"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 shipment 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 worshiped, 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 dashing 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 crushing 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 languishing here in Capua. Suppose that this she-devil would bolt? Where would I land then?" He was most sadly rattled.

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 Cooma.s.sie Castle turned her prow toward Palk Strait. The terrible ordeal of "pa.s.sing 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 sh.o.r.es 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 sh.o.r.e for some last commissions, to telegraph to the secret address at Allahabad the words: "Madras steamer Cooma.s.sie 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 G.o.d! 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 sh.o.r.e duty was done when he had wired to his urgent relative in Delhi the glad tidings: "All right. Cooma.s.sie 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 surpa.s.sed 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 d.a.m.ned 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.

"h.e.l.lo! 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.

"I must watch this young fool," growled Alan Hawke. "Thank my lucky stars, the woman is far away! But, he's well connected, has a brilliant record, and is a V. C. now for Berthe Louison and the fireworks! But, first, old Ram Lal! They bowled the old boy out! I suppose that he has already told Alixe Delavigne that she has been outwitted. I hold the trump cards now! No single word without its golden price! I must not make one false step! As to the club men, I only join in the general wonder." He made a careful and very studied toilet and sauntered out of the club en flaneur, and then stealthily betook himself to the paG.o.da in Ram Lal's garden, where his innocent dupe had so often waited for him with a softly beating heart.

"I'm glad the girl is gone," mused Alan Hawke. "If she were here, the chorus hymning Hardwicke's perfections might set her young heart on fire." He was, as yet, ignorant of the tender bond of grat.i.tude fast ripening into Love. For, Love, that strange plant, rooted in the human heart, thrives in absence, and, watered by the tears of sorrow and adversity, fills the longing and faithful heart, in days of absence, with its flowers of rarest fragrance and blossoms of unfading beauty.

Nadine Johnstone, speeding on over sapphire seas, had already conquered the tender secret of the simple Justine Delande's heart; and in her own loving day-dreams:

"Aye she loot the tears down fa' for Jock o' Hazeldean!"

"I must see him again! I must see him!" she fondly pledged her waiting heart. With the serpent cunning of a loving maiden, she brooded like a dove with tender eyes, and so in her heart of hearts, determined to draw forth from her stalwart cousin, Douglas Fraser, the secret of their future destination. And the honest fellow became even as wax in her hands; while the gloomy Hardwicke, in far-away Delhi, eyed the parchment-faced Hugh Johnstone in mute wonder, at the long official reception in the Marble House. "Will he not vouchsafe to me even one word of thanks?" thought the young man, in an increasing wonder.

But, Ram Lal Singh, when Major Alan Hawke drew him into the sanctum behind the shop, showed a dark face, seamed with lines of care. "There will be some terrible happening!" muttered the smooth old Mohammedan.

He had good gift of the world's gear, and now preferred the role of fox to lion. "She knows nothing as yet. I waited till I could see you. I dared not to tell her. She only fancies that this official visit of the General-Sahib from Calcutta will, of course, take up all their time at the marble house. But she begs me to watch them all, and she has given me some little presents--money presents." Hawke winced, but in silence.

His employer trusted him not. Here was proof positive.

"How in the devil's name did they get away without you knowing of it?"

demanded Hawke. "If you are lying to me, Ram Lal, we may lose both our pickings from this fat paG.o.da tree. You see old Johnstone may slip away after the girl. He may leave here with Abercromby."