As a wild Communard soldier he had risked his life vainly to save the aged Colonel Delavigne from a furious mob, for the red rosette in the old officer’s buttonhole had cost him his life in an awkward promenade, and this sent the orphans, Valerie and Alixe Delavigne, adrift upon the mad maelstrom of Paris incendie. While Ram Lal glowered in his dissatisfaction, Madame Berthe Louison complacently regarded her two secret protectors on guard in the special car. For the strange turn of Fortune’s wheel, which had left Alixe Delavigne alone in the world, and rich enough to effect her special vengeance upon her one enemy, had given to Jules Victor and his wife Marie a sinecure for life as the personal attendants of the soi-disant Madame Berthe Louison.
Marie was but a wild-eyed child of ten when Jules had picked her up in the flaming streets of Paris, and they had graduated together from the gutters of Montmartre into the later control of Madame Louison’s pretty little pied a terre in Paris, hard by Auteuil, in that dreamy little impasse, the Rue de Berlioz. Neither of these attendants were faint-hearted, for their young hearts had been attuned early to the wolfish precocity of the Parisian waif. And they had followed their resolute mistress in her weary quest of the past years.
Berthe Louison smiled in a comforting sense of security, as she gazed listlessly out upon the landscape flying by.
The two servants, modestly voyaging out to Calcutta, on a telegraphic summons, to embark at Marseilles, had preceded the Empress of India by ten days. So, neither friendless, nor without untiring devotion, was the wary woman who had thus secretly armed herself against any “little mistake” on the part of Major Alan Hawke. Certain private instructions to the manager of Grindlay & Co., at Calcutta, had caused that respectable party to open his eyes in wonder.
“Of course, Madame, our local agent at Delhi will act in your behalf, with both secrecy and discretion. I have already written him a private cipher letter in regard to your every wish being fulfilled.”
Such is the potent influence of a letter of credit, practically approaching the “unlimited.”
“If I could only use Jules in the double capacity of gentleman and factotum, I would dress him up a la mode and let him approach Hugh Johnstone,” mused the beautiful tourist, but I must be content to use this cold-hearted adventurer Hawke, for he has at least a surface rank of gentleman, and, moreover, he knows my enemy! I must keep Jules and Marie every moment at my side, for some strange things happen in India by day as well as by night. Sir Hugh may dream of some ‘unusually distressing accident’ as a means of safely ridding himself of a long slumbering specter.”
“Of course, this sly jeweler is Alan Hawke’s spy! A few guineas extra, however, may buy his ‘inner consciousness’ for me,” she mused. And so it fell out that Ram Lal Singh was destined to drop into the secret service of both Hawke and the fair invader! And, as yet, neither of his intending employers could divine the dark purposes of the oily rascal who had stealthily watched Hugh Fraser for long years to slake the hungry vengeance of a despoiled traitor to the last King of Oude.
Major Hawke found the tete a tete dinner with Hugh Johnstone a mere dull social parade. There was no demure face at the feast slyly regarding him, for while the two watchful secret foes exchanged old reminiscence and newer gossip, Justine Delande was cheering the lonely girl, whose silent mutiny as to her shining prison life now reached almost an open revolt. It was a grateful relief to the Swiss woman, whose agitated heart was softly beating the refrain: “To-morrow! to-morrow! I shall see him again!” She feared a self-betrayal!
While the governess mused upon the extent of her proposed revelations to the handsome Major, that rising social star had adroitly exploited his long tete a tete with Captain Hardwicke to his host, and gracefully magnified the warmth of General Willoughby’s personal welcome.