A Fascinating Traitor

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

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"It seems that fortune favors us," tremblingly said Alixe Delavigne.
"This prying and curious Yankee, Professor Hobbs, also seems to
have fallen at once into the trap! Captain Murray's description
of his 'interview,' at the Royal Victoria, with Alaric Hobbs, is
a crystallized work of humorous art!"

"Of course the Yankee savant will write columns to the Waukesha
Clarion, describing this Asiatic lion, Prince Djiddin, and exploit
him in the States as an 'original discovery' of his own. His
eagerness to arrange an interview between the Prince and Professor
Fraser is most ludicrously fortunate for us," said Captain Anstruther.

The entrance of the butler with a telegram disturbed "Prince
Djiddin" and his lovely confidential staff officer. "An answer,
please, Captain," formally continued the household factotum.

"Hurrah!" cried Hardwicke, when the little conclave gathered around
the red light. "Simpson has arrived, and now Nadine and I have
some one whom we can both trust!" The further information that the
"Moonshee" would arrive forthwith to conduct "Prince Djiddin" to
the safe haven where that fascinating bride, Mrs. Flossie Murray,
awaited her beloved truant, was a call to prompt action. "I am
ready! I shall drop the Royal Engineers and live up to my 'blue
china' as a Prince!" cried Hardwicke.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE COUNCIL AT GRANVILLE.

When Major Alan Hawke returned, three weeks later, to the Hotel
Grand National, at Geneva, he was sorely wearied and dispirited.
A round of inspection of all the principal jewel marts of the
continent had been only a fruitless, solitary tourist promenade.
And the ominous silence of Captain Anson Anstruther, A. D. C.,
boded no good to the military future of the adventurer. "Damn me,
if I don't think that I have been hoodwinked!" growled Major Hawke,
on his re-turn from Moscow and St. Petersburg, whither he had been
ordered, as a last resort, to see the Court jewelers.

From Warsaw, he wrote to the Hotel Faucon, at Lausanne, to send
all his letters to meet him at Berlin, where Jack Blunt had given
him the address of the safest "fence" in all Kaiser Wilhelm's broad
domain. He had his own jewels valued there in Russia, but dared
not sell them.

With a sudden inspiration, born of a growing fear for the stability
of his house of cards, so flimsy in construction, he ran down to
Jitomir, and the half-crazed adventurer only lingered an hour with
the Intendant of Madame Alixe Delavigne's grand old domain. He
found the bird flown. Had he been duped? A permission to view the
old chateau was courteously accorded, and then Alan Hawke soon
realized that he was betrayed. For the fact that Madame was still
absent, "traveling around the world," and had not visited her
Volhynian estate for a year, proved to him now that he had been
doubly tricked. "Ah! By God! I have it!" he cried, as he set his
teeth in a white rage. "That fool, Anstruther, is bewitched by her
Polish wiles, the mongrel inheritance of La Grande Armee's visit
to Russia!" Straight as the crow flies, Alan Hawke then pressed on
to Lemberg, and hastened to Berlin, having sent on his last official
report to Captain Anstruther, at London. In Berlin, a letter from
Jack Blunt decided his whole career. There was news of moment,
which set his hot blood boiling in his veins.

"Simpson, the old body servant, has arrived from India," wrote the
disguised ex-convict. "And he's mighty thick with your shy bird, too.
There is some strange game going on here, which I can't make out.
The cute Yankee professor is furious, for old Fraser has temporarily
given him the 'dead cut.' The American is totally neglected, for the
old idiot spends half his time, now, shut up in his study with a
visiting nigger prince from India, and the yellow fellow's half-breed
interpreter. I send you a dozen cuttings from the papers. The
Prince, however, seems to be all O. K. He never even notices the
shy bird. He probably buys his women at home. How could he, for
he does not speak a single damned word of English. But I've caught
sight of this Moonshee fellow trying to do the polite to the heiress.
Old Simpson keenly watches the whole goings on, and I've tried to
pull him on! No go! But he sneaks off himself, gets roaring full,
down at Rozel Pier, with a little French peddler fellow, that he
has picked up. And, I don't like this French chap's looks. Too fly,
and far too free with his money. There's no one else who has, as
yet, showed up here. Not a woman, no other human being but a London
lawyer. And I'm told now the guardian and niece are soon going over
to London to deposit all the papers that Simpson brought home and
to do 'a turn' at Doctor's Commons. Now's your very time--the dark
of the moon. Better cut your job and come over to me at Granville;
and why can we not turn the place up-while they are away? To do that,
we must do Simpson 'for fair,' and I now know his nightly trail.
Send money, plenty of it, and come on. I am 'on the beachcomber's
lay,' now, down at the Jersey Arms, Rozel Pier. Write or telegraph
me a line, and I'll instantly meet you at Granville, at the Cor
d'Abondance."

A loving letter from Justine Delande inclosed a notice of a registered
letter waiting at the Agence du Credit Lyonnais, Geneva. It is
marked "Tres Important," she wrote, and then added: "I have received
a letter from Nadine, who says that her guardian is now half crazy
with excitement over the finishing of his 'History of Thibet, and
Memoir Upon the Lost Ten Tribes,' for he has an Indian visitor of
princely rank, and he even proposes to take this Prince Djiddin
and his 'Moonshee' into the house, so as to shut the world out from
the wonderful disclosures of the only visitor of rank who ever left
Thibet."

Alan Hawke's brow was gloomy when he read the last letter, which
was a brief note from Captain Anstruther, informing him that his
final instructions would be forwarded "in a week." The ominous
silence of "Madame Berthe Louison," the living lie of her pretended
visit to Russia, the trick of the letters sent on from Jitomir to
his Parisian address, now only confirmed his jealous rage.

"They are living in a fool's paradise together, this dapper aide
and the wily woman, hiding in England! One has betrayed me, and the
other will now coldly abandon me! I'll soon raise a hornets' nest
about their ears!" So, with a simple telegraphed word "coming,"
dispatched to "Joseph Smith," he sped on to Geneva from his "Leipsic
defeat" at Berlin, but only to meet a ghastly "Waterloo" at the
Grand Hotel National. He had ordered the letters from the Hotel
Faucon to be sent on there to Miss Justine, and when he had freed
himself from her clasping arms he read a curt official note from
the Viceroy's aid-de-camp which left him livid in a paroxysm of
fury. On his way from the station he had only stopped long enough
at the Agence du Credit Lyonnais to receive an official-looking
document. "My accounts, I presume," he had muttered, thrusting them
in his pocket. But, when he had read Captain Anstruther's formal
note, he tore open the letter of the great French Banking Company.
The two letters curtly illustrated the old saw, that "it never
rains, but it pours!" With a fluttering heart poor Justine Delande
watched her undeclared lover's blackening face.

"Hell and furies!" he cried, "the whole world is leagued against
me. I've got to go back to India now, Justine, and go alone. Luck
is dead against me now." And the whitening face of the woman who
hung on his every glance made the infuriated man even more reckless.
"Damn them, I'll grind them all to powder!" he growled. For the
tide was on the turn, and it was dead water again at Geneva, the
tide fast receding, and the man who was "a devil for luck" was soon
left on the rocks of a silent despair.

Alan Hawke's eyes gleamed out with a murderous sheen as he scanned
both letters carefully. "It is his work--the low dog--and he shall
die. Wait till Jack Blunt and I get a hack at him," he mused,
with a sudden conviction that he dared not now show himself at St.
Heliers, nor openly approach the Banker's Folly. "I stand to lose
all and win nothing. I must work in the dark. I cannot dare to
brave this Anstruther. They would simply drive me from India. But,
Simpson and Ram Lal shall pay! And, Berthe Louison--Ah! By God! I
will strike her to the heart now! I see the way!"

The official words of Captain Anstruther were few but crushing in
there stern brevity. And Alan Hawke's heart sank as he read them over
again. "By the orders of His Excellency, the Viceroy, I have the
honor to inform you that he has withdrawn your temporary rank, and
all powers heretofore delegated to you will cease on the receipt
of this letter, which please acknowledge. On reporting to me in
London in person, you will receive the payment of all your accounts
with your back pay and transportation back to Calcutta, the place of
your temporary appointment. All the Consuls in continental Europe
have now been notified of the cessation of your powers, and you will
therefore, in no way act in the future in regard to the confidential
business once in your hands. The inquiry has been finally abandoned
by the order of the Indian Government.

"Please do report as soon as possible, and deliver over all papers
and vouchers now remaining in your hands. With assurance of my
consideration, Yours,

"ANSON ANSTRUTHER, Captain and A. D. C."

"Official,

"Confidential."

The letter of the Credit Lyonnais was even more menacing in its
tone. The Direction G'entrale referred to a formal letter of the
solicitors of the estate of Hugh Fraser Johnstone, deceased, totally
repudiating the four unaccepted drafts of five thousand pounds
sterling each, and legally notifying the Direction of an intended
suit to recover from the payee and the in-dorser, the first draft
for five thousand pounds paid before Executor Andrew Fraser had
filed his objections with Messrs. Glyn, Carr & Glyn. "The arrival
from India of the papers of the deceased, and the testimony of his
body servant Simpson, as well as the Calcutta Banker and solicitors,
proves that no such considerable withdrawals as twenty-five thousand
pounds were ever contemplated by the deceased, who had sent the
most minute business instructions to his agent and later executor."

"I shall have to throw this all back on Ram Lal." mused Alan
Hawke, who hastily bade Justine an adieu, until he could conjure
up an explanation for the Geneva agents of the Credit Lyonnais.
The closing words of the Paris Derection were semi-hostile. "Be
pleased. Monsieur, to call at once upon our Geneva branch and
explain these imputations. We are forced to withhold your present
deposits to cover any reclamation and legal expenses, and we
therefore beg you to discontinue the drawing of any drafts upon us
until the solicitors of Messrs. Glyn, Carr & Glyn and the Executor
notify us of the settlement of this distressing imputation upon
the regularity of our actions as your business agents."

"That leaves me only the jewels, and about a thousand pounds ready
cash on hand, and that is due from Anstruther," gloomily decided
Alan Hawke, when he was safely locked in his rooms at the National.

"Tricked by this double-faced devil Louison-Delavigne, thrown
out of my future rank, held for the five thousand pounds already
advanced, and, with eleven thousand embargoed in that Paris pawnbroker
shop of a Credit Lyonnais, I've but one course left to me now."

He took counsel of the brandy bottle, and then, ignoring all else,
he sent off a careful letter to Joseph Smith. "I'll jolly poor
Justine a bit, so as to leave one faithful friend to watch and get
all my letters here. Jack can raise money on the jewels now for us
both. I must tell these fellows of the French Bank here that I go
to London to see my own lawyers. I'll go over, settle with Anstruther,
and then just quietly disappear. The next blow shall come out of
the blackness of night, and I'll strike them all at once!"

In the evening, Major Alan Hawke drove with Justine Delande to the
restaurant garden, where, long months before, he had first learned
the daring hardihood of his fair employer--the acute woman who
had fooled him at every turn. His heart was saddened with all the
fresh hopes which had failed him. He had frankly told Euphrosyne
Delande that a return journey to India, and a long and bitter
struggle now lay between him and the rank and competence which he
would need to make her loving sister his wife.

Three hours later Justine Delande's arms clung desparingly around
the handsome outcast, as he was leaving her to be escorted home
by the adroit Francois, already in waiting without the restaurant
with a closed carriage. The presage of sorrow weighed upon her
loving heart.

"Alan, My God, I can not let you go. You are the one brightness
of my life. My heart of hearts. My very soul," sobbed the wretched
woman. "I have fears for you. They will kill you in that far land,
these powerful enemies. That mysterious devil woman who bends all
to her will will ruin you." And then, really touched at heart,
the desperate trickster drew off his finger a superb diamond, the
nonpareil, the choicest stone of Ram Lal's unwilling tribute. "Wear
this always, and think of me, Justine," he said. "You are the only
woman who ever loved me, and, if I succeed, I swear you shall share
my better fortunes--if not, then--" he crushed her to his breast
and ran out of the room, before she could drag him back. "Go
in, Francois, quickly to Miss Justine," cried Hawke, thrusting a
hundred-franc note in the butler's open hand. The rattle of departing
wheels was heard as Francois supported the half-fainting woman to
her carriage.

"Now for London," growled Major Hawke as the train dashed down the
Rhone valley. "I've got a clear alibi here. All my letters sent
to Justine will be forwarded to the Delhi Club. One day in London,
then to Granville, and Jack Blunt. They will only get Justine's
story if they shadow me, and if I can only hit it off right, at
Calcutta. Yes! there is the king luck of all. To give the whole
thing away to the baffled Viceroy. Then denounce Ram Lal to him as
the early confederate and later assassin of Hugh Fraser Johnstone!
These jewels that I have 'innocently received' will connect old
Ram Lal with Hugh Fraser's betrayed trust. I will hold the murder
business back at first.

"Ram Lal or his estate will be finally forced to cash my drafts. It
is clear that Johnstone and Ram Lal have either divided or hidden
the jewels. Yes! By God! I have it. If I can wring them out of the
old professor, or find them, I will then hide them away and secretly
report the whole affair to the Viceroy, in my chosen colors as a
friend of the Crown, and they'll give me a huge reward; my permanent
army rank will soon follow. So, if Justine only holds to my alibi,
by God! I will marry her, for she would be a badge of respectability.
I'll take no more chances after this--not another single chance!
I've got money enough to satisfy Jack Blunt. He shall secretly sell
the jewels for me--a small lot, here and there, a few at a time."

"There is just one frightful risk to run," he muttered, as he
reached out for his brandy flask. "Ram Lal might go in to save his
twenty-five thousand pounds, for the Johnstone estate will never pay
these disputed claims which I cannot prove in law. Good in honor,
but bad in law! And if he should denounce me privately to the Viceroy,
as the real murderer of Hugh Fraser? He is there on the ground. I
did not denounce him. I did not produce the dagger. I dare not to
explain why I concealed the crime. An accessory! He might seek to
turn Queen's evidence, and even try to hang me. He is rich, sly,
smart. By God! they may even now be shadowing me. Once on English
soil, I am at Anstruther's mercy." He was still white-faced and
unmanned as he took the Boulogne boat the next evening. "I must
face Anstruther, get my money, and then telegraph to Justine my
departure for India from London. I'll wire the poor woman from here
now. A few loving words will cheer her. Her true heart is the only
jewel I have that I have not stolen. Poor girl! she will miss me
sorely!" And the handsome blackguard sighed over the ruin he had
wrought--an honest woman's shattered peace of mind. It weighed
heavily upon him now.

For there came back to him now strange shadowy glimpses of his own
stormy past! Dashing on, to face unknown dangers, the dauntless
adventurer, with a softened heart, recalled the days when he could
gaze, without a secret shudder, upon the battle-torn colors of the
regiment from which he had been chased by that suddenly discovered
sin, once so sweet!

He "looked along life's columned years, to see its riven fane--just
where it fell." And, sadly alone in life now, his heart gnawed with
a growing remorse, he saw in the mirror of memory, once more, the
bright faced boy who had "filled the cup, to toast his flag and
land." Alan Hawke, in all the bright promise of his youth, the
darling of women, the envy of men!

Under the swiftly gliding current of his tortuous past, he plainly
saw now the fanged reefs which had wrecked him! With a smothered
groan, he recalled all that he had lost, and this bitter introspection
brought up to him, among his deeds of passion, the one needless
cruelty of his reckless life! "Poor Justine! There is such a
thing as woman's love after all!" he sighed, for he knew that the
steadfast woman had poured out the wine of her life all in vain.
"She loves me!" he cried!

Woman, born to be man's sport and plaything, is doomed to be the
unconscious avenger of her sex in every tragedy of the heart! The
treason of some callous lover is repaid with vengeance meted out to
some defenseless man who comes all unguarded "into the arid desert
of Phryne's life, where all is parched and hot." And, Alan Hawke,
the innocent Lancelot, had suffered for some recreant's past crime!

Among the visions of the burning Lotos Land, the bright phantasmagoria
of his unstained youth, there came back now to Alan Hawke all the
glories of his first Durbar, the unforgotten day when he had fallen
under the spell of the woman whose fatal touch had withered the
"very rose and expectancy" of his brilliant promise. His mind
strayed backward through all the misty years to that gorgeous
scene of Oriental pomp. He closed his eyes and pictured again the
brilliant pageant.

The huge masses of serried troops, the lines of stately elephants,
the castled background of the temples of Aurungzebe. The blare of
trumpets smote once more upon his ear, and hordes of jewel-decked
Asiatics swept along before the pompous military representatives
of the Empress, who wears the Crown of the Seas.

There was a quickening of "Love's extinguished embers" as he lived
over again the moment, when "side by side, with England's pride,"
he rode with his sword lowered in knightly salute before the clustered
banners of the Imperial military throne. And the hour of his fate
sounded when the eyes of a woman rested upon him in a mute appeal!
Their glances told him all.

For, then and there, the young officer had seen the wonderful
beauty of the woman who had lured him on and then, in after days,
sold his unstained soul to shame! A fair-faced Lilith, her glowing
beauty enshrined in all the borrowed splendor of majesty, a woman
of gleaming golden hair, a later, all too willing, Guenevere! The
soft subtle invitation of her eyes of sapphire blue had called him
to her side, in that unspoken pact which needs no words! He was
her slave from the first moment! With a last pang of his quivering
heart, Hawke recalled the sly skill of the faithless wife who had
drawn the young officer into her net, for the passing amusement
of her idle hours! Too late he knew all the artful craft of his
being bidden to the Grand Ball, of the "veiled interest" which had
"detailed him, for special duty," of the self-protecting maneuvers
which had placed him on the staff of the faded valetudinarian
general who had given his spotless name to the woman whose lava
heart glowed under a snowy bosom. It was the wreck of a soul!

And then, with a gasp, he recalled his mad fever to win every honor
under her glowing eyes. The forgotten deeds of desperate valor--all
useless now, and stained forever with the bar sinister of his treason.
He shuddered at the unforgotten delights of the hour when they had
met in her seraglio bower of shaded luxury, and "the fairest of
Laocoons" had answered his passionate whisper, "Stoop down and seem
to kiss me ere I die," with the faltered words: "Alan, you are all
the world to me!"

Fondly blind, he had drifted along in a Fool's Paradise, at
her bidding, until the crash came! He never knew the military Sir
Modred, who had betrayed the open secret, but his blood boiled
when he recalled the cruel abandonment to the rage of a jealous
and awakened spouse!

All in vain had been his manly sacrifice to save the woman whom
he had loved more than life. He had cast away every protection for
himself. Duped and tricked, he had remained mute before the storm
of abuse heaped on him by the General, and his papers sent in, at
a momentary summons, had carried him in dishonor out of the band of
laureled soldier knights, to dream no more "the dream that martial
music weaves!" And the smiling woman Judas tricked him to the very
last!

How hollow her faith, how lying the mute pleading of her eyes,
he knew now, for had he not paused at the door for one despairing
glance of farewell, to hear her murmur to her placated lord: "After
all your goodness to him, to dare to offer me insult! You have
punished him rightly, but, he is a fascinating traitor, after all!"
Deprived of his sword, shunned by his associates, and lingering
near her in hopes of the last interview pledged him by her lying
eyes, he had only been undeceived when he vainly tried to reach
her carriage for a last farewell on a star-lit lonely drive.

The cold cutting accent of her voice smote him as the edge of
a sword. "Drive on, Johnson!" she sharply cried. "These vagabond
people must face the General himself." Then came the insane
self-sacrifice of his reckless downfall, but he had spared her to
the very last.

He bowed his head in his hands, and a storm of agony swept over
him as he recalled the word "traitor," branded upon his brow as
a badge of shame, and again he wandered along that devious path
which had led him year by year downward. Too bitterly self-accusing
to palliate his past, he only knew that in all the long years of
social pariahhood he had learned to despise all men and to trust
no woman! For had not Friendship been a lie to him, Love only
a hollow cheat, and woman's vows of deathless loyalty but writ in
sand to be washed out by the next wave of passion?

And yet, stained with crime, there was one breath of truth which
swept over his soul as fresh as the voice of the "pines of Ramoth
Hill!" His eyes were misty and his breath choked in a sorrowing gasp
of manly remorse, as the winsome face of the true-hearted Justine
rose up before him in this hour of lonely agony! Her devotion had
touched the wayworn wanderer, and, pure and unselfish, her love
had been the one bright star of all these darkened years!

"By Jove! She is a royal soul! If I could only save her the shock
of the awakening," he murmured. His heart beat generously in a thrill
of pride recalling Justine's steadfast devotion to the motherless
girl whom he had sought to entangle. "Far above rubies!" he cried,
and the memory of the fond woman who was watching for him at Lausanne,
swept over his stormy soul to bring unbidden tears to eyes which
had never flinched before the red flash of the grim cannon.

"There are still good women in the world!" he muttered, "and, God
bless you, you have taught me this, Justine!" Drawing her picture
from his bosom, he gazed fondly at the face of the gentle-hearted
daughter of the Alps. A vain and passionate regret racked his
bosom--the last struggle of his wavering soul! "Shall I turn back?"
he doubtfully cried. And then in the rush of his onward course,
a dull hopeless feeling came over him. "Kismet!" he cried. "It is
too late now. If they had only trusted me! If they had told me all
and given my fighting soul a chance to redeem the lost promise once
written on my brow. I have played a man's part before! I might,
perhaps, have won this girl's gratitude and earned Justine's love
to be a shield and a buckler to me. But--" his head, overweaned
with care, drooped down, and in the company of strange visions and
and dreams of ominous import, the hunted soldier of fortune forgot
alike the echoing voice of his better angel, and lost from view,
the shadowy faces of both the woman who had lured him to a living
death, and the tender-hearted one whose heart was glowing at
Lausanne in all the fervor of her unrequited devotion. Over Alan
Hawke, sleeping there, as he was swiftly borne away, hovered, in
sad regret, his good angel, with sorrowing eyes, for the stern,
self-accusing man had not sought, in the last hours of this sorrow,
even the poor consolation that his life had been wrecked to feed
the fires of vanity burning in the jaded heart of the beautiful
Faustine, whose cold desertion had sold his youth to shame!

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