“Perfectly,” replied Ram Lal, “and comes alone—on the master’s business. You know I had many dealings with Sahib Hugh Fraser in the old days,” mused the jeweler. “He always admits my men. I have valued gems for him for twenty years.”
“Good!” cried the happy Major. “I want to send a man now to her with a note. I am going to put up at the United Service Club, but I must see this woman first. I don’t like to send a letter, though. If I had any one to trust—”
The merchant promptly said: “I will go myself! They are always in the garden in the afternoon. I can easily see her alone.”
“First rate! Then I will give you a message,” answered Hawke. “I must see her to-morrow early, for old Hugh will surely ask me to tiffin. And, Ram, you must at once set your best man on to watch all that goes on there. I have a good fat plum for you now—to set up a neat little house here for a friend of mine who is coming, and you shall do the whole thing!” The merchant’s dark eyes glistened. “A new officer of rank?” he queried.
“It’s a lady—a friend of mine—rich, too, and she wants to live on the quiet! She will stay here for some time!” The oily listener had learned a vast prudence in the days when he trod the halls of the last King of Delhi, so he held his peace and wondered at the suddenly enhanced fortunes of that star of graceful wanderers, Allan Hawke!
“I’ll go over to the club now and get a room! Send all my things over!” said the Major. “I wish to let Hugh know that I am here. I will give you the directions about the house to-morrow. Make no mistake with this message now!” Whereat Alan Hawke repeated a few words which would awake the slumbering curiosity in the woman-heart of the lonely Justine Delande!
“Now, I will return and await your success,” concluded Hawke as he read over a dozen times Madame Berthe Louison’s long dispatch, ordering him to prepare her pied de terre in Delhi. “Gad! Milady means to do the thing in style,” he murmured. “She is a deep one, and she must have a pot of money!” He lit a cheroot and sauntered away to show up officially at the club. Major Hawke soon became aware that nothing succeeds like success. Not only did all the flaneurs of the Chandnee Chouk seize upon him, but, from passing carriages, bright, roguish eyes merrily challenged him as the hot-hearted English Mem-Sahibs whirled by.
Rumor had magnified the importance of Major Alan Hawke’s secret service appointment, and the wanderer was astounded when the highest official of the Delhi College gravely saluted him.
“By Gad! I believe that I am really becoming respectable!” laughed the delighted major. His uncertain past seemed to be fast fading away in the glow of the skillfully hinted official promotion. “I wonder now if old Ram Lal has a hold on my canny friend, Hugh Fraser Johnstone—Sir Hugh to be! Perhaps they are like all the rest of us—rascals of the same grade, but only in different ways. The old jewel matters! I must look to this and watch Ram Lal!” The returned Anglo-Indian carelessly nodded to the group of men gathered in the club’s lounging-room as he entered. Designedly, he loudly demanded to know if his traps had arrived. “Left all my odds and ends in store,” he murmured to a friend, as he called for a brandy pawnee. “Beastly bore! Must wait orders here for some time!”
Skilled at tossing the ball of conversation to and fro, Major Alan Hawke, while at luncheon, artfully planted seeds here and there, to be neatly dished up later for that incipient baronet, Hugh Johnstone. And yet a graceful shade of dignified reserve lent color to his rumored advancement, and the schemer leaned over the writing table with quite a foreign-office air as he indited his diplomatic note of arrival to his destined prey.