“But why does he not go? I have watched him for years.
“There is some reason! Hawke Sahib shall tell me all! He must tell! He needs my help!” The old man’s slumbers were haunted with the olden memories of a day of doom, the day when the bodies of the sacred Princes of Oude lay naked in the glaring sun as they were despoiled after Hodson’s pistol had done its bloody work. “They may have taken them all from him, these English are greedy spoilers,” muttered the crafty old man, as his head fell upon the silken cushions with a curse. He was a rebel still, as rank as Tantia Topee.
In the splendid marble palace of Hugh Johnstone, the startled Justine Delande was awake long before the dawn, thinking only of the meeting of the morning, her bosom heaving with its first questionable secret, but Major Alan Hawke smiled as he leisurely breakfasted later, reading a telegram just received. “On my way. Will come to private address. Send servants to Allahabad to join me. Silence and discretion.—Lausanne.”
CHAPTER V. A DIPLOMATIC TIFFIN.
Major Alan Hawke had designedly breakfasted in the stately seclusion of his rooms, and as he came gravely sauntering into the Club ordinary, was at once beset by a friendly chorus, as he carelessly glanced over the morning letters which attested his progress toward the social zenith. He, however, gazed impatiently at the club-house door, where a neat pair of ponies awaited him, with servants deftly purveyed by the subtle Ram Lal. His two body servants were also afrites of the same sly Aladdin. His swelling port duly impressed his old friends.
The man “who had dropped into a good thing” gently put aside sundry hospitable proffers, politely laughed away several tempting bargains as to horses, carriages, furnished bungalows, and offers of racing engagements, hunting bouts, and “private” dinners. “Waiting orders, d’ye see!” he gently murmured. “Not worth while to set up anything!” And then, with the air of a martyr, he disappeared, the ponies springing briskly away, leaving all baffled conjecture behind. The curious men who were left discussing a flying rumor that Major Hawke was authorized to raise a Regiment of Irregular Horse for a special expeditionary secret purpose, wrangled with those who maintained that a brilliant local civil-service vacancy would be theatrically filled by the man who now bore a brow of mystery. The advent of this prosperous Hawke had made the great social deeps of Delhi to boil like a pot. His mission was one of those things no fellow could find out.
Laughing in his sleeve, the object of all this sudden curiosity made a number of detours, and adroitly followed a native servant down an obscure rear street, after dismissing his pony carriage. The equipage was busied during the earlier hours of the day in leaving the visiting cards of the returned soldier of fortune in certain quarters well calculated to attract social notice.
Threading the spacious gardens in rear of Ram Lal’s establishment, the artful Major entered the jewel merchant’s abode without the notice of the morning gossips of the Chandnee Chouk. “All right, now,” he laughed, as he bade the sly merchant set a private guard to prevent all intrusion upon their privacy. “I think that I have thrown these fellows off the track very neatly!” he laughed. “No one knows of your rear entrances at the club, I am sure!” It suited the luxurious old jewel merchant to hide the opulence of his secret life, and to veil the graceful lapses of his private code from the sober austerities of a dignified Mohammedanism.