“Do not sulk in your tent. On my return I shall have need of you. You can prepare to go into action then.”
“Where shall I address you at Calcutta?” demanded Hawke. “Something might happen.”
“Ah,” smiled Berthe Louison. “Nothing will happen. Not a line, not a telegram; send nothing, come what will! I return here soon, and, besides, Old Johnstone might watch and intercept it. Remember, we do not know each other. It would be a fatal mistake to write.” And so she went quietly on her way. The house was locked, the Indian servants having the Madame’s orders to admit no one, on any pretense. “Damn her!” growled Alan Hawke, when the door was shut in his face. “She feared I would give her away to Johnstone. No address! Not a line or a telegram! Only wait—only wait!”
Ram Lal infuriated him later with the news that nothing could be learned from the baffled spies of the household in the Silver Bungalow as to the first or second interwiew of Johnstone and the resolute Alixe Delavigne. “Money will not do it! Not a lac of rupees. The Frenchman and woman never leave her day or night. He is on guard with weapons and a night light at her door, and the maid sleeps in the room.
“And she has other secret helpers!” groaned the baffled Ram Lal. “She is writing and receiving letters all the time. And yet none of these come or go by the post. She does not trust you, Major,” said the jewel merchant, with a cruel gleam of his dark eyes. “I believe that she is some old love of Sahib Johnstone. They have deep dealings. She has bought a great store of jewels and trinkets from me.”
“Hell and fury! I’ve been duped!” cried Hawke. “I see it. That damned Frenchman takes and brings the letters! But who is her local go-between? Perhaps the French Consul at Calcutta, or some banker here! I can’t buy them all. She only needs me in case of a violent rupture with Johnstone. Damn her stony-hearted impertinence!”
And he mentally resolved to sell her out and out to the liberal old nabob. “He might then give his daughter to me for peace and safety. But I’ve got to do the trick before he finds out the falsity of Anstruther’s so-called telegram. And, first, I must have something to sell. She is the devil’s own for sly nerve, is my lady.”
“She is too smart for us, as yet,” soothingly said Ram Lal. “But wait; wait till they return! Pay me well and I will find out all that goes on. I can always get into the marble house at night. At any time, I may spy on old Johnstone and get the secret there. I have a couple of men of my own in his house. They know where to leave a door, a window, an opened sash for me. And at the Silver Bungalow, I can go in and out secretly by day and night. She would not know. You would not wish anything to happen to her?” The old jewel merchant’s voice was darkly suggestive.
“No! Devil take her!” cried Hawke. “What I want to know is hidden in her crafty head and stony heart. Death would bury it forever. Nothing must happen either to her or to him. It would spoil the whole game. Don’t you see, Ram Lal, there’s money in this for you and me just as long as we keep them all here under our hands. If they separate—even if one goes to Europe—you can watch one and I the other. You can always frighten money out of old Johnstone if we tell each other all, and I can follow that woman over Europe and dog her till she is driven crazy. She will fear me just as long as old Hugh Johnstone is alive, for I could sell her out to him. No one else cares. They must both live to be our bankers. Now tell me, why did either or both of them go to Calcutta—what for?” Ram Lal figuratively washed his hands in invisible water.
“Running water, passing silently, leaves no story behind, Sahib,” he said, simply. “We have not caught our eels yet. But they are both coming back into our eel pot.” And as the days dragged on Alan Hawke beguiled the time with the most energetic inroads into Justine Delande’s heart.