“None of the great people go there?” keenly queried Hawke.
“Not even the fine ladies,” laughed Ram Lal. “The old fellow may have his own memories of the past. He trusts no one. The girl is only a bulbul in a golden cage and with no one to sing to.” Hawke cut short Ram Lal’s flowery figures.
“Does the Swiss woman trade with you?” he demanded.
“Yes, she buys a few simple things—my peddlers take the Veiled Rose many rich things. The old Sahib is very generous to the child. And the dragon loves trinkets, too!” Then Alan Hawke’s eyes gleamed.
“She knows your shop here?”
“Perfectly,” replied Ram Lal, “and comes alone—on the master’s business. You know I had many dealings with Sahib Hugh Fraser in the old days,” mused the jeweler. “He always admits my men. I have valued gems for him for twenty years.”
“Good!” cried the happy Major. “I want to send a man now to her with a note. I am going to put up at the United Service Club, but I must see this woman first. I don’t like to send a letter, though. If I had any one to trust—”
The merchant promptly said: “I will go myself! They are always in the garden in the afternoon. I can easily see her alone.”
“First rate! Then I will give you a message,” answered Hawke. “I must see her to-morrow early, for old Hugh will surely ask me to tiffin. And, Ram, you must at once set your best man on to watch all that goes on there. I have a good fat plum for you now—to set up a neat little house here for a friend of mine who is coming, and you shall do the whole thing!” The merchant’s dark eyes glistened. “A new officer of rank?” he queried.
“It’s a lady—a friend of mine—rich, too, and she wants to live on the quiet! She will stay here for some time!” The oily listener had learned a vast prudence in the days when he trod the halls of the last King of Delhi, so he held his peace and wondered at the suddenly enhanced fortunes of that star of graceful wanderers, Allan Hawke!
“I’ll go over to the club now and get a room! Send all my things over!” said the Major. “I wish to let Hugh know that I am here. I will give you the directions about the house to-morrow. Make no mistake with this message now!” Whereat Alan Hawke repeated a few words which would awake the slumbering curiosity in the woman-heart of the lonely Justine Delande!
“Now, I will return and await your success,” concluded Hawke as he read over a dozen times Madame Berthe Louison’s long dispatch, ordering him to prepare her pied de terre in Delhi. “Gad! Milady means to do the thing in style,” he murmured. “She is a deep one, and she must have a pot of money!” He lit a cheroot and sauntered away to show up officially at the club. Major Hawke soon became aware that nothing succeeds like success. Not only did all the flaneurs of the Chandnee Chouk seize upon him, but, from passing carriages, bright, roguish eyes merrily challenged him as the hot-hearted English Mem-Sahibs whirled by.
Rumor had magnified the importance of Major Alan Hawke’s secret service appointment, and the wanderer was astounded when the highest official of the Delhi College gravely saluted him.
“By Gad! I believe that I am really becoming respectable!” laughed the delighted major. His uncertain past seemed to be fast fading away in the glow of the skillfully hinted official promotion. “I wonder now if old Ram Lal has a hold on my canny friend, Hugh Fraser Johnstone—Sir Hugh to be! Perhaps they are like all the rest of us—rascals of the same grade, but only in different ways. The old jewel matters! I must look to this and watch Ram Lal!” The returned Anglo-Indian carelessly nodded to the group of men gathered in the club’s lounging-room as he entered. Designedly, he loudly demanded to know if his traps had arrived. “Left all my odds and ends in store,” he murmured to a friend, as he called for a brandy pawnee. “Beastly bore! Must wait orders here for some time!”
Skilled at tossing the ball of conversation to and fro, Major Alan Hawke, while at luncheon, artfully planted seeds here and there, to be neatly dished up later for that incipient baronet, Hugh Johnstone. And yet a graceful shade of dignified reserve lent color to his rumored advancement, and the schemer leaned over the writing table with quite a foreign-office air as he indited his diplomatic note of arrival to his destined prey.
With a grave air he selected his rooms and accommodations to suit his swelling port, and even the club stewards nodded in recognition of the tidal wave of Alan Hawke’s mended fortunes.
With due official gravity the man “who had dropped into a good thing,” disappeared, to allow the gilded youth of Delhi to carry the gossip to mess and bungalow. It was a welcome morsel to these merry crows!
It was late when the handsome Major returned to find a small pyramid of notes on his table and many letters in his box. He was in the highest good humor, for the wary Ram Lal had most diplomatically acquitted his task of opening a secret communication.
“Just as I thought,” laughed the Major, as he sipped his pale ale in Ram Lal’s spacious room of pleasaunce. “They all protest, woman-like, but they all come!”
The watchful Swiss exile’s heart fluttered tenderly in the far-off Lotos land at the arrival of a secret friend of her sage sister. She longed for the morning to meet her new friend. Alan Hawke’s irresistible attractions had pointed the praises which flowed smoothly over the double crossed letter which had preceded him! The oily Ram Lal, a veteran observer of many an intrigue, scented a budding rose of romance in the Major’s adroit coup, and the arrival of the only lady whom Alan Hawke had ever socially fathered in Delhi.
“In three days I will be all ready! So you can telegraph to-night,” reported the merchant, when the Major carefully went over all the details of the proposed temporary establishment of the disguised Alixe Delaviarne.
“Very good!” approvingly answered the dignified confidant and patron. “See here, Ram Lal! You have only to serve me well in these little private matters, and you shall handle all the coming Mem-Sahib’s money business here! She wants to be quiet. I am to direct all her private matters! Not a word, however, to old Hugh!” The two men separated, Hawke with the knowledge that one of Ram’s men had already glided into the swarming household entourage of Hugh Johnstone’s stately home, and the spy was on every movement of the strange interior, which defied the Delhi beaux.
“Not a bad day’s work,” mused Hawke, as he dined in solitary state. The hospitable bidding of the wealthiest civilian of Delhi to tiffin on the morrow brought him in touch with Alixe Delavigne’s proposed victim once more. The delighted rascal mused: “I will surely have letters from her to-morrow, possibly even a telegram of her arrival. When the silly Swiss woman is the partner of an innocent secret, she is mine to control! Then the chase for a few lacs of rupees begins!”
Major Hawke was somewhat startled at the little avalanche of welcoming cards and notes. “Bravo! this will throw old Hugh off the track a bit also. The simple duty of piquing local curiosity shall open all hearts, hearths, and homes to me!” And then, Alan Hawke joyously realized how easily the light-headed world can be fooled to the top of its bent by the hollow trick of a bit of mystery play.
“This falls out rightly,” he mused. “I will take up all the threads of my old society life and Madame Berthe Louison may deign to confide a bit in me the first half of the story forced from her, then I will guess out all the missing links of the chain. Once domiciled here, she is helpless in my hands, for I can either gain her inner secrets, or boldly checkmate her. And the veiled Rose of Delhi?”
Alan Hawke dreamed not of the sorrows of the restless heart beating in that virginal bosom. He paced the veranda of the Club gravely preoccupied till the midnight hour. Long before that, Justine Delande had sought her rooms in a feeble flutter of excitement over the harmless assignation of the morrow. There was a stern old man pacing his splendid hall alone, with an unhappy heart, that night, for Hugh Johnstone saw again in the sweet uplifted eyes of his beautiful child the old unanswered question!