“Don’t lie to me, Ram Lal,” fiercely said the Major. “I have a fifty-pound note if you will find out.”
“He is going there to-morrow,” slowly said Ram.
“All right, watch them both. I’ll be back here. Wait for me.” And then at a nod the horses sprang away.
“Fools! Fools all!” glowered Ram Lal, as he straightened up from his low salaam. “I’ll have those stolen jewels yet. Now is the time to gain his confidence. He is an old man, and weak, and, cowardly.”
When Major Hawke entered the great doors of the marble house, he was gravely received by Mademoiselle Justine Delande. “He has been asking every ten minutes for you,” she said. “I am to show you at once to his rooms.”
“Now, what’s this? what’s all this?” cheerfully cried the Major as he entered the vast sleeping-room of the Anglo-Indian. Old Johnstone feebly pointed to the door, and motioned to his attendants to leave the room. He was worn and gaunt, and his ashen cheeks and sunken eyes told of some great inward convulsion. He had aged ten years since the pompous tiffin. “I’m not well, Hawke! Come here! Near to me!” he huskily cried. And then, the hunter and the hunted gazed mutely into each other’s eyes.
“What’s gone wrong?” frankly demanded the Major. The old man scowled in silence for a moment.
“I have no one I dare trust but you,” he unwillingly said. “You know something of my position, my future. I want to know if you have ever met this woman who has taken the Silver Bungalow—a kind of a French woman. There’s her card.” Old Johnstone’s haggard eyes followed Hawke, as he silently studied the bit of pasteboard.
“Madame Berthe Louison,” he gravely read. And, then, with a magnificent audacity, he lied successfully. “Never even heard the name,” he murmured.
“Fellows at the Club speaking of some such woman today. Pretty woman, I supppose a declassee.” Hawke, lifted his eyebrows.