hobbes had incautiously left a bottle of this “red-eye” mixture with his aboriginal host on one of the “exploring tours.” A powerful disturbing agent, the American cocktail!
But for all Miss Nadine Johnstone’s seeming aversion to men, and in spite of Prince Djiddin’s inability to utter a word of any jargon save ninety-five degree Thibetan, “far above proof,” on this very morning while the “Moonshee” was transcribing under the watchful eyes of the excited Andrew Fraser the disclosures of the evening before, the young millionairess was “getting on” very well in exhibiting the glories of the tropical garden to the august tourist from the lacustrine Himalayas.
Jules Victor adroitly busied the maid whom Janet Fairbarn had dispatched to “play propriety,” and the other London girl had quietly stolen away to her own last rendezvous with her mysterious London lover, “Mr. Joseph Smith,” otherwise “Jack Blunt, Esq., of the Swell Mob of the Thames.”
The whispers of the stately young Prince brought crimson blushes to the face of the glowing girl, whose answering murmurs were as low as the siren voice of Swinburne’s “small serpents, with soft, stretching throats.” They had a double secret to keep now. A momentous, a dangerous one; for in the depths of the Tropical Gardens of Rozel, the passionate hearted Alixe Delavigne was hidden, waiting this very morning to clasp again the beautiful orphan to a bosom throbbing in wildest love. Prince Djiddin, always on his guard, artfully turned back and busied the maid, when she was released from Jules Victor’s vociferous bar-gaining, with a half-hour’s choosing her “fairing,” out of the lively peddler’s pretty stock. The woman’s vanity made her an easy victim. The “descendant of Thibetan Kings” could not, of course, speak intelligibly, but the yellow sovereigns which he carried were the magic talisman which opened at once the pretty maid servant’s softened heart.
It was a long half hour before the happy Nadine Johnstone returned to join the kinsman of the Maharajah of Cashmere. Her eyes were gleaming in a tender, dawning lovelight, her lips still thrilling with Alixe Delavigne’s warm kisses. In her heart, there still rang out her mysterious visitor’s last words: “Wait, darling! My own darling! Before another month the secret Government agent will have officially visited Andrew Fraser. We are all ready to act with crushing power when the happy moment safely arrives. And you shall then hear all the story of the past on my breast. You shall know how near you have been to my loving heart in all these weary years. The story of your own dear mother’s life shall be my wedding present to you. Yet, a few days more of watchful patience,” softly sighed Alixe.
“For we must not let Andrew Fraser wake for a moment from his frenzy of Thibetan study until we can force from him the permission which we will demand to visit you, and to free you from his control.”
Prince Djiddin paced solemnly back toward the Banker’s Folly, leaving the overjoyed maid to bundle up all her many gifts. A grateful wink to Jules Victor from the Prince rewarded the disguised valet, as he gayly sped away to meet his mistress, and to obtain her orders for the next day. This artful game of mingled Literature and Love had so far been safely played, but Jules Victor had secretly warned Nadine Johnstone against any confidences with her pretty London sewing woman. “She has found a sweetheart here. He is a curious looking fellow, he has money and is liberal, and, so, what you tell her she will surely tell her sweetheart. Trust to no one but the other maid, who is devoted to me,” proudly said the dapper little Frenchman. Nearing the mansion, on this eventful morning, Prince Djiddin, at a hidden bend of a leafy path, whispered to his fair conductress, “For God’s sake, darling Nadine, do not betray yourself! Those sweetly shining eyes are tell-tale stars! Your heart happiness will struggle for expression. Go to your rooms at once. Pour out your happy heart in song, lift up your voice. But, watch over your very heart-throbs! Only a single fortnight more, darling, and we will clip the claws of this old Scottish lion who has you in his clutches!
“Anstruther will soon make his coup de main, for Hawke has at last gone back to India, and we will have a deadly grasp soon on the frightened Andrew Fraser. He must either give up his legal tyranny and yield you to us, or else face a future which would appall even a braver man. I dare not to tell you our secret yet. Only the Viceroy and Anstruther know it. And, now, darling, above all, be sure not to betray yourself, in London. Remember that Anstruther will have you secretly watched, from this gate to the very moment when you return to it! Any false play of old Fraser would lead to his detention by the authorities, and you would be freed at once by the law!”
In the three weeks of their long masquerade, neither Prince Djiddin, his scribe and interpreter, or else the two, as studious visitors, never left Andrew Fraser alone a single moment! The old scholar was thrilled at heart with Eric Murray’s solemn rehearsing of Frank Halton’s valuable notebooks and ingenious theories. He eagerly enforced Prince Djiddin’s request that no curious strangers should be allowed to force themselves on him, no matter of what lofty rank. Prince Djiddin was wrapped in the veil of a solemn personal seclusion.