A Fascinating Traitor Part 26

As he rolled along toward Delhi, he seriously cogitated "playing fair"

in his new capacity. "Perhaps it will pay!" he mused. "But I will even up with that old hog, Johnstone!" He dared not contemplate now any substantial treason to Madame Alixe Delavigne. "She is a witch woman!

She seems to have an untold backing! The Bankers, even, the Viceroy, and the French Consul-General, too. She could crush me! I must serve My Lady Disdain, and I will fight and die in her army!" Arriving at Delhi, Major Alan Hawke's first visit was to Ram Lal Singh, as he prepared to "report forthwith," in "full rig," to the local Commander. There was a strange preoccupation in the old jeweler which baffled Hawke. Ram Lal only humbly begged to have all his lengthened accounts with Madame Berthe Louison arranged, and Alan Hawke, with a few words, calmed the Mussulman's fears.

"I'll have it all attended to, to-morrow, when I look it over," said the Major, hastening away to the Club. "Ram has been at the has.h.i.+sh, or bhang, or the betel nut, or some of his recondite dissipations--perhaps he has enjoyed an opium bout in the Zenana," mused the new appointee, as he gayly "begged off" from a cloud of eager congratulations by promising to "blow off" the whole Delhi Club. "Business first, pleasure afterwards" said the resplendent Major Hawke, as he clattered away, a handsome son of Mars, to report to General Willoughby.

Major Hawke was secretly delighted with his cordial reception. "Come to me to-morrow at ten, Major," said the Commander, "I will have your first instructions, but remember absolute secrecy. This is a very grave affair to both of us--your coming employment."

"The tide of life is bearing me on, with a devilish rapidity, with favoring gales," the Major reflected. But beyond the clouds veiling the future he saw no farther sh.o.r.e.

In the dim watches of the night for a week past, Simpson, secretly busied with preparing Hugh Johnstone's flitting, was perplexed at the sound of shuffling feet and whispered voices in the master's rooms opening into the splendid gardens. "Who the devil has he there? Some woman!" mused the old veteran servant. Simpson had his own little "private life" to wind up, and so he was charitably inclined. It was his custom when all was still to slip away "to the quarter" where some lingering cords were now slowly snapping one by one. The old servant noted with surprise a dark form gliding on his trail in several of these goings and comings. Being of a practical nature, the man who had faced the mad rebels at Lucknow only belted on a heavy Adams revolver, and concluded at last that some others of the household were busied in secret dissipation or nocturnal lovemaking. "No one man has a controlling patent on being a fool," mused Simpson. "Black and white, we're all of a muchness." And as he knew they might now leave at any moment he sped away to his last delightful nights in Delhi.

On the night when Alan Hawke returned from Calcutta, the inky blackness of an approaching storm wrapped dreaming Delhi in an impenetrable mantle. Under the huge camphor tree where the cobra had risen in its horrid menace before the frightened girl, a dark figure waited till a man glided to his side. His head was bent as the spy reported "Simpson is gone to the quarter. Two of our men have followed him, and, if he returns, he will be stopped on the way." The only answer was an outstretched arm, and the whispered words, "Go, then, and watch."

"It is the very night--the night of all nights!" muttered the watcher under the tree, and then, stealing forward, he tapped three times at the window where Hugh Johnstone stood with his heart beating high in all the pride of a coming triumph ready to open to the man who was settling hisprivate affairs.

"No one shall know that I have stolen away," he mused. "Forever and in the night."

A light foot pressed the floor as the expected one glided over the low window sill. There was a night lamp burning dimly in a shaded corner.

"Put out the light. I must tell you something. We are both watched and spied on!" whispered a well-known voice.

As Hugh Johnstone turned from the corner, in the darkness, there was a gurgling cry--a half-smothered groan--as Mirzah Shah's poisoned dagger was driven to the hilt between his shoulders. His accounts were settled, at last!

An hour later, a dark form crept through the gardens toward the gate where Harry Hardwicke had rode in to the rescue. There was a silent struggle as two men wrestled in the darkness, and one fled away into the shadows of the night. It was the chance meeting of a spy and a murderer.

And then Major Alan Hawke stooped and picked up a heavy dagger lying at his feet. "I have the beggar's knife," he growled. And, with a sudden intention, he vanished toward the Club, for the knife of Mirzah Shah was reeking, and Hugh Johnstone had gone out on his darkened path alone. He had left Delhi--forever.

BOOK III. PRINCE DJIDDIN'S VISIT TO ENGLAND.

CHAPTER XI. "DO YOU SEE THIS DAGGER?"

Morning in Delhi! The fiery sun leaped up, gilding once more the far Himalayas and lighting the bloodstained plains of Oude. The golden shafts twinkled on the huge colonnade, the vast ruined arch, the crumbling walls, and the huge castled oval of Humayoon's tomb. In the dark night, the monsoon winds wailed over the wreck of Hindu, Pathan, and Mogul magnificence. The dark demons of Bowanee rejoiced at a new sacrifice to the gloomy G.o.ddess; and the straggling jungle was alive again.

In the vacant caverns, whence the sons of Mohammed Bahadur were once dragged forth to die by daring Hodson's smoking pistols, their slaughtered shades grinned over the ghastly vengeance of the barren years.

The huge dome of the mosque hung in air over the vacant palaces of the great Moguls, and the far windmill ridge, and the bastioned walls of Delhi were bathed in golden light, while Alan Hawke slept the sleep of exhaustion. And while Ram Lal Singh, secure in his zenana, calmly greeted the cool morning hour with a smiling face and a happy heart, in the lonely marble house, stern old Hugh Fraser Johnstone slept the sleep that knows no waking.

The Chandnee Chouk awoke to its busy daily chatter, and old Shahjehanabad sought its pleasures languidly again, or bowed its shoulders once more under the yoke of toil.

The faithful sought the Jumna Musjid for morning prayer, and the nonchalant British officials began to straggle into the vacant Hall of the Peac.o.c.k Throne.

Far away, the Kootab Minar, rising three hundred feet in air, bore its mute witness to the splendor of the vanished rulers of Delhi, the peerless Ghori swordsmen of Khora.s.san. But, even as the soldiers of the old Pathan fort had marched out into the shadowless night of death to join Ghori and Baber and Nadir Shah, so the spirit of the lonely old miser nabob had sought the echoless sh.o.r.e.

When Simpson had unavailingly endeavored to awaken his master, the locked doors were burst in at last by the anxious servants, and they found only the tenantless sh.e.l.l of the mighty millionaire, as cold and rigid as the iron pillar which veils to-day its mystery of a forgotten past, when the jackals howl in the ruins of old Delhi.

Then rose up a wild outcry, and the sound of hurrying feet. The alert old veteran servitor, with instinctive military obedience, dispatched two messengers, on the run, to notify General Willoughby and Major Alan Hawke. And then, with quick wit, he forbade the gaping crowd to touch even a single article.

Not even the stiffened body, as it lay p.r.o.ne upon its face, was disturbed. Simpson stood there, pistol in hand, on guard until properly relieved, and as silent as a crouching rifleman on picket. The whole room bore the evidence of a thorough ransacking, and the disordered clothing of the nabob proved, too, that the body had been rifled. The mysterious nocturnal visits returned to Simpson's mind. "Could it have been some once-wronged woman?" he mused while waiting for his "military superiors." For the simple old soldier scorned all civilian control.

His keen eye had caught the strange facts of the fastened windows, the disappearance of the two mahogany boxes, and the startling absence of the key of the chamber door.

"Whoever did this job knew what they came for and when to come!" mused Simpson. He gazed at the window sill. There was the mark of damp earth still upon it. "Just as I fancied!" growled Simp-son. "They came in at the window, and when their work was done, left by the door. There was more than one murderer in this job!" And, then, certain old stories of a mysterious Eurasian beauty returned to cloud the old man's judgment.

"Was it robbery, or vengeance?" he grumbled. "The black gang are in this, but their secrets are safe forever! They are a close corporation--these devils!"

With certain ideas of an endangered life pension, and a sudden yearning for the absent Hardwicke's counsel, stern old Simpson awaited the coming of his betters. And, the ghastly news of Johnstone's "taking-off" flew over Delhi to furnish a nine days' wonder.

There was a great crowd gathered around the garden walls of the Marble House, as an officer of the guard galloped up with a platoon of cavalry.

"The General will be here himself, soon! What's all this terrible happening?" said the young officer, as he took post beside Simpson. "You have done well!" the soldier said, on a brief report. "Let nothing be touched. My guard will prevent any one leaving the grounds!" There was a sullen apathy as regarded the unloved old egoist.

Major Alan Hawke sprang to his feet, hastily, as the excited Club Steward, forgetting all his decorum, banged loudly upon the staff officer's bedroom door. The young man was still in the dress of night, as the Steward excitedly exclaimed: "Here's a fearful deed! Hugh Johnstone has been murdered in his bed, and--they've sent for you!"

Alan Hawke was staggered. "Get me a horse, at once! I must report to the General! When, where, how? Tell me all! Send off a man for the horse!"

And, as Hawke hastily donned his uniform, he heard the Hindu servant's story.

"Be off! Tell Simpson I go first to the General, and, then, I will come over to the house!"

As Major Hawke strode through the clubroom, a half-dozen half-dressed clubmen seized upon him. He waved off their inquiries, as an orderly dashed up to the door.

"General Willoughby's compliments, Sir. You are to report to him instantly at the Marble House! You can take my horse, Major! I'll bring yours on." And so, lightly leaping into the saddle, the Major galloped away, with an approving nod. "There'll be a devil of a racket over this thing!" he reflected, as he dashed along. And he chuckled with glee at his prudence in hiding away the dagger which he had picked up in the garden. For, a moonlight-eyed Eurasian girl, hidden in a little cottage, was the only human being in Delhi who knew of the hasty visit her secret lover had made in the night. The jeweled dagger of Mirzah Shah was now securely locked in a little chest where Alan Hawke kept a few articles hidden away in the humble home of the pa.s.sive plaything of his idle hours. As he caught sight of the Marble House, with its gathered crowds, he saw the gleam of musket barrels, as a company of foot were picketing the vast garden inclosure, and forcing back the excited crowd.

A non-commissioned officer swung open the heavy gates which would only turn on their hinges once more for Hugh Johnstone going out on his last journey. "The General awaits you, Major," said the sergeant, touching his cap. "He has already asked for you." And as Hawke rode up to the front door he was suddenly reminded of his imperiled interests. "The drafts! They may be stopped now! By G.o.d! I must see Ram Lal! I need him now and he needs me."

With an unruffled professional calm, however, Major Hawke reported to the visibly disturbed General commanding.

With a single warning gesture of silence, General Willoughby drew the Major aside. "I shall put you in entire charge here. I have seen all the civil authorities. This is your affair. It touches your mission. The Viceroy has been telegraphed, and you are to guard the whole property here till we have his pleasure. Now come with me and let us question Simpson. The rest are merely a lot of apes."

And so Major Alan Hawke had ample time to arrange his private plan of campaign as he guarded a respectful silence during Simpson's long relation, for his thoughts were now far away with Berthe Louison, and the lovely orphan, whose only confidante was his tender-hearted dupe Justine Delande. But the acute adventurer's mind returned to fix itself upon Ram Lal Singh, now blandly smiling in his jewel shop, where the morning gossips babbled over Johnstone Sahib's tragic death. "I must telegraph to Euphrosyne," thought the Major, "and to 9 Rue Berlioz, Paris, for my will-o-the-wisp employer. But, Mr. Ram Lal Singh, you shall pay me for what ruin Mirzah Shah's dagger has wrought!"

The mantle of silence had fallen forever over the last night's rencontre in the garden. With dreaming eyes Hawke mused: "It would never do to tell any part of that story. What business had I there?" And, without a tremor, he stood by the General's side as they gazed on the dead millionaire's body still lying on the floor.

"I will now send for the civil authorities, and you, Major Hawke, will represent me in the investigation. Your military future hangs on this.

Remember, now, that the Viceroy looks to you alone! I will return here after tiffin. I will have some personal instructions for you." And Alan Hawke now saw the farther sh.o.r.e of his voyage of life gleaming out as General Willoughby left him to confer with the arriving magistrates and civil police. "I shall marry you, my veiled Rose of Delhi, and be master here yet, in this Marble House, and, by G.o.d, I'll die a general, too!"

he swore, with which pleasing prophecy Major Alan Hawke calmly took up the varied secret duties which joined a Viceroy's secret orders to the will of the General commanding.

"I am a devil for luck!" he mused as he gazed down on the old man's shrunken and withered dead face. "I will do the honors alone for you, my departed friend," he sneered, "for I am the master here now." The absence of all articles of value, the disappearance of Johnstone's three superb ruby s.h.i.+rt-studs, and his magnificent single diamond cuff-b.u.t.tons, told of the greed of the robbers, presumably familiar with his personal ornaments, while the terrific stab in the back showed that the heavy knife had been driven through the back up to its very hilt.

"We must find the dagger!" pompously said the civil magistrate.

"Major Hawke, will you give orders to have the whole house and grounds searched?" And with a faint smile the Major politely rose and set all his myrmidons in motion.

Even then the telegraph was clicking away a message to Johnstone's lawyer and bankers in Calcutta, and to his young relative, Douglas Fraser, of the great P. and O. steams.h.i.+p service. Before night the crafty Calcutta lawyer had notified Professor Andrew Fraser, in the far-away island of Jersey, and before Major Hawke himself received the Viceroy's orders, through General Willoughby, Mademoiselle Euphrosyne Delande, of Geneva, and the household at No. 9 Rue Berlioz, Paris, both knew that the defiant old nabob had sailed the dark sea without a sh.o.r.e.

Most of all surprised was Captain Anson Anstruther in London, who pondered long at the United Service Club over an official message from the Viceroy, telling him of the startling murder. The young gallant's heart beat in a strange agitation as he examined the previous dispatches of both Berthe Louison and the Viceroy.

"She had no hand in it, thank G.o.d!" mused the young aide-de-camp.