Part 20 (1/2)
”Remember! The personal interests of the Crown are involved here!” said the Viceroy. ”Any mistake might cost me my Sovereign's confidence and you your commission, perhaps a Star of India!” he laughed, with an affected lightness.
In far-away Delhi, as the sun faded away into the soft summer twilight, Harry Hardwicke was sitting at the side of Nadine Johnstone, while her stern father secretly exulted in distant Calcutta. He had already mailed by registered post a set of duplicated receipts and insurance policies for his last s.h.i.+pment addressed to ”Professor Andrew Fraser” and his mind was centered upon some peculiarly pleasurable coming events to take place in the Marble House. But the dreamy-eyed girl watching the man who had so gallantly saved her life, thought only of a love which had stolen into her heart to wake all its slumbering chords to life, and to loosen the sweet music of her singing soul! They were alone, save for the bent figure of Justine Delande at a distant window, and the spirit of Love breathed upon them silently drew them heart to heart.
Here now, before the divinity so fondly wors.h.i.+ped, Harry Hardwicke lost his soldier's ready voice. ”Say no more! You need rest, Miss Nadine!
I shall only call to-morrow to a.s.sure myself of your perfect recovery.
When your father returns I shall do myself the honor to ask his formal permission to visit you later.” There was a sigh and a sob as Nadine Johnstone took her silent lover's hands and pressed them in her own, bursting into happy tears.
”I owe you my life--my father shall speak, but in my own heart I shall treasure your splendid bravery forever!” Her tall young knight stooped over the little hands, kissed them, and was turning to go, when the maiden slipped off a sparkling ring. ”Wear this always for my sake; I can say no more till we meet again!” And, bending low, Captain Hardwicke stepped backward, as from a queen's presence, leaving her there, weak, loving, and trembling in a strange delight.
As he rode slowly homeward in the evening's glow, he pa.s.sed Major Alan Hawke das.h.i.+ng away to the railway station in a carriage. Traveling luggage told the story of a sudden jaunt. A wave of the hand and the secret-service man was gone. Hawke growled: ”d.a.m.ned young jackanapes, I'll fool you, too; but what does old Johnstone want?” He was reading a telegram just received: ”Come to meet me at Allahabad. Have brought the drafts. Want you for a few days down here.”
At ten o'clock next morning, Simpson, his voice all broken, his old eyes filled with tears, dashed into Captain Hardwicke's office. ”Dead?”
cried the young soldier, springing up in a sudden horror. ”No. Gone over night--both the women--G.o.d knows where, but they left secretly, by the Master's orders!” And then Hardwicke sank back into his chair with a groan. But, at Allahabad, Major Alan Hawke was raving alone in a helpless rage. There was no Johnstone there, and Ram Lal Singh had telegraphed him: ”The daughter and governess went away in the night by the railroad--special train. A man from Calcutta took them away.”
”You shall pay for this, you old hound!” he yelled, ”Yes, with your heart's blood.'”
CHAPTER IX. ALAN HAWKE PLAYS HIS TRUMP CARD.
When the Calcutta train rolled into Allahabad, two days after Harry Hardwicke's crus.h.i.+ng surprise, Major Alan Hawke, the very pink of Anglo-Indian elegance, awaited the dismounting of the returning voyagers. He had pa.s.sed a whole sleepless night in revolving the various methods to play oft each of his wary employers against each other, and had decided to let Fate make the game.
”The devil of it is, I'm not supposed to know anything of the flitting!”
he mused, after digesting Ram Lal Singh's carefully worded telegrams.
All the light in his shadowy mental eclipse was the positive information that a special train had been made up for Bombay at the station, ”on government secret service.”
”The old man is preparing to fight, now,” he decided. ”His 'wooden horse' is within Berthe Loiuson's camp. If she is not wary, she may never leave India, Johnstone can be very ugly. But what must I do? Shall I warn Berthe, now? If I do, she will both doubt me and make a scene.
Old Johnstone will then know at once that I have betrayed him.” An hour's cogitation led Alan Hawke to decide to let the ”high contracting parties” fight it out themselves at Delhi.
”I'll secretly join the winner and then bleed them both. I must be unconscious of all. Johnstone's money I want first, then, Berthe must pay me well for my aid.” With an exquisite nosegay of flowers, he awaited the slow descent of the social magnates. A second telegram from Johnstone had warned him that the wanderers were on the same train. ”He is a cool devil!” mused Hawke.
Radiant in beauty, pleasantly smiling, and watched by her French bodyguard, Madame Louison swept into the grand cafe room upon the arm of Hugh Johnstone, who deftly exchanged a silent glance of warning with the artful Major. The first intimation of Johnstone's craft was the fact that Alan Hawke found he could not manage to see Madame Louison alone, even for a single moment. There was a veiled surprise in her beautiful brown eyes, when the nabob led Hawke a few tables away for a conference in full view of the beauty, who was surrounded with a cloud of obsequious attendants. ”As we have but one hour, Madame, pray at once, order a repast for us all. I must have a few words with Hawke.”
Johnstone was as smiling as a summer sea.
”We were delayed a day by my own private business,” genially cried the nabob. ”What's new in Delhi?”
It was the crowning lie of Hawke's splendidly mendacious career when he carelessly said, ”Nothing. I supposed, of course, that you had grave need of me here.”
”So I have,” earnestly replied Johnstone, as the station master bustled up, sc.r.a.ping and bowing, with a bundle of letters and several telegrams.
”Just look over these five drafts on Glyn, Carr & Glyn's, while I look at the letters,” whispered Johnstone, handing Hawke an official looking envelope. Even while the adventurer carefully scanned the bills of exchange, he saw a gleam of devilish triumph in the old man's eyes as he opened the telegrams, and with affected carelessness shoved his letters in his pocket. ”See here, Hawke! You can even earn a neat 'further donation' if you will play your part rightly. General Abercromby, as personally representing the Viceroy, arrives here to-morrow night to adjust my accounts finally. He will be a week or so at Delhi. I want you to represent me and receive him here. I've telegraphed back to Abercromby that you will bring him up in a special car. He does not want old Willoughby to think he is nosing around Delhi. Now, do the handsome thing. Abercromby knows you. Here is a pocket-book. Lose a few fifty-pound notes to the old boy on the train. Amuse him, mind you, and set him up well! The car will be well stocked. I leave my two men here to wait on you and him. That's all. I want to go off 'in a blaze of glory,' as the Yankees would say. I will meet you at Delhi. Abercromby comes to my house. Can I depend on you? And, not a single word about the Baronetcy. The Viceroy has graciously sent a special dispatch to England.”
”All right. Let us join the Madame,” said Hawke, with an uneasy feeling of a coming tropical storm, ”I'm glad to be out of it,” mused Hawke. ”If Abercromby stays a week, both parties will defer hostilities until he goes. If that soft-hearted Swiss fool only telegraphs! By G.o.d, I would have liked to have had one final tete-a-tete. She can make my fortune yet.”
The flying minutes glided easily away, with Hugh Johnstone's old-time gallantry artfully separating the two secret conspirators against his peace. Alan Hawke lunched gayly, with but one lurking regret--a futile sorrow that he had not bent Justine Delande to his will. There was no dark pledge between them, no secret bond of a man's perfidious victory, no soft surrender, the seal of a woman's dishonor.
”Will she telegraph?” the adventurer asked himself with a beating heart and a burning brain. ”If so, then I hold them both in my hands, and the game is mine.” When the train drew out, the Major watched the disappearing forms of the mortal enemies in a secret wonder. ”Have they made it up? Will they marry after all?” he growled, and yet he laughed the idea to scorn. ”And yet fear, as well as love, has tied the nuptial knot before,” he mused.
A new proof of Johnstone's craft was afforded him after he had, in a leisurely way, verified the regularity of his windfall in good London exchange, signed by the millionaire upon his home bankers, and duly stamped. A mental flash of lightning showed him how he was ”sewed up,”
for Johnstone's all too polite servants shadowed him, alternately, in his every movement. He even dared not visit the secret telegraph address. ”Old scoundrel!” raged Alan Hawke. ”I will only get the first news after the fair and probably in a storm from Berthe. The denouement may occur with me languis.h.i.+ng here in Capua. Suppose that this she-devil would bolt? Where would I land then?” He was most sadly rattled.