Major Hawke shook his head. "You may rely on me to meet you, and to faithfully obey you," he gravely said. There were unspoken words trembling on his lips, which he fain would have uttered. "By Heavens!

She is a witch!" he murmured, in a repressed excitement, as he walked quietly down the hallway to keep his tryst with Casimir Wieniawski. For Berthe Louison had at once divined the cause of his unrest.

"You think that I should tell you more? Why should I tell you anything?

We are strangers yet, not even friends. You may divine that I trust no man. I have had my own sad lessons of life-lessons learned in bitterness and tears. I go out to your burning jungle land, with neither hope to allure, nor fear to repel. The whole world is the same to me. That I have a purpose, I admit; and even you may know me better by and bye!

Till then, no professions, no promises, no pledges. I use you for my own selfish purposes, that is all; and you can frankly study your own self-interest. We are two clay jars swept along down the Ganges of life.

For a few threads of the dark river's current, we travel on, side by side! You have frankly taken me at my word! I have taken you at yours!

There is a written order to settle my affairs and remove my luggage.

Of course, should you meet with any accident, telegraph to the Vittorio Emmanuele, at Brindisi. Money," she said, almost bitterly, "would be telegraphed; and so, I say"--he listened breathlessly--"au revoir--at Brindisi!" she concluded, giving him her hand, with a frank smile.

As Alan Hawke descended the stair, he growled. "A woman without a heart, and--not without a head!" As he calmly answered the manager's polite inquiry for Madame's health, the "heartless woman" whom he had left was lying sobbing in the dark room above--crying, in her anguish, "Valerie!

My poor, dead Valerie! I go to your child!"

But, none suspected her departure, when the trimly-clad woman glided out of the entrance of the Hotel Faucon, at eleven o'clock. The maid was in waiting on the circular place in front with a carriage, and the key of the apartment lay in a sealed envelope on Alan Hawke's table, which proves that a few francs are just as potent in Switzerland as the same number of shillings in London, or dollars in New York. It was a clear case of "stole away."

When Major Alan Hawke leaned over the supper table at the Casino, pledging Madame Frangipanni's bright eyes in very fair cafe champagne, he nervously started as he heard the wailing whistle and clanging bells of the through train for Constance. He forgot the faded complexion, the worn face, the chemically tinted hair and haggard eyes of the broken-down Austrian blonde concert singer, in the exhilaration of Berthe Louison's departure.

For he had not lost Professor Casimir Wieniawski from sight a moment since the hour of ten, and that "distinguished n.o.ble refugee" was now in a maudlin way, murmuring perfunctory endearments in the ear of the ex-prima donna, who tenderly gazed upon him in a proprietary manner.

Alan Hawke had judged it well to ply the champagne, and, at the witching hour of midnight, he critically inspected Casimir's condition. "He is probably about tipsy enough now to tell all he knows, and, with an acquired truthfulness. I will, therefore, bring this festive occasion to a close." Whereat the watchful Lucullus of the feast artfully drew Madame Frangipanni aside.

"I have to go on to London, Chere Comtesse," he flatteringly said, "you must give me Casimir for a couple of hours to-night, to talk over the old times."

He lingered a moment, hat in hand, as he chivalrously sent Madame Frangipanni home in a carriage. The poor old singer's bosom was thrilled with a sunset glow of departing greatness, as she lingered tearfully that night over the memories of the halcyon days when the officers of Francis Joseph's bodyguard had fought for the honors of the carriage courtesies of the Diva. Eheu fugaces!

Closeted together, the minor guests having been artfully dispersed, Major Alan Hawke and his friend recalled the olden glories of Wieniawski's Indian tour. It was with a jealous hand that Hawke doled out the cognac, until Casimir abruptly said: "And now, mon ami, tell me what has linked you to Alixe Delavigne?" Alan Hawke had keenly studied his man, and found that the limit of the artist's drinking capacity seemed to be infinity, and so he leaned back and coldly scrutinized the musician's shabby exterior. "I think that I can risk it now," he mused, and then, in a crisp, hard voice, he suddenly said: "I don't mind parting with a twenty-pound note, Casimir, if you will tell me all you know about that beauty. You need it now--more than I. I am to be the judge of the value of your story, however. Mark me, I know the main features, but I also know that you have met her in the old days." The broken-down artist flushed under the changed relation of guest and paid tool.

He uneasily stammered, as he filled a brandy gla.s.s, "As a loan--as a loan!" But Hawke was sternly business-like in his reply.

"Don't make any pretenses with me. You are hard down on your luck, and you know it. This is a mere matter of business." He unfolded a bundle of notes and carelessly tossed two ten-pound notes over to Casimir, who seized them with trembling fingers. The pitiful sum represented to the artist two months of his meager salary. Here was absinthe unlimited, a little roulette, a new frock for Madame Frangipanni, perhaps even a dress coat for himself.

"How old do you think Alixe is?" unsteadily began the artist.

"I should say about twenty-five," gallantly replied the Major.

"We will premise that she is thirty-three," confidently began the musician, "or even thirty-five. When I was a young fool at Warsaw, eighteen years old," he babbled. "I was the local prodigy. My first essays in public were, of course, concerts, and I was soon the vogue.

And, later, asked as an artistic guest to the chateaux of the n.o.bility in Poland, Kowno, Vitebsk, Wilna, Minsk, Grodno and Volhynia. I was a poet in thought, a lover of all womankind in my dreams, and a conspirator in the inmost chambers of my defiant Polish nature."

"They made me the cat's-paw of adroit adventurers who were filling their pockets from wealthy Polish sympathizers in France and America, and some of them were Russian paid spies. I braved all the risks. I was the secret means of communication of the highest circles of our cult of Rebellion. Fool that I was, wandering from province to province, I lived the life of a mad enthusiast. The proud memories of Poland were mine, the spirit of her music, arts, and poetry had cast its witchery over me. Her history, the tragedy of a crownless queen of sorrows, had transported me into a dreamy idealism. I was soon the confidant of our seductive mobile Polish beauties. Sinuous, insincere, changeful, pa.s.sionate, and burning with the flames of Love and Life, I was, at once, their idol and their plaything, their hero, and their willing slave.

"For then, the spirit of old Poland rang out in my numbers, and I waked the quivering echoes of woman's heart at will. It was in seventy-three that I was sent on a special mission to Prince Pierre Troubetskoi's splendid chateau at Jitomir in Volhynia. The crafty Russians were watching us even there, and were busied in a.s.sembling troops secretly, at Kiev and Wilna. To another was given the proud place of secret spy over the higher circles of Wilna, while my duty was to watch Jitomir and Kiev. Troubetskoi was a bold gallant fellow, an ardent Muscovite, and had secretly returned from a long sojourn in Paris. He was in close touch with the Governors of Volhynia, Kiev, and Podolia, and we feared his sword within, his Parisian connections without. An evil star brought me into his household as his guest. For nearly a year I was kept vibrating between the points of danger to us, my personal headquarters being at the Chateau of Jitomir. And there I lived out my brief heart-life, for there I met Valerie Troubetskoi. No one seemed to know where Pierre had found her, but later I learned her story from her own lips.

"That is, all of the story of a woman's heart-life which is ever unveiled to any man! She was beautiful beyond--compare, her wistful tenderness shining out as the moon, softer than the fierce noonday glare of the pa.s.sion-transfigured faces of our Polish beauties. For they loved, for Love's own sake, and Valerie Troubetskoi offered up the chalice of her own heart in silent sadness. I never saw so lovely a being."

"Did she look like that?" suddenly demanded Hawke, thrusting a photograph before the haggard eyes of the broken artist. He gasped, and tears gathered in his lashes. "Valerie, herself, and, as I knew her only before her fatal illness had marked her down. Did Alixe give you this?"

He clutched at it with his trembling hands.

"Go on," harshly said Alan Hawke, "the hour is late!"

The Pole buried his face in his thinned hands, and then brokenly resumed: "The old story--the only one you know. She was about my own age; Troubetskoi was nearly always away; perhaps he thought to trap all my traitorous circle through me, or else he was in the secret service of the hungry Russian eagle. Valerie roamed silently through the great halls of Jitomir, saddened and lonely, for their union was childless.

My heart spoke to her own in my music; she knew the prayer of my soul, though my lips were silent. For I madly adored her. Then, then, I was a man! My life belonged to Poland, my soul to art, but my heart was a sealed temple of love, a temple where Valerie, the beloved, the secretly worshiped, sat alone on her throne.

"One day a woman, radiant in youth, and reflecting Valerie's own beauty, was brought to the chateau by Troubetskoi, who had journeyed on to Vienna. It was Alixe Delavigne, the woman whom I saw last with you. A month later Valerie called me to her side: 'My poor Casimir,' she said, as I knelt at her feet, 'I am dying! The struggle will not be a long one. I know the secret of your boyish heart. Your eyes have spoken and your music has reached my heart. Your love is written in your songs without words. When you have forgotten me, there is Alixe; she is alone upon earth. Let me seal your heart to hers, and even in death I shall feel that I love you both.' Then," the artist sobbed, "I lost my head.

I told her all in mad, burning words. She raised her eyes to mine, and softly said: 'I shall see you no more unless Alixe is with us, for I love Pierre and he loves me. When I am gone, Alixe will be the only one who knows the secret of my life.'

"It was two months later--for I would not leave her side, even Pierre Troubetskoi could not see her pa.s.sing away, for it was a mysterious malady--when a sudden alarm brought me to my senses. My secret society work was done, and yet I lingered there, at the very steps of the scaffold. Alixe Delavigne burst into my room at midnight.

"'Hasten!' she cried. 'Even now the Cossacks are surrounding the house!'

She let me out through the secret pa.s.sage of the old Chateau. A cloak was thrown over me by the Intendant. He was a Pole--and one true to the old blood. Alixe pressed a purse upon me. An address in Paris was whispered. 'I will write! Go! For Valerie's sake, go!'

"Forty-eight hours later I crossed the Galician frontier at Lemberg disguised as a Polish peasant. My guardian, the Intendant, turned me over to our friends in the valley of the Styr. After six months of wandering, I finally reached Paris in safety. There were sorrowful letters awaiting me. Valerie was hidden forever in the yawning tombs of the gloomy old chapel of Jitomir, and Alixe herself wrote of Pierre Troubetlskoi's generous blinding of the pursuit. I was, however, prosecuted and hunted. I fled to America, for all our plans of revolt were miserably wrecked--and by Polish traitors!

"Two years later, I learned from a fellow refugee that Pierre Troubetskoi had been killed by accident in a great forest battle. And to Alixe Delavigne, all the wealth which would have been Valerie's was left by the lion-hearted man who awoke too late to the early doom of his beloved.

"I knew naught of the family history save that the sisters were the daughters of Colonel Delavigne, a gallant French officer, who was murdered by the Communists in seventy-one." Alan Hawke was now sternly eyeing the musician, who abruptly concluded: "I have never met Alixe Delavigne since. I dare not return to Poland. My own course has been steadily downward, and, beyond knowing that she still possesses the splendid domains of Jitomir, we are strangers to each other. Polish refugees have told me that she has always administered the vast estate with liberal kindness to all. And now you will tell me of her?" The tremulous hand of Wieniawski raised a br.i.m.m.i.n.g gla.s.s of brandy to his lips. He stared about vacantly when Hawke said:

"Madame Delavigne left Lausanne this evening on a special mission. Her life is a sealed book to all, and a mere business interest has drawn us together." The Englishman went callously on: "There are a couple of mountainously rich American girls coming down here to-morrow at nine o'clock to spend the day at Chillon with me. I need a running mate. Will you then meet me at the Montreux Landing? You can have a day off, and these young fools are fat pigeons, ardent, and enthusiastic." Hawke saw the hesitation on the man's face.

"You can say to Madame Frangipanni that you are with me and that I will explain later at the dinner." With a glance at his watch, Alan Hawke rang for the Oberkellner. He was extending his hand in goodnight, when the refugee cried imploringly, "I must see her once more! Tell me of her journey!" and Major Hawke deliberately lied to the poor vaurien artist, the wreck of his better self. "The through train to Paris is her only address. I presume that Madame Delavigne will spend some time in a sanitarium after this heart attack, and she has my banker's address. It is only through them that we meet to arrange some affairs of business.

Whether maid, wife, or widow, I know not, for you know what women are--sealed books to their enemies, and to their husbands and lovers--only enigmas!

"But fail not to meet me. I'll give you a pleasant day. You will find the two Americans both gushing and susceptible." Then as Major Alan Hawke stepped lightly away to the sedately closed Hotel Faucon, Casimir Wieniawski staggered back into the cafe.

His fit of pa.s.sionate sorrow was brief, for in a half hour he was the king of a mad revel, where his meaner sycophants divided Alan Hawke's bounty. The cool Major strode along happy hearted to his rest, quietly revolving the plan of campaign.

"There was then a sealed chapter in Valerie Troubetskoi's life. And the key of that is in Berthe Louison's keeping. Now, my fair employer, it is diamond cut diamond. I think that I have done a fair day's work." And he thanked his lucky stars for the precipitate flight of his mysterious employer. "She evidently feared the n.o.ble Casimir following upon the trail. Strange--strange pathways! Strange footprints on the sands of Time! It is a devilish funny world, but, after all, the best that we have any authentic account of." And so he slept the sleep of the just, for he was making the woes of others the cornerstones of his newer fortunes.

Major Hawke arose with the lark, by a previous arrangement with the Hotel Bureau. His face was eminently businesslike in its gravity, as he summoned the porter and dispatched all his luggage to the care of the Chef du Gare, Geneva. "Business of extreme importance awaiting upon Madame's complete recovery had caused her to depart to consult an eminent specialist. Thank you, there will be no letters," said the Major, as he pocketed both receipted bills. He amused himself while watching for the morning boat, as the mountain mists, lifting, revealed the glittering lake, in sending a very carefully sketched letter to Mademoiselle Euphrosyne Delande, No. 123 Rue du Rhone, Geneva. This letter was of such moment that it went on to London, to be posted back duly stamped with good Queen Victoria's likeness. A very careful Major!

The lofty semi-official tone, in which the writer spoke of a possible return to India "under the auspices of the Foreign Office," was well calculated to fill the spinster's bosom with the flattering unction that a mighty protector had been raised up for the adventurous Justine, now supposed to be environed with all the glittering snares of society, as well as enveloped in the mystic jungle.

A week later, when Euphrosyne Delande laid down the pen and abandoned her unfinished "Lecture Upon the Influence of the Allobroges, Romans, Provencal Franks, Burgundians, and Germans Upon the Intellectual Development of Geneva," she read Alan Hawke's letter with a thrill of secret pride.

The smooth adventurer had written: "If I have the future pleasure of meeting Mademoiselle Justine Delande I only hope to find a resemblance to her charming and distinguished sister. As my movements are necessarily secret, pray write only in the utmost confidence to Mademoiselle Justine. I hope to soon return and enjoy once more the hospitalities of your intellectual circle." The address given for India was "Bombay Club." Miss Euphrosyne gazed up at the stony lineaments of Professor Delande, her marble-browed and flinty-hearted sire, locked in the cold chill of a steel engraving. He was as neutral as the busts of Buffon, Cuvier, Laplace, Humboldt, and Pestalozzi, which coldly furnished forth her sanctum. She thought of the eloquent eyed young Major and sadly sighed. She proceeded to enshrine him in her withered heart, and then wrote a crossed letter of many tender underlinings to her distant sister. And thus the pathway was made very smooth for the artful wanderer, who had already stepped upon the decks of the Sepoy.

Major Hawke had dispatched an excellent breakfast before he stepped into the carriage to be whirled away to Montreux. His bridges were burned behind him. There was not a vestige of Madame Berthe Louison left to give the needy Pole a clue. "They are separated, and Anstruther and the Swiss schoolmistress are harmless. I have only my play to make upon the lovely Justine, and to retake up my old friendship with Hugh Fraser.

Then I am ready to bit by bit unravel the story of Valerie Delavigne's child--the Veiled Rose of Delhi."

"Between a father with a secret to keep, and this strange woman with a purpose, there is a pretty girl and a vast fortune at issue, besides the prospective pickings of Madame Berthe Louison." These musings of the Major led him up to the question of his employer's false name, as he swept down to the nearby Montreux station. "She evidently had traced the child to Switzerland, and was upon a still hunt to find out the home of the growing heiress, and,--for what purpose? Ah! One day after another,"

he pleasantly exclaimed, as he saw the artist awaiting him. "Peu apeu I'oiseau fait son nid." He had already evolved a scheme to permanently separate Casimir Wieniawski from his own beautiful employer, who was now dashing along well on her way toward Munich. Alan Hawke was startled at the distinguished appearance of the musician. An aristocratic pallor refined his face, he was neatly booted and gloved, the elegant lines of the Pole's supple figure were displayed in a morning frock coat, and his chapeau de soie was virginal in its gloss.

"Some of my own twenty pounds," mused Alan Hawke, as he gayly sprang out and saluted his dupe. "Ah! There you are. You look to-day the old Casimir. Let us have a few last words before the boat arrives."

Hardened as he was, Alan Hawke was surprised at the childlike lightness of the Pole's manner when they encountered the fresh young beauties who were already the cynosure of all eyes upon the morning boat. The storm of emotion had spent itself, and while Alan Hawke squired, the aggressive Miss Genie, Casimir Wieniawski was bending over the slightly dreamy and more romantic Miss Phenie! They distributed themselves in open order, as they strolled along toward the drawbridge of that most hospitable of old horrors, Chillon Castle.

It was a day of days, and the artful Hawke laughed as he smoked his cigar upon a rustic bench in the castle Garden. Miss Genie was at his side, pouting, petulant, provokingly pretty and duly agnostic as to the Polish prince.

A week later, Alan Hawke stood on the deck of the Sepoy, as that reliable vessel steamed out of Brindisi harbor for Bombay. He was watching a lace handkerchief, waved by a graceful woman, standing alone upon the pier. The adventurer drew a silver rupee from his pocket, and then gayly tossed it into the waves, crying, "Here's for luck!" as he watched the slender, distant, womanly figure move up the pier. There lay the Empress of India with steam now curling from her stacks, ready to follow on to Calcutta. "I have not broken her lines yet," murmured Major Hawke as he paced the deck, "but I have her pretty well surrounded, cunning as she is!" and so he complacently ordered his first bottle of pale ale.