A Fascinating Traitor

C >> Col. Richard Henry Savage >> A Fascinating Traitor

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Long before that rising star of fashion, Major Alan Hawke, returned
from General Willoughby's delightful dinner upon the day of Hugh
Johnstone's crafty surrender, he knew that Hugh Johnstone had astounded
Delhi by a personal exploitation of the Lady of the Silver Bungalow.

"By Gad! Hawke!" roared old Brigadier Willoughby, with his mouth
full of chutney, "Johnstone is going the pace! First he produces
a daughter, a hidden treasure, and now this wonderfully beautiful
French countess."

"I suppose, General," lightly said the Major, "the old nabob will
marry and retire to Europe on his coming baronetcy."

"Likely enough!" sputtered Willoughby. "You lucky young dog. I
suppose you are in the secret?"

But neither that night, nor two days later, at Major Hawke's superb
dinner at the Delhi Club, did the jeunesse doree of the old capital
extract an admission from that mysterious "secret service" man, Major
Alan Hawke. "You cannot deny, Hawke, that you dined at the marble
house with the beauty whom we are all toasting," said a rallying
roisterer. "And--with the Veiled Rose of Delhi!" said another,
still more eagerly.

"It is true, gentlemen" gravely said Major Hawke, "that I was invited
to dinner at the marble house, but Madame Louison is a stranger to
me, and I believe a tourist of some rank. It was merely a formal
affair. I believe that she brought letters from Paris to Hugh
Johnstone." Late that night Alan Hawke laughed, as he pocketed
his winnings at baccarat. "Three hundred pounds to the good! I'm a
devil for luck!" And he sat down in his room to think over all the
events of a day which had half turned his head. Warned by Justine
Delande that Madame Louison was bidden to dine with Hugh Johnstone,
Alan Hawke closely interrogated her. She evidently knew and suspected
nothing. "Ah! Berthe plays a lone hand against the world," he
smiled.

His mysterious employer had merely bidden him be ready to meet her
there, without surprise. There was as yet no lightning move up on
the chess board, and in vain he studied her resolute, smiling face.
"All I can tell you," murmured Justine to her handsome Mentor, in
the seclusion of Ram Lal's back room, "is that this Madame Berthe
Louison comes to spend the day in looking over Hugh Johnstone's
art treasures. Nadine and I are to meet her, with the master. Do
you know aught of her?"

"Nothing, dear Justine," unhesitatingly lied Alan Hawke. "Watch
her and tell me all."

"I will," smilingly replied the Swiss. "I have a strange fear that
Hugh Johnstone has known her before, that he intends to marry her,
and then to send us two, Nadine and I, away to a quiet life in
Europe." Whereupon Alan Hawke laughed loud and long.

"She is only a bird of passage, some wealthy globe wanderer, perhaps
even a sly adventuress. No, old Johnstone will not tempt Fortune."

"He has been so unusually amiable," agnostically said Justine. "Of
course he could hide such a design easily from Nadine, who knows
nothing of love."

"She will learn! She will learn--in due time," laughed Hawke.
"There is but one thing possible. This whole pretended visit may
be a sham--she may even be the belle amie of this old curmudgeon."

"I will watch all three of them! You shall know all!" murmured
Justine, as she stole away, not without the kisses of her secret
knight burning upon her lips.

"What a consummate actress!" mused Alan Hawke, when, for the first
time, since Nadine Johnstone's arrival, a formal dinner party
enlivened the dull monotony of the marble house. The round table,
set for five, gave Hugh Johnstone the strategic advantage of
separating his secret enemy from his blushing daughter. Hawke demurely
paid his devoirs to Madame Justine Delande, with a finely studied
inattention to either the guest of the evening or the beautiful
girl who only murmured a few words when presented to her father's
only visitor. "I wonder if Justine, poor soul, will see the
resemblance?" It had been a triumph of art, Madame Berthe Louison's
magnificent dinner toilette, those rich robes which effaced the
opening-rose beauty of the slim girl in the simplicity of her rare
Indian lawn frock. Rich color and flowers and diamonds heightened
the splendid loveliness of the woman who "looked like a queen in
a play that night."

Alas, for Justine Delande, she was so busied with her mute telegraphy
to Alan Hawke that she never saw the startling family likeness of
the two women so eagerly watched by Hugh Johnstone. But the keen-eyed
Alan Hawke saw the girl's fascinated gaze. He noted her virginal
bosom heaving in a new and strange emotion. He marked the tender
challenge of her dreamy eyes as Berthe Louison's loving soul spoke
out to the radiant young beauty only held away from her heart by
the stern old skeleton at the feast.

The long-drawn-out splendors of the feast were over, and the ladies
had, at last, retired. Hawke observed the stony glare with which
Johnstone whispered a few words of command to Justine Delande, when
the two men sought the smoking-room.

The door was hardly closed upon them when the coffee and cigars
were served, when Johnstone, striding forward, locked the door.

"See here, Hawke!" abruptly said the host "I want you to serve me
to-night, and to stand by me while this she-devil is in Delhi. I've
got to run down to Calcutta on business for a few days. She will
not be here. She has some business of her own down there, also.
First, find out for me, for God's sake, all about her. How she came
here; where she hides in Europe; who her friends are. When you are
able to, you can follow her over the world. I'll foot the bill, as
the Yankees say.

"Now, to-night, I wish you to take your leave conventionally.
Get away at once, and go immediately and telegraph to Anstruther
in London. No, don't deny you are intimate with him. I know it.
Telegraph him that I am in a position, now, to trace out and restore
those missing jewels. The secret of their hiding is mine at last.
Here's a hundred pounds. Don't spare your words. Within a month
they will be in the hands of the Viceroy. I have to play a part to
get them--a dangerous part. I pledge my whole estate to back this.
But I must have my Baronetcy so that I can leave India, for I fear
the vengeance of the devils who robbed the captured Princes of
Oude.

"Once in England, I am safe. I'll not leave till I get the Baronetcy,
and the jewels will not be delivered up until I get it. I am closely
watched here."

Hawke's eyes burned fiercely. "And if I was to take the train and
tell the Viceroy this?" he boldly said.

"Then I would say that you had lied--that is all."

"What do I get?" coolly demanded Hawke.

"Five thousand pounds the day that I get my Baronetcy," quietly
replied Johnstone.

"I'll not do it," hotly cried Hawke. "You might say I lied," he
sneered. "I want it now!"

The two men glared at each other in a mutual distrust. Hugh Johnstone
pondered a moment, and said deliberately:

"I'll give you five accepted drafts for a thousand pounds each, when
I return from Calcutta, on Glyn, Carr & Glyn, my London bankers,
dated thirty days apart. That will make you sure of your money,
and me, sure of my Baronetcy. Will you act?" Hawke knocked the ash
off his Havana lightly.

"Yes, if you give me a thousand pounds cash bonus now! I am
deliberately misleading Anstruther to help you. And I risk my own
place to do it."

"All right," said Johnstone as he left the room, and in a few
moments returned with a check-book. "There's your thousand pounds.
Now listen. Not a word to old General Willoughby. He is a meddlesome
old sot. I shall slip away quietly. To deceive the Delhi scandal-mongers
you must call here every day in my absence. Mademoiselle Delande
will receive you. My daughter, of course, sees no one in my absence.
And you can inform Delhi secretly, guardedly, that Madame Berthe
Louison is an art enthusiast, a Frenchwoman of rank and fortune,
and one who, in her short stay, only studies the wonders of old
Oude. I don't want this damned pack of local lady-killers--the
lobster-backs--to get after her. Do you understand? I'll have
further use for you. I may retire to Europe. You can trust the
Swiss woman. I will give her my orders."

"All right! I will go and telegraph as soon as I can make my adieux.
When do you start for Calcutta?" Hawke asked warily.

"The moment you get Anstruther's reply," decisively replied Johnstone.
"I'll be away for a couple of weeks in all!" Hawke turned paler
than his wont, but he mused in silence and cheerfully finished
his coffee and cognac. In half an hour, he left an aching void in
Justine Delande's bosom, but some subtle magnetism had so drawn
Berthe Louison and the heart-stirred Justine together that Hugh
Johnstone was happy, when, with courtly gallantry, he escorted the
beauty, who had set Delhi all agog, to her garden-bowered nest.

"Have I kept my compact?" said Berthe, as they stood once more in
her "tiger's den."

"You have, madame!" said Hugh Johnstone. "I have been considering
all. I will leave secretly for Calcutta in two or three days. You
had better follow me in a week. I have some private business there.
I will ask my friend, Major Hawke, to show you the environs. You
can trust him. Telegraph me to Grindlay's Bank, Calcutta, of your
arrival. I will meet you. Our business transacted, we can return
together on the same train. All will then be safe." His own secret
preparations were all made.

"I agree to all," said Berthe. "And, as to Nadine?"

Johnstone turned with blazing eyes, "You are to see her each day,
at her own home, in the presence of Justine Delande. She will have
my orders. Remember our compact! All your future association with
her depends on your prudence. I will not be betrayed or openly
disgraced!" His face was as black as a murderer caught in the act.

"I remember!" said the beauty of the Bungalow.

"To mystify the fools here, if I will bring my daughter and take
you for a drive, each day at four, till I go," said Johnstone.
"And, then, I'll have Hawke show you the city." He bowed, and at
once disappeared, leaving his enemy laughing. But he grinned.

"If she knew that I go to meet Douglas Fraser, my lady would pass
an uneasy night! I hold the trump cards now!"

Major Alan Hawke smiled grimly the next day, when he presented to
Hugh Johnstone a neatly got up cipher, answering dispatch in code
words which had cost Ram Lal just half of the bribe which Hawke
gave him for the sly Hindu telegraph clerk.

"Ah! Anstruther was prompt!" said the neatly tricked nabob, when
Hawke translated:

"Intelligence gratifying. Name approved and on list. Appointment
sure!" Three days later, Delhi missed Hugh Johnstone from the
afternoon drives, which showed Madame Louison and Nadine to an
eager bevy of Madame Grundys. But the envied of all men was Major
Alan Hawke, escorting Madame Louison for a week over the storied
plains of the Jumna.

When Madame Berthe Louison and her two body servants took the
Calcutta train, local society jumped to its sage conclusion.

"Old Hugh will lead the beautiful Countess to the altar, while
Major Alan Hawke will bear off the Rosebud of Delhi, and so become
the richest son-in-law in India." But the handsome Alan Hawke,
each morning lingering with Justine Delande in the grounds of the
marble house, never saw the face of Nadine Johnstone. The beautiful
girl breathlessly awaited her new-made friend's return. But stern
old Hugh Johnstone, at Calcutta, laughed as he thought of his own
secret coup de main.

"Wait! Wait till I return!" he gloated. "She is powerless now!"

CHAPTER VIII.

HARRY HARDWICKE TAKES THE GATE NEATLY.

In the few days succeeding Hugh Johnstone's still unsuspected
departure, the dull fires of a growing jealousy burned and smouldered
in Captain Harry Hardwicke's agitated heart. The old nabob had
neatly slipped away in the night, on a special engine, and the
Captain heard all the growing tattle of Delhi, as to the social
activity at the marble house. The open hospitable board of General
Willoughby rang with the very wildest rumors. Alan Hawke seemed to
be the "Prince Charming" of the hidden festivities.

Hardwicke, on the eve of his Majority, now darkly moped in his
rooms, undecided to apply for a long home leave, unwilling to leave
Delhi, and even afraid to ask his general for any positive favor
as to a future station. Club and mess bandied the freest tattle as
to old Hugh Johnstone's lovely "importation." Men eyed the prosperous
Major Alan Hawke on his rising pathway with a growing envy. There
was a smart coterie who now firmly believed that the Major's
only "secret business" was to marry the Rose of Delhi, and then,
departing on an extended honeymoon, leave the "Diamond Nabob," as
the ci-devant Hugh Fraser was called, free to proclaim Madame Berthe
Louison, queen of the marble house, and sharer of his expected
dignity, the crown of his life, the long-coveted Baronetcy. When
old Major Verner growled:

"That's the scheme, Hardwicke! My Lady of France makes the condition
that the young heiress shall be settled first. Gad! What a lucky
dog Hawke is!" Then, Harry Hardwicke suddenly discovered that he
loved the moonlight beauty of his dreams--the fair veiled Rose of
Delhi. Hawke rose up as a darkly menacing cloud on his future.

His morning rides were now but keen inspections of the Commissioner's
garden, and, lingering on the Chandnee Chouk, he knew, by experiments,
conducted with a beating heart, just where Justine Delande was wont
to wander in the lonely labyrinth, with her lovely young charge.
A low double gate, a break in the high stone wall, often gave him
glimpses of the two women in their morning rambles and, with a
softened feeling, born of her own secret passion for Hawke, Justine
Delande watched a fluttering handkerchief often answer Captain
Hardwicke's morning salute.

"Tell me, Justine," said Nadine, the morning after Hugh Johnstone had
stolen away, "Why does my father not ask Major Hardwicke to visit
us? He is to be promoted for his superb gallantry, he is so brave--so
noble! He certainly has as many claims to honor as this--this Major
Hawke--whom my father has made his confidant. I don't know why,
but I don't like that man!"

"What do you know of Major Hardwicke, as you call him?" cried
Justine in wonder at Miss Nadine's growing interest.

"Ah!" the agitated girl cried with blushing cheeks, "Mrs. Willoughby
told me how he dragged his wounded friend out of a storm of Afghan
balls, and gave her back the child of her heart. It was General
Willoughby who got him his Victoria Cross. And, she says that he
is a hero, he is so gentle and manly--so gifted--a man destined
to be a commanding general yet." The guilty Swiss woman dared not
raise her eyes to watch the fleeting blushes on Nadine's cheeks.

"It is time, high time we leave India," she mused, and then, the
thought of separation from Alan Hawke chilled her blood. "Let us go
in," she said. "The grass is damp yet." Captain Hardwicke's argus
eyes, love inspired, were now daily fixed on the marble house. He
scoured Delhi and amassed a pyramid of detached fragmentary gossip
in all his alarm, but one star of hope cheered him. Though Major
Hawke was known as the only cavalier of Madame Louison, save the
old nabob, now supposed to be ill at home; though Hawke drove out
for a week with the lovely countess--to the great surprise of the
local society, the handsome renegade had never once been seen in
public with Miss Nadine Johnstone. Stranger still, the star-eyed
Madame Berthe Louison had never accompanied the young heiress in
the regular afternoon parade en voiture. "There's a mystery here,"
mused the lover. "Old Hugh and the Major appear daily with the
Frenchwoman, but Nadine Johnstone has never been seen alone with
anyone save her father, or this Swiss duenna. Hawke is making slow
progress there, if any." Meeting old Simpson, the nabob's butler,
Captain Hardwicke tipped him with a five-pound note. The old retired
soldier grinned and opened his confidence.

"The Major! Bless your stars!" gabbled Simpson, "She's a straightaway
angel, and not for the likes of him! Major Hawke has a dark spot
or two in his record--away back!" grumbled Simpson, "No, Captain!
Major Hawke has never set eyes on her for a single moment, but the
one night of that dinner. By the way, it is the only one we ever
gave!" The butler swelled up proudly.

"That night she never lifted her eyes, nor spoke even a word to
him. He comes to see the Guv'nor on business, an' mighty private
business it is. They're locked up together often."

"And, this marrying? The stories are now told everywhere?" queried
Hardwicke, blushing, but desperately remembering that "all is fair
in love and war." He, an incipient Major, a V. C.--"pumping" an
old private soldier.

"Rank rot!" frankly said the butler, "They're all strangers. The
French countess is only sight-seeing here and buying out old Ram
Lal's shop. The old thief! She brought letters to the Guv'nor!
That's all! He's no special fancy to her, and he set Major Hawke
on just to do the amiable. The Guv'nor's far too old to beau the
lady around. Marry?--not him! And Miss Nadine's just as silent as
a flower in one of them gold vases. All she does is to look pretty
and keep still, poor lamb. Her music, her books, her flowers, her
birds. And as to Major Hawke and this Madame Louison--I've the
Guv'nor's own orders they are never to see Miss Nadine. That is,
Hawke not at all, and the lady only when Miss Delande is present!
Them's my solid orders, and the old Guv'nor put my eye out with a
ten-pound note--the first I ever got from him. No, Captain! You've
done the handsome by me, and I give you the straight tip--wasn't
I in the old Eighth Hussars with your father when we charged the
rebel camp at Lucknow? I've got a tulwar yet that I cut out of the
hand of a 'pandy' who was hacking away at Colonel Hardwicke."

"How did you get it, Simpson?" cried the young Captain.

"I got arm and all! Took it off with a right cut! You may know,
Cap'n, that we ground our sabers in those old days! No, sir! Miss
Nadine's for none of them people, and Hawke is only in the house for
business. He's a deep one--is that same Hawke," concluded Simpson,
pocketing his note.

Captain Hardwicke began to see the light dawning. "Alan Hawke has
then some secret business scheme with the old money grubber that's
all," mused the young engineer officer, happy at heart. "I'll
fight a bit shy of him. His scheme may take the girl in. So, old
Johnstone's away a few days. Perhaps settling his affairs before
his departure. I think," the lover mused, "I will follow them to
Europe, if they go, and, if they stay, Willoughby will ask for my
retention, and, after all, 'faint heart never won fair lady.' Hawke
is not an open suitor. If the old man should ever marry this French
beauty, I may find the pathway open to Nadine Johnstone's side!"

So, with a "fighting chance," Captain Hardwicke determined that Miss
Nadine should know his heart before long, and have also a chance
to know her own mind. "The fact is, the old boy has lived the life
of a recluse, that's all, but I'll find a way to pierce the shell
of his moroseness. There's one comfort," he smiled, "No other fellow
is making any running."

In these swiftly gliding days of absence, Ram Lal Singh and the
watchful Major Alan Hawke conferred at length over narghileh and
glass. A sullen discontent had settled down on Hawke's brow when
Berthe Louison publicly departed upon her business trip with not
even a fragmentary confidence.

"Wait for my return, and only watch the marble house," said the
Madame. "Do not be foolish enough to attempt to call on Miss Nadine.
I heard Johnstone tell the Swiss woman not to allow you to follow
up any social acquaintance with his daughter. 'I want Nadine to
remain a girl as yet,' growled the old brute. Now, the Swiss woman
may be able to give you some information."

"I'll do what I can," carelessly replied Alan Hawke, but his eyes
gleamed when she said:

"Do not sulk in your tent. On my return I shall have need of you.
You can prepare to go into action then."

"Where shall I address you at Calcutta?" demanded Hawke. "Something
might happen."

"Ah," smiled Berthe Louison. "Nothing will happen. Not a line, not
a telegram; send nothing, come what will! I return here soon, and,
besides, Old Johnstone might watch and intercept it. Remember, we
do not know each other. It would be a fatal mistake to write." And
so she went quietly on her way. The house was locked, the Indian
servants having the Madame's orders to admit no one, on any pretense.
"Damn her!" growled Alan Hawke, when the door was shut in his face.
"She feared I would give her away to Johnstone. No address! Not a
line or a telegram! Only wait--only wait!"

Ram Lal infuriated him later with the news that nothing could
be learned from the baffled spies of the household in the Silver
Bungalow as to the first or second interwiew of Johnstone and
the resolute Alixe Delavigne. "Money will not do it! Not a lac of
rupees. The Frenchman and woman never leave her day or night. He is
on guard with weapons and a night light at her door, and the maid
sleeps in the room.

"And she has other secret helpers!" groaned the baffled Ram Lal.
"She is writing and receiving letters all the time. And yet none
of these come or go by the post. She does not trust you, Major,"
said the jewel merchant, with a cruel gleam of his dark eyes. "I
believe that she is some old love of Sahib Johnstone. They have
deep dealings. She has bought a great store of jewels and trinkets
from me."

"Hell and fury! I've been duped!" cried Hawke. "I see it. That
damned Frenchman takes and brings the letters! But who is her local
go-between? Perhaps the French Consul at Calcutta, or some banker
here! I can't buy them all. She only needs me in case of a violent
rupture with Johnstone. Damn her stony-hearted impertinence!"

And he mentally resolved to sell her out and out to the liberal old
nabob. "He might then give his daughter to me for peace and safety.
But I've got to do the trick before he finds out the falsity of
Anstruther's so-called telegram. And, first, I must have something
to sell. She is the devil's own for sly nerve, is my lady."

"She is too smart for us, as yet," soothingly said Ram Lal. "But
wait; wait till they return! Pay me well and I will find out all
that goes on. I can always get into the marble house at night.
At any time, I may spy on old Johnstone and get the secret there.
I have a couple of men of my own in his house. They know where to
leave a door, a window, an opened sash for me. And at the Silver
Bungalow, I can go in and out secretly by day and night. She would
not know. You would not wish anything to happen to her?" The old
jewel merchant's voice was darkly suggestive.

"No! Devil take her!" cried Hawke. "What I want to know is hidden
in her crafty head and stony heart. Death would bury it forever.
Nothing must happen either to her or to him. It would spoil the
whole game. Don't you see, Ram Lal, there's money in this for you
and me just as long as we keep them all here under our hands. If
they separate--even if one goes to Europe--you can watch one and I
the other. You can always frighten money out of old Johnstone if
we tell each other all, and I can follow that woman over Europe and
dog her till she is driven crazy. She will fear me just as long as
old Hugh Johnstone is alive, for I could sell her out to him. No
one else cares. They must both live to be our bankers. Now tell
me, why did either or both of them go to Calcutta--what for?" Ram
Lal figuratively washed his hands in invisible water.

"Running water, passing silently, leaves no story behind, Sahib,"
he said, simply. "We have not caught our eels yet. But they are
both coming back into our eel pot." And as the days dragged on
Alan Hawke beguiled the time with the most energetic inroads into
Justine Delande's heart.

"Some one must break the line of the enemy," darkly mused Alan Hawke,
as in the unrestrained intimacy of their long, morning rides, he
influenced the Swiss woman's heart, love-tortured, to a greater
passionate surrender.

"It maybe all in all to me, in my secret career, your future
fidelity," he pleaded. '"It will be all in all to you, and to your
sister. There will be your home, the friendship of an enormously
rich woman! The girl will have a million pounds! And you and I,
Justine, shall not be cast off, as one throws away an old sandal."
The cowering woman clung closer daily to the man who now molded
her will to his own.

The absence of Johnstone and Madame Louison seemed confirmation of
the rumors of coming bridals.

"They will come back, as man and wife!" growled old Verner, to
Captain Hardwicke, "and then, look out for a second bridal! Hawke
and the heiress!" But Harry Hardwicke only smiled and bided his
time. His daily morning ride led him to the double gateway, to at
least nearby the isolation of the lovely Rose who was filling his
heart with all beauty and brightness.

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