“It’s a go, then. Come on, now, and get your money,” said Hawke, as he led the way to the nearest fiacre. In ten minutes, Alan Hawke disappeared into the railway waiting-room, and returned after a visit to the luggage store-room. Jack Blunt was astonished at his pal’s evident distrust. “Here you are, Jack,” the Major cordially cried, as they sought the rear room of the neat cafe opposite the gare. “Now, count over your five hundred pounds. I’ll give Garcin the other sum in your presence. Then, I suppose that I am safe,” he coldly smiled. “Tell me now where has old Fraser hidden the stuff.”
“In his study on the first floor, in a secret hiding place. The girl Mattie has watched the old fellow through the keyhole. I know just where to easily break in on the ground floor. These damned Hindus are far away in the other wing, so there’s only Simpson to hinder. Now, I’ll have a couple of the boys pipe him off at the Jersey Arms. Old Janet Fairbarn’s strait-laced ways make him sneak out late at night for his toddy. When he is ‘well loaded’ and tired with climbing up the cliff, they will follow him and fix him, for good. One of the boys will come along with me, to my hiding place, and be ‘outside fence’ while the two others will watch the road and the gardener’s quarters. The three men are two hundred yards away, in the porter’s lodge. The old Scotch woman sleeps like a post. Then I make my way when I’ve done, at once to the Hirondelle, alone and hide my plant. The men relieved can rally on your party at the old martello tower, and so we will be ready to sail when your part of the job is done. Two on board, three with me, nine with you, will be plenty! My work is a quiet job! I can do the whole trick in five minutes! Yours, I leave for yourself. I know just where to lay my hand.”
“But, should any trouble occur?” said Alan Ha wke, “any outcry, any pursuit?”
“Then I will bury the stuff on the shore, saunter back openly to the Jersey Arms, and just stay there as friend Joseph Smith, till I can get over to Granville by the steamer. The Hirondelle will not be seen by any one; there are fifty luggers always hovering around. She will first land us all in Bouley Bay in the morning, or drop half the men off at St. Catherine’s Bay in the early afternoon. They all know every inch of the ground.” In half an hour the chums in villainy dined gayly with “Angelique,” and a running mate, rejoicing in the cognomen of “Petite Diable Jaune.” The next day, a secret meeting with a confidential Jewish money-lender, enabled Major Alan Hawke to safely market the half of the jewels which he had extorted from Ram Lal Singh. In a waist belt, he wore a thousand pounds of Banque of France notes neatly concealed. Jack Blunt and Garcia had earned an extra bonus of a hundred pounds each in the jewel sale, and Alan Hawke laughed, as he laid away four thousand pounds in his safely deposited luggage, in the railway office. “I can trust to the French Republic—one and indivisible,” he said, as he sent a loving letter to Justine Delande, and then mailed her the receipt for his valuable package, with his last wishes, “in case of accident.” “These fellows might kill me for this, if they knew of it!” he growled.
Three days later, the stanch Hirondelle was beating up and down Granville Bay, while Alan Hawke awaited the letter of the faithful Mattie Jones. He had furnished the twenty-pound note which made that natty damsel doubly anxious to meet her faithful lover “Joseph Smith,” to whom she now dispatched the news of the immediate return of the anxious Professor. Fraser was burning to take up the gathering of Thibetan pearls of hidden knowledge, while the artful and restless Professor Alaric Hobbs was stealthily waiting Prince Djiddin’s departure, but kept busied with some personal tidal and magnetic observations on Rozel Head. In the deserted second floor of an old martello tower, he had made a lair for his evening star and planetory researches, and the ingenious Yankee concealed a rope ladder in the clinging ivy which enabled him to cut off all intrusion on his eyrie.
CHAPTER XV. THE FRENCH FISHER BOAT, “HIRONDELLE.”
It was four o’clock of a wild November afternoon when Major Alan Hawke, cowering in a hooded Irish frieze ulster, crawled deeper into a cave-like recess in the little path leading from the Jersey Arms up to Rozel Head. The blinding rain was thrown in wild gusts by the howling winds, now lashing the green channel to a roughened foam. A sudden and terrific storm was coming on.
Half an hour before the disguised adventurer could see the ominous double storm signals flying in warning on the scattered coast guard stations, a signal of danger sent on from the Corbieres Lighthouse. But now not a single sail was to be seen, and huge banks of heavy blackening mists were rolling over the stormy channel. Not a stray sail was in sight!