With a grave air he selected his rooms and accommodations to suit his swelling port, and even the club stewards nodded in recognition of the tidal wave of Alan Hawke’s mended fortunes.
With due official gravity the man “who had dropped into a good thing,” disappeared, to allow the gilded youth of Delhi to carry the gossip to mess and bungalow. It was a welcome morsel to these merry crows!
It was late when the handsome Major returned to find a small pyramid of notes on his table and many letters in his box. He was in the highest good humor, for the wary Ram Lal had most diplomatically acquitted his task of opening a secret communication.
“Just as I thought,” laughed the Major, as he sipped his pale ale in Ram Lal’s spacious room of pleasaunce. “They all protest, woman-like, but they all come!”
The watchful Swiss exile’s heart fluttered tenderly in the far-off Lotos land at the arrival of a secret friend of her sage sister. She longed for the morning to meet her new friend. Alan Hawke’s irresistible attractions had pointed the praises which flowed smoothly over the double crossed letter which had preceded him! The oily Ram Lal, a veteran observer of many an intrigue, scented a budding rose of romance in the Major’s adroit coup, and the arrival of the only lady whom Alan Hawke had ever socially fathered in Delhi.
“In three days I will be all ready! So you can telegraph to-night,” reported the merchant, when the Major carefully went over all the details of the proposed temporary establishment of the disguised Alixe Delaviarne.
“Very good!” approvingly answered the dignified confidant and patron. “See here, Ram Lal! You have only to serve me well in these little private matters, and you shall handle all the coming Mem-Sahib’s money business here! She wants to be quiet. I am to direct all her private matters! Not a word, however, to old Hugh!” The two men separated, Hawke with the knowledge that one of Ram’s men had already glided into the swarming household entourage of Hugh Johnstone’s stately home, and the spy was on every movement of the strange interior, which defied the Delhi beaux.
“Not a bad day’s work,” mused Hawke, as he dined in solitary state. The hospitable bidding of the wealthiest civilian of Delhi to tiffin on the morrow brought him in touch with Alixe Delavigne’s proposed victim once more. The delighted rascal mused: “I will surely have letters from her to-morrow, possibly even a telegram of her arrival. When the silly Swiss woman is the partner of an innocent secret, she is mine to control! Then the chase for a few lacs of rupees begins!”
Major Hawke was somewhat startled at the little avalanche of welcoming cards and notes. “Bravo! this will throw old Hugh off the track a bit also. The simple duty of piquing local curiosity shall open all hearts, hearths, and homes to me!” And then, Alan Hawke joyously realized how easily the light-headed world can be fooled to the top of its bent by the hollow trick of a bit of mystery play.
“This falls out rightly,” he mused. “I will take up all the threads of my old society life and Madame Berthe Louison may deign to confide a bit in me the first half of the story forced from her, then I will guess out all the missing links of the chain. Once domiciled here, she is helpless in my hands, for I can either gain her inner secrets, or boldly checkmate her. And the veiled Rose of Delhi?”