A Fascinating Traitor

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Produced by Carrie Fellman.

A FASCINATING TRAITOR

AN ANGLO-INDIAN STORY

By Col. Richard Henry Savage

CONTENTS.

BOOK I. OUT OF THE DEAD PAST.

I.-A Chance Meeting at Geneva

II.-An Offensive and Defensive Alliance

III.-"And at Delhi What Am I to Do?"

IV.-The Veiled Rosebud of Delhi

V.-A Diplomatic Tiffin

BOOK II. "A DEVIL FOR LUCK."

VI.-The Mysterious Bungalow

VII.-The Price of Safety

VIII.-Harry Hardwicke Takes the Gate Neatly!

IX.-Alan Hawke Plays His Trump Card

X.-A Captivated Viceroy

BOOK III. PRINCE DJIDDIN'S VISIT TO ENGLAND.

XI.-"Do You See This Dagger?"

XII.-On the Cliffs of Jersey

XIII.-An Asiatic Lion in Hiding.

XIV.-The Council at Granville

XV.-The French Fisher Boat "Hirondelle"

BOOK I. OUT OF THE DEAD PAST.

CHAPTER I.

A CHANCE MEETING AT GENEVA.

"By Jove! I may as well make an end of the thing right here to-night!"
was the dejected conclusion of a long council of war over which
Major Alan Hawke had presided, with the one straggling comfort of
being its only member.

All this long September afternoon he had dawdled away in feeding
certain rapacious swans navigating gracefully around Rousseau's
Island. He had consumed several Trichinopoly cigars in the interval,
and had moodily gazed back upon the strange path which had led him
to the placid shores of Lake Leman! The gay promenaders envied the
debonnair-looking young Briton, whose outer man was essentially
"good form." Children left the side of their ox-eyed bonnes to
challenge the handsome young stranger with shy, friendly approaches.

Bevies of flashing-eyed American girls "took him in" with parthian
glances, and even a widowed Russian princess, hobbling by, easing
her gouty steps with a jeweled cane, gazed back upon the moody
Adonis and sighed for the vanished days, when she possessed both
the physical and mental capacity to wander from the beaten paths
of the proprieties.

But--the world forgetting--the young man lingered long, gazing out
upon the broad expanse of the waters, his eyes resting carelessly
upon the superb panorama of the southern shore. He had wandered far
away from the Grand Hotel National, in the aimlessness of sore
mental unrest, and, all unheeded, the hours passed on, as he threaded
the streets of the proud old Swiss burgher city. He had known its
every turn in brighter days, and, though the year of ninety-one was
a brilliant Alpine season, and he was in the very flower of youth
and manly promise, gaunt care walked as a viewless warder at Alan
Hawke's side.

He had crossed over the Pont de Montblanc to the British Consulate,
only to learn that the very man whom he had come from Monaco to
seek, was now already at Aix la Chapelle, on his way to America,
on a long leave. He had wearily made a tour of the principal hotels
and scanned the registers with no lucky find! Not a single gleam
of hope shone out in all the polyglot inscriptions passing under
his eye! And so he had sadly betaken himself to a safe, retired
place, where he could hold the aforesaid council of war.

The practical part of the operations of this sole committee of ways
and means, was an exhaustive examination of his depleted pockets.
A few sovereigns and a single crisp twenty-pound Bank of England
note constituted the rear guard of Alan Hawke's vanished "sinews of
war." The young man briefly noted the slender store, with a sigh.

"Twenty-five pounds--and a little trumpery jewelry--I can't ever
get back to India on that!" He seemed to hear again the rasping
voice of the vulpine caller at Monte Carlo: "Messieurs! Faites vos
jeux! Rien ne va plus! Le jeu est fait!" And, if a dismal failure
in Lender had been his Leipsic, the black week at Monaco had been
his long drawn-out Waterloo! "I was a rank fool to go there," he
growled, "and a greater fool to come over here! I might have got
on easily to Malta, and then chanced it from there to Calcutta!"

The sun's last lances glittered on the waters gleaming clear as
crystal, with their deep blue tint of reflected sky, and liquid
sapphire! The gardens were becoming deserted as the loungers dropped
off homeward one by one, and still the handsome young fellow sat
moodily gazing down into the rushing waters of the arrowy Rhone,
as if he fain would cast the dark burden of his dreary thoughts
far away from him down into those darkling waters. But thirty-two
years of age, Alan Hawke had already outlived all his wild boyish
romances. The thrill with which he had first set foot upon the land
of Clive and Warren Hastings had faded away long years gone! And,
Fate had stranded him at Geneva!

As he sat, still irresolute as to his future movements, the dying
sunlight gilded the splendid panorama of the whole Mont Blanc
group. Rose and purple, with fading gold and amethystine gleams
played softly upon the far-away giant peak, with its noble bodyguard,
the Aiguilles du Midi, Grandes Jorasses, the Dent du Geant, the
sturdy pyramid of the Mole, and the long far sweep of the Voirons.
But he noted not these splendors of the dying sun god, as he stood
there moodily defying adverse fate, a modern Manfred. "I might
with this get on to London--but what waits me there? Only scorn,
callous neglect!" His eye fell upon the statue of Jean Jacques,
lifted up there by the sturdy men who have for centuries clung to
the golden creeds of civil and religious liberty--the independence
of man--and the freedom of the unshackled human soul. "Poor Rousseau!
seer and parasite, fugitive adventurer, the sport of the great,
the eater of bitter bread--the black bread of dependence! I will
not linger here in a long-drawn agony! Here, I will end it forever,
and to-night!"

There were certain visions of the past which returned to shake
even the iron nerves of Alan Hawke! Face to face now with his half
formed resolution of suicide, the wasted past slowly unrolled itself
before him.

The brief days of his service in India, an abrupt exit from the
service, long years of wandering in Japan and China, as a gentleman
adventurer, and all the singular phases of a nomadic life in Burmah,
Nepaul, Cashmere, Bhootan, and the Pamirs.

He smiled in derision at the recollection of a briefly flattering
fortune which had rebaptized him with a shadowy title of uncertain
origin. Thus far, his visiting card, "Major Alan Hawke, Bombay Club"
had been an easily vised passport, but--alas--good only among his
own kind! He was but a free lance of the polished "Detrimentals,"
and, under this last adverse stroke of fortune, his poor cockboat
was being swamped in the black waters of adversity. He had staked
much upon a little campaign at the Foreign Office in London.
The cold rebuff which he had received to there had carried him in
sheer desperation over to Monaro and incoming onto Geneva, he had
"burned his ships" behind him. Ignorant of the precise manner in
which his clouded reputation had stopped the way to his advancement
in the English Secret Service, he remembered, even at the last,
that a few letters were due to those who still watched his little
flickering light on its way over the trackless sea of life. For
hard-hearted as he was,--benumbed by the blows of fate, his heart
calloused with the snapping of cords and ties which once had
closely bound him--there were yet loosely knit bonds of the past
which tinged with the glow of his dying passions--the unforgotten
idols of his adventurous career!

He rose and walked mechanically along the Qua du Mont Blanc with
the alert, springy step of the soldier. "Once a Captain, always
a Captain" was in every line of his resolute, martial figure. His
well-set-up, graceful form, his nobly poised head and easy soldierly
bearing contrasted sharply with the lazy shuffle of the prosperous
Swiss denizens and the listless lolling of the sporadic foreign
tourists. Crisp, curling, tawny hair, a sweeping soldierly moustache,
with a resolute chin and gleaming blue eyes accentuated a handsome
face burnt to a dark olive by the fiery Indian sun. An easy insouciance
tempered the habitual military smartness of the man who had known
several different services in the fifteen years of his wasted young
manhood. As he swung into the glare of the hospitable doorway of the
Grand Rational, the obsequious head porter doffed his gold banded
cap.

"Table d'hote serving now, Major!" With the mere social instinct of
long years, Alan Hawke recognized the man's perfunctory politeness,
tipped him a couple of francs, and then, mechanically sauntered to
a seat in the superb salle a manger. "I'll get out of here to-night,"
he muttered, and then he bent down his head over the carte du jour
and peered at the wine list, as the chatter of happy voices, the
animated faces of lovely women and the eager hum of social life
around, recalled him to that world from which he contemplated an
unceremonious exit. It was in a deference to old habit, and the "qu
en dira't on," that he ordered a half bottle of excellent Chambertin
and then proceeded to dine with all the scrupulous punctilio of
the old happy mess days.

Something of defiance seemed to steal back into his veins with the
generous warmth of the wine--a touch of the old gallant spirit with
which he had faced a hard world, since the unfortunate incident
which had abruptly terminated his connection with "The Widow's"
Service. His eye swept carelessly over the international detachment
seated at the splendid table. Lively and chattering as they were,
it was a human Sahara to him. He easily recognized the "Ten-Pounder"
element of wandering Britons; poor, anxious-eyed beings grudgingly
furloughed from shop and desk, and now sternly determined to descend
at Charing Cross without breaking into the few reserve sovereigns.
Serious-looking women, clad in many colors, and stolid cockneys,
hostile to all foreign innovation, met his eye. He sighed as he
cast his social net and drew up nothing.

There was a vacant chair at his left. Very shortly, without turning
his eyes, he was made aware of the proximity of a woman, young,
evidently a continental, from her softly murmured French.

"Houbigant's Forest Violets," he murmured. "She is at least
semi-civilized!" He was dreaming of the far off lotos land which
he had left, as he felt the rebellious protest of his young blood
and the defiant spirit awaked by the mechanical luxury of the
well-ordered dinner. "These human pawns seem to be all prosperous,
if not happy! I'll have another shy at it! By God! I must get back
to India!" The whole checkered past rushed back over his mind! The
fifteen years of his "wanderjahre"! Scenes which even he dared not
recall! Incidents which he had never dared to own to any European!
He but too well knew the origin of his loosely applied title of
Major--a field officer's rank more honored at the easygoing clubs
of Yokahama, Shanghai, and Hong Kong than on the Army List--a rank
best known at the ring-side of Indian sporting grounds, and only
tacitly accepted in the extra-official circles of Hindustan. For it
figured not in the official Army List, either as active or retired.
The whole panorama of the mystic land of the Hindus was unrolled
once more by the memories of fifteen clouded years, He saw again
his far-away theater of varied action, with its huge grim mountains
towering far over the snow line, its arid wastes, its fertile plains
bathed in intense sunshine, its mystic rivers, and its silent,
solemn shrines of the vanished gods.

Major Alan Hawke silently ran over his slender professional
accomplishments. "I'm not too heavy to ride yet. I've a fair hand
at cards--tough nerves, and even a bit of staying power. Luck may
turn my way yet and there's always the Pamirs! At the worst, the
Russians--the Afghans,--or those fellows up in Sikkim and Hill
Tipperah! An artillerist is always welcome there!" But even in his
moral desperation, he hung his head, for a flush of his boyhood's
bright ambitions returned to shame him. An old song jingled in his
memory, "When I first put this uniform on." He lapsed into a bitter
reverie!

The soldier of fortune was finally aroused from a brown study by
the impassive steward presenting two great dishes. The clatter of
some late convive seating himself also caused him to turn his head.

"Hello, Anstruther! You are a long way from staff headquarters
here!" quietly said Hawke, as the new arrival gazed at him in a
mute surprise.

Captain the Honorable Anson Anstruther put up his monocle and
duly answered: "I thought that you were still in Calcutta, Hawke."
There was a faint noli me tangere air in the young staff officer's
manner, and yet mere propinquity drew them together in a few
minutes. With the insouciance of men bred in club and at mess,
the two soldiers soon drifted into an easy chat, meeting on safe
grounds. They calmly ignored the surrounding civilians, regardless
of the attractions of two falcon-eyed Chicago beauties, loud of
voice and brilliantly overdressed, who were guiding "Popper" and
"Mommer" over the continent. These resplendent daughters of Columbia
already boasted a train consisting of a French count (of a very
old and shadowy regime), a singularly second-hand looking Italian
marquis, a wooden-soldier figured German baron, and a sad-eyed,
distant-looking Russian prince, whose bold Tartar glances rested
hungrily upon both Miss "Phenie" and Miss "Genie" Forbes.

The Anglo-Indians, however, calmly pursued their dinner and gossip
regardless of the fact that Miss "Phenie" had violently nudged
Miss "Genie," and whispered in a stage aside: "Say, Genie, look at
those two English fellows! They are something like--I bet you that
they are two Lords!" The approval of the gilded Western maidens,
whose father systematically assassinated a thousand porkers per
diem, was lost upon the chance-met acquaintances. "I must get back
to India, by hook or crook," mused Alan Hawke, and therefore, he
very delicately played his wary fish, the sybaritic young swell of
the staff. Captain the Honorable Anson Anstruther's reserve soon
melted under the skillful bonhomie of the astute Alan Hawke. An
easy-going patrician of the staff, he was in the magic circle of
the viceroy. The heir to an inevitable fortune, and already vested
with substantially stratified deposits at "Coutts" and Glyn, Carr
and Glyn's, he would have been envied by most luckless mortals the
heavy balances which he always carried at "Grind-lay's," a fortune
for any less fortunate man.

He was already interested in the remarkably fetching looking young
woman at Alan Hawke's left, being a squire of dames par excellence,
while Major Alan Hawke himself wondered how Anstruther had drifted
so far away from the direct line of travel to London.

Thawing visibly under the influence of Hawke's gracefully modulated
camaraderie, the susceptible Anstruther was attentively examining
his fair neighbor in silence, while he tried vaguely to recall some
story which he had once heard, quite detrimental to the cosmopolitan
Major.

He gave it up as a bad job! "Hang it!" he thought. "It may have
been some other chap. Verylikely!" It was the strange story of a
sharp encounter with the hostile Kookies, in which a couple of English
mountain guns, long before abandoned by a British expeditionary
force, had been served with due professional skill and most
desperate dash by a reckless man, easily recognized as an English
refugee artillerist. The wounded escaped British soldier, who had
died after denouncing the deserting adventurer, had left his parting
advice to the Royal Artillery to burn the fearless renegade, should
he ever be captured. It was the Story of a nameless traitor!

But, the vague distrust of the curled darling of Fortune soon faded
away under Hawke's measured social leading. A silver wine cooler
stood behind their chairs, and the old yarn of a British officer
playing Olivier Pain became very misty under the subtle influence of
the Pommery Sec. Alan Hawke guarded the expected story of his own
wanderings, waiting craftily until Bacchus and Venus had sufficiently
mollified Anstruther.

He duplicated the champagne, knowing well the warming influence
of "t'other bottle." The Major of a shadowy rank had early learned
the graceful art of effacing himself, and on this occasion, it
stood greatly to his credit. Anstruther was now quite sure that the
graceful head of the beautiful neighbor swayed in an unconscious
recognition of his witty sallies. A true son of Mars--ardent,
headlong, and gallant as regarded le beau sexe--he talked brilliantly
and well, aiming his boomerang remarks at a woman whom he knew to
be young and graceful, and whose beauty he was gayly taking upon
trust; an old, old interlude, played many a time and oft.

"What is going on here in this beastly slow old town? Nothing
much for to-night, I fancy," said the aid-de-camp, wondering if a
promenade au clair de la lune or a carriage ride to Ferney would
be possible! He already had noted the purity of the French accent
of the fair unknown. No guttural Swiss patois there, but that crisp
elegance of tone which promised him a flirtation en vraie Parisienne.

"Only Philemon and Baucis, an antique opera, at the Grand Opera
House, and sung by a band of relics of better days, wandering over
here!" said Hawke.

And then it finally dawned upon the blase young staff officer that
he had met Alan Hawke in certain circles where plunging had chased
away the tedium of Indian club life with the delightful sensations
of raking in other people's money.

"Better come up to my rooms then, and have a weed and a bit of
ecarte!" slowly said Anstruther. "We may manage a ride afterward!"
Alan Hawke nodded, and a thirsty gleam lit up his crafty eyes. He
instinctively felt for the little card case containing that solitary
twenty-pound note; it was a gentleman's stake after all. And the
would-be suicide silently invoked the fickle goddess Fortuna!

Captain Anstruther, however, furtively murmured a few words to the
solemn head steward and then leaned back contentedly in his chair.
His ostensible orders for cafe noir and cards, as well as the least
murderous of the obtainable cigars, covered the plan of using a
five-pound note in an adroit personal inquiry. For, the Honorable
Anson Anstruther proposed to ride that very evening, and he did
not wish to bore Major Hawke with his company. He nursed a little
scheme of his own. "Do you make a long stay?" carelessly said the
wary Major.

"I intend to leave to-morrow night," gayly answered the other. "I
came over here on a very strange errand. I've got to see an eminent
Gorgon of respectability, who has a finishing school here for the
young person [bien clevee," said Anstruther, eyeing the unknown.

"Hardly in your line, Anstruther!" laughed Hawke, casting his eyes
around the depleted table, for Miss Phenie and Miss Genie Forbes
had vanished at last, leaving behind them expanding wave circles
of sharply echoing comment. The noisy Teutons had devoured their
seven francs worth, and the fair bird of passage on their left was
left alone, woman-like, dallying with the last sweets and finishing
her demi bouteille with true French deliberation. "It's a case of
the wolf and the sheep-fold!"

"Not that; not at all!" gayly answered Anstruther. "I have a long
leave, and I only ran over here to oblige His Excellency." He
spoke with all the easy disdain of all underlings born of an Indian
official life--the habitual disregard of the Briton for his inferior
surroundings. "By Jove! you may help me out yourself! You're an
old Delhi man!" He gazed earnestly at Hawke, who started nervously,
and then said:

"You know I've been away for a good bit of the ten years in the
far Orient, but I used to know them all, before I went out of the
line."

"Then you surely know old Hugh Johnstone, the rich, old, retired
deputy commissioner of Oude?" Alan Hawke slowly sipped his champagne,
for his Delhi memories were both risky and uncertain ground.

"I fail to recall the name, Johnstone--Johnstone," murmured Hawke.

"Why, everyone knows old Johnstone; he is an old mutiny man. You
surely do! He was Hugh Fraser until he took the name of Johnstone,
ten years or so ago, on a Scotch relative leaving him a handsome
Highland estate!" There was a warning rustle at Hawke's left, as
the fair stranger prepared for her flitting.

"I was very intimate with Hugh Fraser in my griffin days. But I
thought he had retired and gone back home. He is enormously rich,
and an old bachelor! I know him very well; he was a good friend of
mine in the old days, too!"

Anstruther leaned toward Hawke, as he signed to the waiter to refill
his hearer's glass. "Well, I can surprise even you! He has turned
up with a beautiful daughter--at Delhi--just about the prettiest
girl I ever--"

"Je demande mills pardons, Madame!" politely cried Major Hawke, as
his fair neighbor's wineglass went shivering down in a crystalline
wreck.

"Pas de quoi, Monsieur," suavely replied the woman whom till now he
had hardly noticed. A moment later the slight damage was repaired,
and then Captain the Honorable Anson Anstruther had his little
innings.

With courtly hospitality he offered the creamy champagne as a
remplacement for the lost vin du pays.

A charming smile rewarded the gallant youth, while Major Hawke
turned with interest to the renewal of the interrupted narrative.
He had caught a glance of burning intensity from the dark brown
eyes of the lady a la Houbigant, which set every nerve in his body
tingling. It was a challenge to a companionship, and, as he led
on the triumphant Anstruther, he deeply regretted the absence of
that most necessary organ,--an eye in the back of the head. He was
dimly aware that his beautiful neighbor was very leisurely drinking
the peace offering of the susceptible son of Mars. "I will bet
hundreds to ha'pennies she speaks English!" quickly reflected the
now aroused Major.

"You astound me, Anstruther," the Major said. "Not a lawful child!
Some Eurasian legacy--a relic of the old days of the Pagoda Tree!
Why, the old commissioner always was a woman hater, and absolutely
hostile to all social influences!" The Captain was now stealing
longing glances at the willowy figure of the beautiful woman whose
glistening dark brown eyes were turned to him with a languid glance,
as Alan Hawke leaned forward. To prolong the sight of that bewitching
half profile, with the fair, low brows, the velvet cheeks, a
Provencale flush tinting them, the parted lips a dainty challenge
speaking, and the rich masses of dark brown hair nobly crowning
her regal outlines, Anstruther yielded to the spell and babbled
on. "The whole thing is a strange melange of official business and
dying gossip!" dreamily said Anstruther with his eyes straying over
the ivory throat, the superbly modeled bust and perfect figure of
the young Venus Victrix.

He was duly rewarded by a glance of secret intelligence when he
leaned back, dreamily closing his eyes. "You see, they were going
to make old Hugh Fraser or Hugh Johnstone, as he is now called,
a baronet for some secret services to the Crown of an important
nature, rendered about the time when mad Hodson piled up the whole
princely succession to the House of Oude in a trophy of naked corpsess
pistoling them with his own hand." He ordered a third bottle of
Pommery, with a wave of his hand, and proceeded: "Of course, you
know, Her Majesty's Government always closely investigate the social
antecedents of the nominee in such cases. The change of name is
all right; it is regularly entered at Herald's College and all that
sort of thing, but the Chief has heard of the sudden appearance
of this beautiful daughter. Now, old Johnstone surely never looked
the way of woman in India! It's true that he went back about twenty
years ago to England on a two years' leave. He has lived the life
of a splendid recluse in his magnificent old bungalow on the Chandnee
Chouk."

Anstruther paused, fishing for another fugitive smile. He caught
it behind the back of the wary adventurer.

"I know the old house well," said Hawke with an affected unconcern.
"Men were always entertained royally there, but I never saw a woman
of station in its vast saloons."

"Now there you are!" cried Anstruther, lightly resuming: "I was
sent up to Delhi to delicately find out about this alleged daughter,
for the Chief does not want to throw Johnstone's baronetcy over.
The fact is before they packed the toothless old King of Oude away
to Rangoon to die with his favorite wife and their one wolf cub out
there, Hugh Fraser skillfully extorted a surrender of a huge private
treasure of jewels from these people while they were hidden away
in Humayoon's tomb. There's one trust deposit yet to be divided
between the Government and this sly old Indo-Scotch-man, and
I fancy the empty honor of the baronetcy is a quid pro quo." Alan
Hawke laughed heartily. "It is really diamond cut diamond, then."

"Precisely," said Anstruther, as he most calmly waved his hand
to the steward, who silently refilled even the glass of the Venus
Anonyma. A slight inclination of the head and parthian glance number
three, encouraged Anstruther to hasten and conclude, for the moon
was sailing grandly over the lake now.

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