“Yes! She will do—with the money. All she needs is the art to show off her points, and that is easily gained. The recruits in Vanity Fair easily pick up the tricks of society, and old Hugh’s money and prospective elevation will surely draw suitors around like flies swarming near the honey.” The boat gracefully glided in to the port of Ouchy before Major Hawke’s day dream faded away.
A flattering dream which led him on to a future gilded by Sir Hugh Johnstone’s money. He longed to ruffle it bravely with the best. To hold up his head once more in official circles, and to smother the ugly floating memories ef a renegade who had served those English guns under the fierce Sikkim hill tribes against his one-time fellow soldiers. “I must have that money, with or without the girl! There must be a way to it! I will cut through the barriers to get it!” There was a steely glitter in his blue eyes as he murmured: “Now for the fox’s hide! She shall have her way—for a time! My play comes on later, when the deal is with me!”
He sprang lightly ashore, and was chatting with the gold-banded porter of the Hotel Faucon, when a lovely face, thrilling in its awakened emotion, met his glance at the window of a carriage. He dispatched his luggage to the Faucon, and sprang lightly in the carriage when the omnibuses had departed for the Lausanne plateau. Alan Hawke was carefully deferential in his greeting and he meekly answered all the rapid queries of his mysterious employer.
“You have closed up your own private affairs?” she briskly queried.
“All is ready for the road in one day more. I have a private social engagement for to-morrow,” he replied. “But I brought you all the sailing dates and the detailed information you requested.”
“You obtained the pictures safely, then, and with a prudent caution,” anxiously demanded Madame Louison.
“You shall know all soon. I hope that I have satisfied you!” he said, handing her a packet, failing to tell her that he had kept two pictures of the far-away girl for his own private use. They were now near the plateau where the Hotel Faucon shows its semi-circular front to the splendid panorama unrolled before its windows.
An afternoon concert was in progress at the Casino, near the local museum. “We will stop here for a few moments,” said the excited woman. “You can go on alone, and walk over to the hotel and secure your own rooms. Then send your card up to me in the usual manner. To-night we will go out separately and meet for a conference. We can arrange all our business.” The Major bowed submissively, and assisted the lady to alight.
Madame Louison dismissed her carriage, and the confederates-to-be entered the afternoon concert room. A superb orchestra was playing the finishing bars of the last number on the program, and the audience had dwindled away to a few knots of demure residents. Following his passive policy, the adventurer sat silently, stealing oblique glances at his companion as she nervously unfolded the wrappings of the coveted pictures. There was a gasp, a low moan, as the woman’s head fell back. Alan Hawke’s strong arms were clasped round her, as she leaned back helplessly in her fauteuil. But a smile of secret triumph was on his face as he quickly bore the helpless form to an anteroom at once opened by the frightened ushers. Berthe Louison’s face was corpse-like in its pallor, as she lay there upon a divan, her fingers still clutching the photograph.
“There is a physician near by,” hazarded a sympathetic woman who had crowded into the room. The music had stopped with a crash.
“Summon him at once!” energetically ordered Hawke. “Some brandy—quick!” he cried, listening to her agonized words, “Valerie! My God! It is Valerie herself! My poor sister!” In a few moments an elderly man parted the assembling loiterers. His bustling air of command soon dispelled the loiterers. A woman attendant was bending over the still senseless woman as the spectacled medico seized Alan Hawke’s arm. “Has your wife ever had a previous heart attack?” he gravely asked, as he opened his lancet case. Major Hawke shook his head, and gazed pityingly upon the beautiful pallid face before him.
“Can I be of any use to Monsieur?” demanded the chef d’orchestre in evening grand tenue, his baton still in his hand.
There was a glance of wondering astonishment as the Englishman faced the speaker. “Wieniawski—Casimir, you here?” The other dropped his voice as the physician ripped up the sleeve of the patient’s gown.
“Major Hawke, I thought you were still in Delhi? Your wife—” faltered the artist, as he listened to a low moan when the lancet blade entered the ivory arm of the sufferer. Then, with a backward step, he pressed his hands to his brows. “My God! It is Alixe Delavigne!” he brokenly said. But Hawke sprang to his side and quickly drew him from the room.
“Not a word! Not a single word to any one! Where are you stopping? I will come to you tonight!” the excited man sternly said, his firm hand still clutching the musician’s arm.
“Here, at the Casino! Come in after ten! I will await you! But where did you meet her?” the Polish violinist cried, speaking as if in a dream.
“You shall know all later! I must get her to the hotel!” He returned to the physician’s side, who authoritatively cried, “Now an easy carriage and to the Faucon, you said?” In half an hour, Berthe Louison was sleeping, a nurse at her side, while Alan Hawke counted the moments crawling on till ten o’clock.
CHAPTER III. AND AT DELHI WHAT AM I TO DO?
Major Alan Hawke was the “observed of all observers,” in the cosy salon of the Grand Hotel Faucon, when the sympathetic hotel manager interrupted a colloquy between the handsome Briton and the Doctor. “A mere syncope, my dear sir. Perhaps—even only the result of tight lacing, or inaction. Perhaps some sudden nerve crisis. These are the results of the easy luxury of an enervating high-life. All these social habits are weakening elements. Now, fortunately, your wife has a singularly strong vital nature. You may safely dismiss all your fears. Madame will be entirely herself in the morning.”
“Can I be of any service?” demanded the genial host, secretly urged on by a coterie of curious, womanly sympathizers in silk and muslin.
“I am the trustee of Madame Louison, in some important business matters, and not her husband,” gravely remarked the Major. “I only came up here to confer with her upon some matters of moment.” Both the listeners bowed in silence.
“Then, my dear sir, you can be perfectly reassured,” the physician briskly concluded, tendering his card. “My professional conscience will not allow me to make even a single future visit, as doctor, to the charming Madame Louison. Should Madame awake in other than her normal health and spirits, I should be professionally at fault.”
Major Hawke then led the doctor aside and pressed a five-pound note upon him. “Madame is of a wonderfully strong constitution. An heiress of nature’s choicest favors,” the happy Galen floridly said, as he took his leave.
“So she is,” grimly assented Hawke.
The gossipy boniface was already spreading such meager details of the sudden seizure as he had been able to pick up, and, the words “Polish noblewoman,” “Italian marchesa,” “French countess,” were tossed about freely in the light froth of the conversation in the ladies’ drawing-room.
Meanwhile, Alan Hawke was smoking a meditative cigar alone, while pacing the old Cantonal high road before the Faucon. “I think I will remain on