In the Delhi train, Hugh Johnstone busied with his late London papers, slyly smiled as he studied a route map and railway time table. He had received a single telegraphed word, dated Madras, and wisely left unsigned, but that one word was the keynote of his coveted victory—“Arrived.”
“Ah! my lady,” he mused, casting his eyes in the direction of Madame Louison’s cozy private compartment. “To-morrow at Delhi, if Douglas Fraser is true to his trust, there will be the message which tells of a ‘bark upon the sea,’ which bears away forever all the brightness of your life—away from you, yes, forever! And Hawke, this smart cad, is powerless now, and both of them are outwitted. The Baronetcy is safe the very moment that Abercromby’s work is done. I’ve paid Hawke now, and he has been very naturally brought down here, out of the way. Madame! Madame! Now to settle accounts with you the very moment that Abercromby has reported back from Calcutta. I think I will just have a good old-fashioned talk with Ram Lal Singh. I need his evidence to hoodwink this old cask of grog, Abercromby. I must blow off’ his vanity in great style.”
While Berthe Louison slept, while old Hugh Johnstone plotted, while Ram Lal Singh fumed at Delhi, and Harry Hardwicke “mourned the hopes that left him,” Major Alan Hawke retired to the Nirvana of a long afternoon siesta. There was a little departing detachment on this golden afternoon at Madras—two frightened women, now gladly seeking the shelter of their cabins, as the fleet steamer Coomassie Castle turned her prow toward Palk Strait. The terrible ordeal of “passing the surf” had appalled them, and the exhausted Nadine Johnstone at last fell asleep with her arms clasped around her sad-hearted governess. A hundred times had they read over together the old nabob’s telegram: “Going home from Calcutta to settle the Baronetcy appointment. Will meet you in Europe.” Nadine’s letter from her stern father bade her implicitly trust to her new-found kinsman, Douglas Fraser. The old nabob’s judiciously private letter had filled Justine Delande’s sad heart with one twilight glow of happiness. A comforting cheque for one thousand pounds was contained therein.
The words: “Your salary and expenses will be paid by me in Europe. This is only a little present. Another may await you and your sister, if you fulfill your trust, that no man, not even Douglas Fraser, meets my daughter alone until you give her back to me. He is but my traveling agent. Nadine is in your hands alone. I have so written to her.” With a breaking heart Justine Delande kissed her beloved gage d’amour, the diamond bracelet, murmuring: “Alan! Alan! To part without even a word!” She lay with tear-stained eyes, watching the low shores of Madras fade away, and listened to the sleeping girl’s murmur: “Harry! Harry! I owe you my life!” Even the maid mourned a dashing Sergeant-Major! With a desperate courage, trying to fan the spark of love, which had slowly crept into her lonely heart, Justine Delande had timidly bribed a stewardess, going on shore for some last commissions, to telegraph to the secret address at Allahabad the words: “Madras steamer Coomassie Castle, Brindisi.”
The signature, “Your Justine,” brought a grim smile to Alan Hawke’s face, the next night, when on the arrival of General Abercromby, he stationed Hugh Johnstone’s secret spies on duty with the redoubtable Calcutta warrior. “By God! She is both game and true!” cried Hawke. “Here is my fortune, and Justine shall share my spoils yet!” As the special train rolled out into the starlit night the old nabob, in a paroxysm of delight, read in the marble house words telegraphed by the happy-hearted Douglas Fraser, now taking up his endless deck tramp on the Brindisi bound steamer. The young Scotsman, ignorant of all intrigue, was relieved to know that he had laid the firm foundation of his future fortunes. His last shore duty was done when he had wired to his urgent relative in Delhi the glad tidings: “All right. Coomassie Castle. Orders strictly obeyed.”
Even the astute Alan Hawke failed, after many days of futile private research, to trace the route of the train which had pulled out of Delhi in the dead of night, beat the record to Allahabad, and then, turning off apparently for Bombay, had curved, on a loop, to the Madras line, and surpassed all speed records on the Indian Peninsula. Even when he telegraphed to Ram Lal’s friends at Madras, he could obtain no definite trace, the railway officials were silent, and the travelers had sought no hotel in Madras. Hugh Johnstone’s well applied money had smothered all inquiry. Even the driver and stokers of the special train never knew who so generously presented them with a ten pound note apiece. “Some secret service racket,” they laughed over their ale. Not a tremor of a single muscle betrayed Major Alan Hawke when he delivered over his official charge, Major General Abercromby, to Hugh Johnstone in the golden glow of Delhi’s morning. “I’ve kept your interests in view,” he whispered. “The old boy’s just two hundred pounds richer. And, you may be sure, he wanted for nothing. I know all his damned old tiger and mutiny stories by heart. I’m going up to the Club for a good long sleep. My compliments to the ladies,” lightly said Alan Hawke, as he gracefully declined Hugh Johnstone’s invitation to breakfast. Then Johnstone bore off his purple prize, set in red and gold.
The wide ripple of excitement caused by General Abercromby’s reported arrival had crowded the railway station. Hugh Johnstone chuckled, “Evidently Hawke knows nothing,” as the two old friends drove away in splendid state. But Major Hawke, an hour later, at his Club, was suddenly interrupted in a cozy breakfast by the most unceremonious entrance of Major Harry Hardwicke, whose promotion was at last gazetted. “Hello! I see you’re a Major now. Lucky devil! What can I do for you, Hardwicke?” cried Alan Hawke, eyeing the haggard and worn-looking young officer with a strange dawning suspicion of the truth. “Did he know, too, of the Hegira?”
Major Hardwicke threw himself down in a chair, curtly saying: “You can tell me who effectuated this lightning disappearance act of Madame Delande and young Miss Johnstone.”
“You speak in riddles to me, Hardwicke,” coolly said the wary Major. “I’ve just come in from Allahabad with General Abercromby, who is here to settle old Johnstone’s accounts. I know nothing of what you refer to. I expected to meet both the ladies at dinner to-day.”
“Then I will not uselessly take up your time, Major Hawke,” gloomily rejoined Hardwicke, as he picked up his sword, and, with a cold formal bow, quitted the room.