Ringing a silver bell twice, Madame Louison sank into a chair. Alan Hawke started up, inquiringly, as Jules and Marie entered the room from an ante-room, whose door was left ajar.
“Jules! Marie!” calmly said Madame Louison. “This gentleman is my secret business agent. He will call here in the evenings very often. He has pass keys of his own, and you need not announce him. He is the only person who has the right to be in my house—at all times.” The husband and wife bowed in silence and, at a gesture from their mistress, departed silently, having mentally photographed the newcomer.
Gazing in open-eyed astonishment, the surprised Major faltered, “Who are these people? Why did you do this strange thing?”
“To assure myself of safety,” quietly smiled Berthe Louison. “They are my personal servants, whom I brought on from Calcutta, and I have reason to believe that Jules is both alert and courageous. He is a veteran of the Tonquin war, and that pretty scar was a present from the Black Flags. They were selected by one who knows the wiles of my desperate enemy Johnstone.”
“Now, Major Hawke, let us to business” calmly continued Berthe, secretly enjoying Alan Hawke’s dismay. “Tell me your whole story. Only the events since your arrival here. The rest counts for nothing. We are all on the ground here and I propose to act quickly. I learned some matters in Calcutta which have greatly enlightened me.” The facile tongue of the renegade was slow to do the bidding of his unready brain. “Damme! But she’s a cool one!” the ex-officer concluded, as he caught his breath. But, conscious of her watchful eye, he related all his adventures, with a judicious reserve as to Justine Delande. The burning eyes of Berthe Louison were steadily fixed upon the relator’s face, and she was coldly noncommittal when Hawke paused for breath and a mental recapitulation. The Major now gazed upon her immovable visage. There was neither joy nor sorrow, neither the flush of anger nor the trembling of rage, awakened by the businesslike presentment of the social facts. “She is a human icicle,” he mused. “She has some deadly hold on him!”
“Can you trust this Ram Lal Singh?” the woman demanded in a business-like tone. Alan Hawke nodded decisively.
“He knows Hugh Fraser Johnstone well?” queried Berthe.
“They have been companions in the mixed line or Delhi since the mutiny,” earnestly replied Hawke, slowly concluding: “And Ram Lal has been Johnstone’s broker in selecting his almost unequaled Indian collection. Ram is a thief, like all Hindus, but he is square to me. I hold him in my hand. You can trust to him, but only through me!” Berthe Louison raised her eyes and then fixed a searching glance upon Alan Hawke, as if she would read his very soul.
“And, can I trust you?” she said, almost solemnly.
“You remember our strange compact, Madame,” coldly said Alan Hawke. “Here, face to face with the enemy, I expect to know what is required of me—and also what my future recompense will be.”