“To mystify the fools here, if I will bring my daughter and take you for a drive, each day at four, till I go,” said Johnstone. “And, then, I’ll have Hawke show you the city.” He bowed, and at once disappeared, leaving his enemy laughing. But he grinned.
“If she knew that I go to meet Douglas Fraser, my lady would pass an uneasy night! I hold the trump cards now!”
Major Alan Hawke smiled grimly the next day, when he presented to Hugh Johnstone a neatly got up cipher, answering dispatch in code words which had cost Ram Lal just half of the bribe which Hawke gave him for the sly Hindu telegraph clerk.
“Ah! Anstruther was prompt!” said the neatly tricked nabob, when Hawke translated:
“Intelligence gratifying. Name approved and on list. Appointment sure!” Three days later, Delhi missed Hugh Johnstone from the afternoon drives, which showed Madame Louison and Nadine to an eager bevy of Madame Grundys. But the envied of all men was Major Alan Hawke, escorting Madame Louison for a week over the storied plains of the Jumna.
When Madame Berthe Louison and her two body servants took the Calcutta train, local society jumped to its sage conclusion.
“Old Hugh will lead the beautiful Countess to the altar, while Major Alan Hawke will bear off the Rosebud of Delhi, and so become the richest son-in-law in India.” But the handsome Alan Hawke, each morning lingering with Justine Delande in the grounds of the marble house, never saw the face of Nadine Johnstone. The beautiful girl breathlessly awaited her new-made friend’s return. But stern old Hugh Johnstone, at Calcutta, laughed as he thought of his own secret coup de main.
“Wait! Wait till I return!” he gloated. “She is powerless now!”