“I will await you,” gravely said Alixe Delavigne, as she bowed in answer to her guest’s formal signal of departure.
An hour later Jules Victor reported to his mistress: “We drove to the telegraph office, where I awaited the gentleman for some time, and then we repaired to his home.”
There was a disgruntled man whose curses upon his kinsman’s changing moods were both loud and deep when Douglas Fraser received a telegram that night at Allahabad. “Is the old man crazy?” he demanded, as he read the words: “Wait at Allahabad for me. Keep shady. With you in three days. Telegraph your address.” The canny young Scot thought of a coming legacy and obeyed the head of his clan.
Madame Berthe Louison, as Delhi was destined to know her, lingered long over her afternoon driving toilet. There was a recurring fear which made her tremble. “Would Hugh Johnstone divulge the facts as to the jewels to the Viceroy, and so gain his free rehabilitation-and then defy her? No-no! He never would dare!” she answered. “My agents are even now watching that bank. The bank would never give up the sealed packages contents unknown, save on surrender of the carefully drawn receipts.” And then Berthe remembered her own secret work at Calcutta. The Grindlays knew of the surreptitious attempts made by the plausible Hugh Fraser to withdraw the deposit long before the baronetcy episode. And Berthe laughed, in memory of her capture of the receipts in the old days at Brighton, while looking for the stolen letter.
Long before that rising star of fashion, Major Alan Hawke, returned from General Willoughby’s delightful dinner upon the day of Hugh Johnstone’s crafty surrender, he knew that Hugh Johnstone had astounded Delhi by a personal exploitation of the Lady of the Silver Bungalow.
“By Gad! Hawke!” roared old Brigadier Willoughby, with his mouth full of chutney, “Johnstone is going the pace! First he produces a daughter, a hidden treasure, and now this wonderfully beautiful French countess.”
“I suppose, General,” lightly said the Major, “the old nabob will marry and retire to Europe on his coming baronetcy.”
“Likely enough!” sputtered Willoughby. “You lucky young dog. I suppose you are in the secret?”
But neither that night, nor two days later, at Major Hawke’s superb dinner at the Delhi Club, did the jeunesse doree of the old capital extract an admission from that mysterious “secret service” man, Major Alan Hawke. “You cannot deny, Hawke, that you dined at the marble house with the beauty whom we are all toasting,” said a rallying roisterer. “And—with the Veiled Rose of Delhi!” said another, still more eagerly.
“It is true, gentlemen” gravely said Major Hawke, “that I was invited to dinner at the marble house, but Madame Louison is a stranger to me, and I believe a tourist of some rank. It was merely a formal affair. I believe that she brought letters from Paris to Hugh Johnstone.” Late that night Alan Hawke laughed, as he pocketed his winnings at baccarat. “Three hundred pounds to the good! I’m a devil for luck!” And he sat down in his room to think over all the events of a day which had half turned his head. Warned by Justine Delande that Madame Louison was bidden to dine with Hugh Johnstone, Alan Hawke closely interrogated her. She evidently knew and suspected nothing. “Ah! Berthe plays a lone hand against the world,” he smiled.