A Fascinating Traitor

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

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"Orders are waiting for you now, with the General. Let me give you
a trusty Sergeant. Drive right up there, Major. The General sent
word that he awaits you." And so the Major sped away to his chief.

No human being in Delhi ever knew the purport of the orders
which General Willoughby handed to Major Hawke, on this eventful
evening, but much marveled all Delhi that the favorite of fortune
was absent from the funeral of the late Hugh Fraser Johnstone, Esq.,
of Delhi and Calcutta. He had vanished, with no P.P.C. calls, and
a hundred-pound note tossed to the poor little Eurasian girl in
the cottage was her whole fortune in life now.

But a grave-faced civilian public official, with Major Williamson,
of the Viceroy's general staff (a late arrival from Calcutta),
ruled over the marble house in place of Major Alan Hawke "absent
upon special duty." Only Ram Lal knew of the real destination of
the lucky man, who was only free from care when he had sailed from
Bombay direct for Brindisi, on the fleet steamer Ramchunder.

"I am safe now," laughed Alan Hawke, who rejoiced in the easy tour
of duty before him. "To repair to London and to report to Captain
Anson Anstruther, A.D.C., for special duty." Such were the Viceroy's
secret orders. It was General Willoughby who had absolutely invoked
secrecy. "Wear a plain military undress, and you must avoid most
men, and all women. Keep your mouth shut and you may find your
provisional rank confirmed."

To Berthe Louison's secret agents, the Grindlay Bank at Delhi,
Major Hawke had delivered a sealed envelope. "Use this only at
your sorest need. I will see Madame Louison probably before she has
any orders for me, as to her private affairs." When the envelope
was opened the words "Major Alan Hawke, Hotel Faucon, Lausanne,
Switzerland," gave the only address which the adventurer dared to
leave. And it was that which the cowering Ram Lal Singh copied when
he brought to Alan Hawke the four sets of altered Bills of Exchange,
and the Bank of England notes for the check of five thousand pounds.

Major Hawke surveyed the skillfully raised Bills of Exchange
and carefully examined them in a dark room with a light, and also
before the glaring sun rays. "A splendid job, Ram Lal," he gayly
said. "You must have given them a coat of size and then moistened
and ironed them." The old rascal gloomily accepted the professional
compliment. "I observe that you have labored to protect your own
indorsement," sportively remarked the Major.

"And now you will return to me my jewels?" timidly demanded Ram
Lal.

"Do you wish me to send the dagger of Mirzah Shah to General
Willoughby? It is deposited here, with a sealed letter," coldly
sneered Hawke. "Should anything happen to me or, to these drafts,
it would be sent to the General, and you would hang. No, I will
keep the jewels."

And then Major Hawke thrust the shivering wretch out, having liberally
paid to him, through Grindlay, the balance due by Berthe Louison.

"I swear that I did not get a single jewel from--from him. He has
hidden them," pleaded Ram Lal.

"Ah! I must look to this" mused Hawke, when Ram Lal had been
frightened away with a last stern injunction:

"Obey my slightest wishes or you will hang! I will have you watched
till I return! There are eyes upon your path that never close in
sleep!" Ram Lal shuddered in silence.

Delhi soon forgot the man whom the great stone now covered in the
English cemetery, and only General Willoughby and the easy-going
civil authorities knew of the cablegram: "Coming on with full
power from Senior Executor.--Dougas Fraser, Junior Executor." The
cablegram was dated from Milan, for two keen Scottish brains were
now busied with plans to save and care for the worldly gear so
suddenly abandoned to their care by Hugh Johnstone. Though Delhi was
swept as with a besom, no trace of the cowardly assassins was ever
found, and only old Simpson, waiting, in final charge as household
major domo for Douglas Fraser's arrival, could enlighten the
perturbed commanding General with certain vague suspicions. But
Ram Lal slept now in a growing security.

"It is clear that the master was watched in his secret preparations
for the voyage home," said Simpson, "and some outsiders, with
the help of some traitor among the blacks, paid off an old score.
I could tell of many an old enemy which he gained in these twenty
years." sadly said Simpson. "I feel they only mussed up the room
to give an appearance of robbery. The mahogany boxes were merely
part of master's old wedding outfit in London, and I know that they
were only filled with toilet articles and little medical stores.
They only lugged them off to make a show."

And General Willoughby, following up Simpson's clues, easily
discovered a shady side of Johnstone's past life, not compatible
with the pompous panegyrics of the Indian press, the resolutions
of a dozen clubs and societies, the minutes of the Bank of Bengal,
and other mortuary literature of a complimentary nature. It was
some old curse come down upon the defenseless man in his old age!
And so no one ever sought for the solution of the mystery in the
deep dejection of Ram Lal Singh, who vainly mourned for his lost
jewels and money. Fear tied his hands, and his tongue was palsied
by guilt. He vindictively, however, raised his customary "rate
of usance," and swore in his own hardened heart that the needy
borrowers of Delhi should recoup him fully before a year. The one
Star gleaming in the dark night of financial blackness was the
vengeance upon the man who had tricked and despoiled a fellow-robber
thirty years before.

Major Hawke on his homeward way counted up a goodly store of twelve
thousand pounds in money, jewels of nearly the same value, and the
skillfully raised and properly indorsed drafts on London for twenty
thousand more. "If I can only get these passed by the executors
I am a made man for life," mused the Major as the Ramchunder sped
over the blue Arabian sea. "If I discover the secret of the stolen
jewels, they must yield, to save both family honor and money; if
I don't, then, Ram Lal must save his life and protect the drafts.
I will negotiate them with the Credit Lyonnais, in Paris, and force
Berthe to help me. No one shall rob me now," somewhat illogically
mused the brilliant adventurer, proud of his life-work.

At Calcutta, the noble Viceroy had already given to Major Harry
Hardwicke and Capt. Eric Murray his orders for their performance
of a delicate duty.

"You will find Captain Anstruther to be my personal as well as
official representative in London, and Her Majesty's service demands
prudence in this grave affair. So but one set of confidential
cipher dispatches have been sent on, and Captain Anstruther will
have charge of the whole delicate affair. Should either of you meet
Major Alan Hawke in London, or out of India, your commissions will
depend on guarding an absolute silence as to the whole Johnstone
affair. You are trusted, and not watched, gentlemen," said the great
noble, "and he is watched, and not trusted. Now, I have done all I
can for you, as this duty takes you home and brings you back at the
expense of her Majesty's government. You will not fail to communicate
with me from Aden, Suez, and Port Said, as well as Brindisi, and to
report if Madame Louison has received at each place her telegrams
and proceeded on her journey in safety. Her Majesty's consuls will,
in each place, aid you in every way. Should I decide to drop or
quash the whole affair, my young kinsman, Anstruther, represents
me, personally as well as officially."

And so the gay young bridegroom-to-be sailed from Calcutta
light-hearted, while Harry Hardwicke counted each day's reckoning
as bringing him, by leaps and bounds, nearer to the dark-eyed girl
now left alone in the world. "There shall nothing come between us
now, my darling one!" was the young Major's fond vow confided to
the evening star, glowing in its trembling silver radiance over
the spicy Indian Ocean.

Alixe Delavigne was still "Madame Berthe Louison" to the
glittering circle of passengers who envied her the state in which
she traveled, the slavish obeisance of the ship's officers, and
the deft ministrations of those admirable servants, Jules Victor
and Marie. "A great personage incognito," was the general verdict,
and so the luckless swains hovering around fell off one by one,
as the beautiful woman seemed to be always wrapped in an unbroken
reverie. There was an anxious gleam in the lady's eyes, for she
felt that she was going home to the sternest battle of her life,
and she brooded now only upon the trials of the future. She never
knew how near the dark angel's wing had swooped over her own
defenseless head.

For the gray head now lying low had been secretly busied with
plans for a huge bribe to Ram Lal which should buy him to the doing
of a dark deed without a name. Only Berthe's determined attack on
the granting of the baronetcy in London, and her own "lightning
disappearance" had saved her from Ram Lal's cupidity. Master of
the secrets of a dozen Eastern poisons, the artful confederate of
her dark retinue in the silver bungalow, Ram Lal would have gladly
worked Hugh Johnstone's will for his red gold. But the fierce quarrel
and the precipitate flight of Berthe Louison had balked Johnstone,
who fell by the very hand of the sly wretch whom he had designed
to buy, as the murderer of another. The engineer hoist by his own
petard. But, steadfastly looking to Valerie's child alone, she knew
not the dangers which she had escaped.

"I was afraid they would kill you, Madame. Thank God, we are now
safe at sea!" said Jules Victor.

"Who?" cried the startled woman.

"Why, that old wretch; he had money, and his spies were all around
you," said Jules.

"Yes! Thank God! We are safe now!" mused Berthe Louison, and she
bade a long adieu to the strange scenes of her pilgrimage. "I shall
never see India again!" she reflected, when she passed, in a mental
review, Calcutta, holy Benares, smoky Patna, brisk Allahabad,
Cawnpore, where the white-winged angel broods over the innocent
dead, heroic Lucknow, and crime-haunted Delhi--all these rose up
in a weird panorama of the mind. Strange tales of wild adventure
told by Alan Hawke returned to her now--the mysteries of Thibet,
the weird ferocity of Bhotan, the quaint tales of the polyandrous
Todas, and the strange story of Vijaynagar, the desecrated city
whose streets are peopled but ten days in the year! A lotos land
where crime broods, where the cobra hides under the painted blossoms
of Death!

Glittering palaces of Agra, gloomy caves of Elephanta, the light
and lovely Mohammedan architecture, the dark haunts of Kali and
Bowanee, the thronged Ghats of the sacred rivers, the color medleys
of the vast cities, all these busied her as she passed her days
alone in study over the secretly gathered up collection of polychrome
views which had taken her from the Neilgherries to Cape Comorin.
Her dreams of all her subtle plans to counteract all of Johnstone's
schemes, her tender intrigues to silently entrap Nadine Johnstone's
girlish heart, her carefully plotted line of future action, all
of these things vanished in a moment, at Aden, when a government
launch steamed out, and an officer of the vessel led up Her Majesty's
Consul to address the mysterious lady passenger.

There was a rush of volunteers when the woman, always brave in
sorrow and ever fate defying, fainted away in a deathly trance as
her eyes eagerly scanned the brief dispatch of the Viceroy. They
were underway again when she realized the fearful decrees of a
merciless fate! She read with a shudder, the lines again and again,
whispering: "Can it be?"

"Hugh Johnstone murdered by persons--unknown at Delhi? Hasten on
to London. Anstruther will have full details. Please acknowledge!"

And it was half an hour before the beautiful Nemesis who had clouded
Hugh Johnstone's life had penned her simple answer. Only at night,
on the voyage afterward, did she ever leave her splendid staterooms,
and when Brindisi was reached she vanished with her loyal servants
so quickly that even the veriest fortune hunter could not follow on
her trail. "Some terrible row--some sad family happening," was the
general smoking-room verdict! But, with a heart strangely yearning
to the orphaned child, Berthe Louison hastened, without stopping,
by Venice to lovely Munich and on to gay Paris. "She shall be mine
now--mine to love, to cherish, my poor darling!" vowed the woman
whose eyes shown out in an infinite pity! The cup of vengeance
was dashed away from her lips for, behind the arras, the waiting
headsman of Fate had struck in the night and laid low the man who
would have compassed her death!

Madame Alixe Delavigne was only a gracious memory to the sympathetic
men passengers who hastened on to London via Mont Cenis, but the
chattering gossips of the Rue Berlioz noted, with an eager Gallic
curiosity, the return of the mysterious occupant of No. 9. Jules
Victor and his wife were seen, however, for only one day, busied
about their usual household avocations, and then the returning
travelers vanished once more to baffle the chatterers. "Diantre!
Comme ils sont des voyageurs!" cried the coachman who took the
wanderers to the Gare St. Lazare. There was need of haste now,
for Madame Louison had received three foreign dispatches, besides
a letter from Captain Anstruther, now waiting impatiently at London,
and chafing over his unsuccessful queries at Morley's Hotel. The
gallant Captain's letter was pregnant with governmental mysteries,
and yet the beautiful woman sighed as she saw the vein of personal
interest but too clearly evident in the long communication. A single
glance at her tell-tale mirror re-assurred her, and she blushed,
as she murmured:

"He believes me younger than I am!" But her brow was grave as she
revolved the situation. "There will be a long struggle, a fight
of love against craft and and greed! Who will win?" The fact that
the Government Secret Service had already traced the delivery of
the heavily insured shipment, "ex. Str. Lord Roberts," to Professor
Andrew Fraser, was a first victory for the enemy! "If the old
nabob wrote directly via Brindisi to his brother, then the acute
old Scotch Professor may be on his guard now! And--the will?--the
will? What does it provide for Nadine's future? If he had already
taken the alarm-then I may have yet to fight my way to my darling's
side! The black curtain of the past shall never be lifted by my
hand unless--unless Andrew Fraser forces me to strike hard at his
dead brother's paper card house of honorable deeds!"

As Madame Louison watched the rich moonlight silvering the broken
wake of the channel steamer, she pondered over the telegrams. "Major
Hardwicke and Alan Hawke are both en route to London, charged with
different missions. And I am to beware of Hawke. They have only
sent him away, perhaps, to veil the official game of the Indian
authorities. And Alan Hawke truthfully warns me of his coming by
private dispatch. Is he trying to regain his lost status? Douglas
Fraser, the second executor, on his way back to India. He has
passed Brindisi already. Ah! The sorrows for the dead are quickly
assuaged when the 'property interests' furnish a fat picking to
solicitors and the holders of dead men's gear.

"Nadine is only eighteen--she has three years to remain under
legal tutelage. Perhaps Andrew Fraser may have been already coached
upon his course by his unrelenting kinsman. And there is a fortune
waiting for father and son in the perquisites." Madame Louison fell
asleep in a vain quandary as to the precise age when men ceased
to value wealth and to sell their souls for gold. That question
was still undecided when the steamer Sparrow Hawk sped into Dover
harbor.

The beautiful wanderer was now clearly resolved as to her future
treatment of Alan Hawke. "My foe dead, the theater of war is transferred
to Great Britain. He is not necessary to my own campaign, but, in
watching him, I may be able to shield Nadine from his crafty plots.
If he should try to secretly make friends with the Frasers, and
to return to India, to aid the nephew, he might assist in robbing
Valerie's child of this mountain of miserably gotten wealth.

"Thank God, I can make her rich. But Captain Anstruther will know
the Viceroy's whole mind, and I can trust to him." But her cheeks were
rosy red and her dancing dark eyes dropped in a sudden confusion,
as the handsome aid-de-camp leaped aboard the steamer at Dover
Pier.

"I did not expect you!" she murmured.

"I knew, of course, from your dispatch when you would arrive, and
so I came down to further the Viceroy's business!" the soldier
said in a sudden confusion. In an hour, the two who had met in
such strange manner at Geneva were seated alone in a first-class
compartment, and were merrily whirling on to Lud's town. Captain
Anstruther's ten shillings to the guard secured them from annoying
intrusion. In another compartment, Jules and Marie Victor sagely
exchanged their lightning glances of Parisian acuteness.

"C'est un homme magnifique!" murmured Marie, and Jules gravely
nodded, "Peut-etre, notre maitresse l'a connu longtemps. II est
tres tendre!" The staff-officer "furthered the Viceroy's business"
by clasping both of Alixe Delavigne's prettily-gloved hands. Her
bosom heaved in a soft alarm, but she repulsed him not.

"Why did you deceive me at Geneva?" he eagerly demanded, with
a trembling voice. And Alixe Delavigne's eyes were downcast and
dreamy, as she whispered:

"Because I was only a poor pilgrim of Love--a lonely woman, heart
hungry for the tidings of the girl whom you have brought back to
me!" The young officer gazed out of the window, and in his heart,
he already pardoned her.

"To those who love much, much shall be forgiven!" he reflected,
with a compassion growing momentarily, for he saw the shadow of
tears in the beautiful dark brown eyes. And he forbore to question
her as he gazed at her glowing face.

With a sudden lifting of her stately head, the woman sitting there,
her heart throbbing in a strange unrest, laid her hand lightly upon
his arm.

"Listen to the strange story of a woman's life!" she said slowly.
"I promised His Excellency, the Viceroy, that you should know why
I left the defensive lines of my sex at Geneva! For he has trusted
to me, and I wish you to know--to know that--" and the sentence
was never finished, for Captain Anstruther bent over her trembling
hands.

"I know that you are what I would have you ever be!" he simply
said. And, with softly shining eyes, she told the soldier of her
strange life path.

It was strange that they had neared London before the whole story
was concluded, and their voices had sunk into softened whispers.
"You may rely upon me to the death! You may depend upon me whenever
you may wish to call upon me!" he said, as the train rolled into
Charing Cross station. "Major Hardwicke, of the Engineers, will be
my chosen ally, and I alone am to trace out this mystery of the
vanished jewels. You shall conquer! I will aid you! Amor omnia
vincit! You are the only heart in the world now throbbing for that
sweet girl."

But when they drove to Morley's Hotel, far away on the sea, Harry
Hardwicke's heart was beating fondly in all a lover's expectancy
for the same friendless Rose of Delhi, and the debonnair Alan Hawke,
in sight of Brindisi, mused in his deck-pacings: "I will placate
Euphrosyne Delande. Justine, too, shall do my bidding, and my
employer shall give me the key to this girl's heart. For I will
marry Nadme Johnstone! I am a devil for luck."

CHAPTER XII.

ON THE CLIFFS OF JERSEY.

Captain Anson Anstruther, A. D. C., was the very happiest of men
three days later, when he watched Madame Alixe Delavigne gracefully
presiding over a pretty tea table, a la fusse, in the quaint old
mansion, bowered in a garden sloping down to the Thames, where
Miss Mildred Anstruther, a venerable maiden aunt, had her "local
habitation and, a name!" A lonely woman of colossal wealth and blue
blood, high in rank, and decidedly of riper years.

"By Jove! Dear old Aunt Mildred is a tower of strength to me, just
now," reflected the gallant Captain, when, as the soft shadows
deepened on lawn and river, he lingered tenderly there in explanation
of his official business. It was hardly "official" that Anson
Anstruther had fallen into the habit of furtively addressing the
now unveiled Madame Berthe Louison, as "Alixe", but it was even
so. Acquaintance can ripen as rapidly on the Thames as by the Arno,
given a certain impetus. And the Pilgrim of Love, though still
Madame Berthe Louison in France, was Alixe Delavigne in the retreat
chosen by the Viceroy.

"Pazienza! Pazienza!" smiled the young soldier, as the impassioned
Alixe eagerly demanded to be allowed to approach the orphaned Nadine,
at St. Heliers. "You have been so noble, so untiring, do not ruin
all by precipitancy now! You see I am already secretly watching over
her. I now represent the whole interests of Her Majesty's Service!
And you--only your own loving heart! I must first meet Major Alan
Hawke, and send him away to be busied on some apparently important
duty, which will keep him away from old Andrew Fraser. We know
the old professor's cunning character. Miser and pedant, he is but
a shriveled parchment edition of his heartless, dead brother. We
must not alarm him. We have already traced the insured packet to
his hands. Now, he properly has the custody of the dead nabob's
will. He may soon have to bring the girl on to London, for the legal
formalities of proving it. We do not wish him to send the stolen
jewels away in a sudden fright, and so hide them from us forever.
If he qualifies duly as executor, and then files the will, then
the estate is responsible, through him.

"We will soon know who controls your niece for the three years of
her long minority. Hawke must be got out of the way. I will hoodwink
him, and every British Consul in the continental towns which he
visits will secretly watch him for me. Besides, Major Hardwicke
and Murray will be here very scon, to aid me, and to watch Hawke.
I wish Alan Hawke to blunder around, hunting for Major Hardwicke,
and so give me an opportunity to do my duty secretly, and to aid
you in your own labor of love. In the mean time--you must be content
to rest tranquilly here; cultivate my dear old aunt, and I will
come to you daily so that your quiet life in this 'moated grange'
will be brightened up a bit. You see," thoughtfully said Anstruther,
"whoever sent old Johnstone to his grave, he had previously spirited
the heiress away--all his plans for the future were perfectly
matured with all the craft of a man well versed in intrigue for
forty years. His bitter hatred of you did not die with him. You
may be assured that he has laid out a plan, both in his private
letters and in the will to fence you forever out of this girl's
life. So your work must be done in secret. If I can ever effectively
help you, I must work on Andrew Fraser and not needlessly alarm
both his greed and fear. As soon as it is safe, you shall take up
your post near to her; but Hawke must come and go first. He must
find no sign of your presence here." There was cogency in the
sentimental soldier's reasoning.

"He will surely come to my Paris home at No. 9 Rue Berlioz. He
knows that address!" murmured Alixe Delavigne, her eyes dropping
in a sudden confusion, as a flame of jealousy lit up the young
soldier's fiery glances. For Anson Anstruther had posted there on
his first voyage from Geneva to find the bird flown.

"Then you may keep Marie, your maid, here," slowly replied Anstruther,
"and send Jules over to Paris. Alan Hawke will surely seek for you
there. Let Jules inform him that you have gone to Jitomir to attend
to your Russian interests."

Alixe Delavigne bowed her head in a mute assent. Day by day the
proud self-reliant woman was yielding to the imperious will of the
young soldier. It was a soft, self-deception that reassured her on
the very evening when he left her.

But there was one now weaving his webs at Lausanne whose fertile
brain was busied with sly schemes of his own. Alan Hawke always
first considered "his duty to himself" and so the acute Major decided
to spy out the land before he precipitately appeared at London, or
dared to risk himself at St. Agnes Road, St. Heliers.

"It is just as well to know all that Justine can tell me before I
see this young dandy Anstruther, and to find out what Euphrosyne
knows before I interrogate her sister," he murmured; "I must make
no mistake with the Viceroy's kinsman!"

With much prevision he had telegraphed the date of his probable
arrival in London to Captain Anstruther from Munich, adding that
convenient fairy tale, "Delayed by illness" and he had also left
this telegram behind, so as to be sent on to allow him four days
leeway near Geneva.

The signature bore also an injunction to answer to Hotel Binda,
Paris. "This is no little card game," muttered Hawke. "It is for
rank, wealth, and the hand of Miss Million, the rose of Delhi."

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