A Fascinating Traitor

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

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"You are to take up your old friendship with Hugh Fraser--this
budding baronet," replied Berthe calmly. She was pouring out a
glass of the wine beloved of women, but her hand trembled as she
hastily drank off the inspiring fluid. "All this is bravo--mere
bravo! She's a very smart woman, and a cool customer!" decided the
schemer, who had filled himself up a long drink. He took up at once
the object-lesson. They were simply to be comrades--and nothing
more.

"I will obey you to the very letter," he said simply, for he was
well aware the woman was keenly watching him.

"Then that is all. There is nothing more," soberly concluded his
companion. "The letters at Suez and Aden are, of course, to be
mere billets de voyage. The correspondence at Allahabad may cover
all of moment. Can you not give me a safe letter and telegraph
address at Delhi?"

"Give me your notebook," said Alan Hawke, as he carefully wrote
down the needed information: "Ram Lal Singh, Jewel Merchant, 16
Chandnee Chouk, Delhi."

"There's the address of my native banker; and as trusty a Hindu as
ever sold a two-shilling strass imitation for a hundred-pound star
sapphire. But, in his way he is honest--as we all are." And then
Alan Hawke boldly said: "How shall I address you at Allahabad?"

The flashing brown eyes gleamed a moment with a brighter luster
than pleasure's glow. "You have my visiting card, Major," the woman
coldly said. "I travel with a French passport, always en regie."

"By God! she has the nerve!" mused Alan Hawke, as he hastily said:
"And now, as we have settled all our little preliminaries, when am
I to know whether you trust me or not?"

He was pressing his advantage, for her precipitate departure would
rob him of the expected effect of Casimir Wieniawski's disclosures.
"If I find you en ami defamille, at Delhi, so that you can
confidentially approach Sir Hugh Johnstone, the ci-devant Hugh
Fraser, your task will be soon set for you, and your reward easily
earned; but under no circumstances are you to make the slightest
attempt to a confidential acquaintance with this wonderful Nadine.
That is my affair." The tone was almost trifling in its lightness,
but Alan Hawke recognized the hand of iron in the velvet glove.

"And now, Sir," coquettishly said Madame Berthe Louison, "you have
been a squire of dames in your day. Tell me of social India, for,
while I shall get a good maid out at Calcutta, I must depend upon
Munich, Venice, and Brindisi for my personal outfit. I know the
whole United Kingdom thoroughly. The Englishman and his cold-pulsed
blonde mate at home are well-learned lessons. The Continent, yes,
even Russia, I know, too," she gayly chattered; "but the Orient
is as yet a sealed book to me, and I would be helpless in Father
India, without the womanly gear appropriate to the social habits
of your countrywomen."

"You have lived in England?" briefly demanded Alan Hawke, in some
surprise at her frank admissions.

"Yes, too long!" sternly answered Madame Louison, who was enjoying
a cigarette, as she signed to the maid to leave them alone. "I
detest the foggy climate," she added, a little late to temper the
bitterness of the remark.

"I will lull this watchful feminine tiger," the Major secretly
decided, as he began a brilliant sketch of the social life of the
strange land of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. "I presume, of course,
that you do not care to appear with a fifty-pound Marshall & Snell
grove outfit, as if you were the wife of an Ensign in a marching
regiment. I will give you the real life our women lead out there.
You could have secured a splendid London outfit by a little time
spent in making the detour."

"I wish to appear en Francaise, my true character," smiled Berthe.
"I never could sacrifice my Gaelic taste to the hideous color mixtures
and utilitarian ugliness of the English machine-made toilette. An
Englishwoman can only be trusted with a blue serge, a plain gray
traveling dress, or in the easy safety of black or white. They are
not the 'glass of fashion and the mold of form.' Now, Sir, let me
see how you have profited by your wandering in Beauty's gardens on
the Indus and Ganges?"

Alan Hawke knew very well at heart what the quickwitted woman would
know. He sketched with grace, the natural features, the climatic
conditions, the bizarre scenery of the million and a half square
miles where the venerable Kaisar-i-Hind rules nearly two hundred
millions of subjugated people. He portrayed all the light splendors
of Mohammedan elegance, the wonders of Delhi and Agra, he sketched
the gloomy temple mysteries of Hinduism, and holy Benares rose up
before her eyes beneath the inspiration of his brilliant fancy.

The ardent woman listened with glowing eyes, as Hawke proudly referred
to the wonderful sweep of the sword of Clive, which conquered an
unrifled treasure vault of ages, annexed a giant Empire, and set
with Golconda's diamonds the scepter of distant England. The year
1756 was hailed by the renegade as the epoch when England's rule
of the sea became her one vitalizing policy--her first and last
national necessity--for the Empire of the waves followed the pitiful
beginning in Madras.

Temples, groves, and mosques peopled with the alien and warring
races were conjured up, the splendid viceregal circle, the pompous
headquarter military, the fast set, staid luxury-loving civilians,
and all the fierce eddies and undercurrents of the graded social
life, in which the cold English heart learns to burn as madly
under "dew of the lawn" muslin as ever Lesbian coryphe'e or Tzigane
pleasure lover.

The burning noons, the sweltering Zones of Death, the cool hills,
the Vanity Fair of Simla, the shaded luxury of bungalow life, and
the mad undercurrent of intrigue, the tragedy element of the Race
for Wealth, the Struggle for Place, and the Chase for Fame. Major
Alan Hawke was gracefully reminiscent, and in describing the
social functions, the habits of those in the swim, the inner core
of Indian life under its canting social and official husk, he brought
an amused smile to the mobile face of his beautiful listener. He did
not note the passage of time. He could now hear the music floating
up from the Casino below. He had answered all her many questions.
He described pithily the voyage out, the social pitfalls, the
essence of "good Anglo-Indian form," and he was astonished at the
keenness of the questions with which he was plied by his employer.

"You have surely traveled in India," he murmured, when his relation
flagged.

"So I have, by proxy, and, in imagination," laughed Madame Berthe
Louison, as she demurely held up her jeweled watch. "Ten minutes
more, and then, Sir, I shall give you your ordre de route. For,
I must go quietly. I trust to your experience and good judgment.
There is nothing to say here. There will be no letters. My bankers
have their orders. You must simply pay our bill, and depart quietly
via Geneva. May I ask if you wish any more money? Some personal
needs?"

Major Hawke shook his head. "You may rely on me to meet you, and to
faithfully obey you," he gravely said. There were unspoken words
trembling on his lips, which he fain would have uttered. "By
Heavens! She is a witch!" he murmured, in a repressed excitement,
as he walked quietly down the hallway to keep his tryst with Casimir
Wieniawski. For Berthe Louison had at once divined the cause of
his unrest.

"You think that I should tell you more? Why should I tell you
anything? We are strangers yet, not even friends. You may divine
that I trust no man. I have had my own sad lessons of life-lessons
learned in bitterness and tears. I go out to your burning jungle
land, with neither hope to allure, nor fear to repel. The whole
world is the same to me. That I have a purpose, I admit; and even
you may know me better by and bye! Till then, no professions, no
promises, no pledges. I use you for my own selfish purposes, that
is all; and you can frankly study your own self-interest. We are
two clay jars swept along down the Ganges of life. For a few threads
of the dark river's current, we travel on, side by side! You have
frankly taken me at my word! I have taken you at yours! There
is a written order to settle my affairs and remove my luggage. Of
course, should you meet with any accident, telegraph to the Vittorio
Emmanuele, at Brindisi. Money," she said, almost bitterly, "would
be telegraphed; and so, I say"--he listened breathlessly--"au
revoir--at Brindisi!" she concluded, giving him her hand, with a
frank smile.

As Alan Hawke descended the stair, he growled. "A woman without a
heart, and--not without a head!" As he calmly answered the manager's
polite inquiry for Madame's health, the "heartless woman" whom he
had left was lying sobbing in the dark room above--crying, in her
anguish, "Valerie! My poor, dead Valerie! I go to your child!"

But, none suspected her departure, when the trimly-clad woman
glided out of the entrance of the Hotel Faucon, at eleven o'clock.
The maid was in waiting on the circular place in front with
a carriage, and the key of the apartment lay in a sealed envelope
on Alan Hawke's table, which proves that a few francs are just as
potent in Switzerland as the same number of shillings in London,
or dollars in New York. It was a clear case of "stole away."

When Major Alan Hawke leaned over the supper table at the Casino,
pledging Madame Frangipanni's bright eyes in very fair cafe champagne,
he nervously started as he heard the wailing whistle and clanging
bells of the through train for Constance. He forgot the faded
complexion, the worn face, the chemically tinted hair and haggard
eyes of the broken-down Austrian blonde concert singer, in the
exhilaration of Berthe Louison's departure.

For he had not lost Professor Casimir Wieniawski from sight a moment
since the hour of ten, and that "distinguished noble refugee" was
now in a maudlin way, murmuring perfunctory endearments in the ear
of the ex-prima donna, who tenderly gazed upon him in a proprietary
manner. Alan Hawke had judged it well to ply the champagne, and,
at the witching hour of midnight, he critically inspected Casimir's
condition. "He is probably about tipsy enough now to tell all he
knows, and, with an acquired truthfulness. I will, therefore, bring
this festive occasion to a close." Whereat the watchful Lucullus
of the feast artfully drew Madame Frangipanni aside.

"I have to go on to London, Chere Comtesse," he flatteringly said,
"you must give me Casimir for a couple of hours to-night, to talk
over the old times."

He lingered a moment, hat in hand, as he chivalrously sent Madame
Frangipanni home in a carriage. The poor old singer's bosom was
thrilled with a sunset glow of departing greatness, as she lingered
tearfully that night over the memories of the halcyon days when the
officers of Francis Joseph's bodyguard had fought for the honors
of the carriage courtesies of the Diva. Eheu fugaces!

Closeted together, the minor guests having been artfully dispersed,
Major Alan Hawke and his friend recalled the olden glories of
Wieniawski's Indian tour. It was with a jealous hand that Hawke
doled out the cognac, until Casimir abruptly said: "And now, mon
ami, tell me what has linked you to Alixe Delavigne?" Alan Hawke
had keenly studied his man, and found that the limit of the artist's
drinking capacity seemed to be infinity, and so he leaned back and
coldly scrutinized the musician's shabby exterior. "I think that
I can risk it now," he mused, and then, in a crisp, hard voice,
he suddenly said: "I don't mind parting with a twenty-pound note,
Casimir, if you will tell me all you know about that beauty. You
need it now--more than I. I am to be the judge of the value of your
story, however. Mark me, I know the main features, but I also know
that you have met her in the old days." The broken-down artist
flushed under the changed relation of guest and paid tool.

He uneasily stammered, as he filled a brandy glass, "As a loan--as
a loan!" But Hawke was sternly business-like in his reply.

"Don't make any pretenses with me. You are hard down on your luck,
and you know it. This is a mere matter of business." He unfolded a
bundle of notes and carelessly tossed two ten-pound notes over to
Casimir, who seized them with trembling fingers. The pitiful sum
represented to the artist two months of his meager salary. Here
was absinthe unlimited, a little roulette, a new frock for Madame
Frangipanni, perhaps even a dress coat for himself.

"How old do you think Alixe is?" unsteadily began the artist.

"I should say about twenty-five," gallantly replied the Major.

"We will premise that she is thirty-three," confidently began the
musician, "or even thirty-five. When I was a young fool at Warsaw,
eighteen years old," he babbled. "I was the local prodigy. My
first essays in public were, of course, concerts, and I was soon
the vogue. And, later, asked as an artistic guest to the chateaux
of the nobility in Poland, Kowno, Vitebsk, Wilna, Minsk, Grodno
and Volhynia. I was a poet in thought, a lover of all womankind in
my dreams, and a conspirator in the inmost chambers of my defiant
Polish nature."

"They made me the cat's-paw of adroit adventurers who were filling
their pockets from wealthy Polish sympathizers in France and America,
and some of them were Russian paid spies. I braved all the risks.
I was the secret means of communication of the highest circles of
our cult of Rebellion. Fool that I was, wandering from province to
province, I lived the life of a mad enthusiast. The proud memories
of Poland were mine, the spirit of her music, arts, and poetry had
cast its witchery over me. Her history, the tragedy of a crownless
queen of sorrows, had transported me into a dreamy idealism. I was
soon the confidant of our seductive mobile Polish beauties. Sinuous,
insincere, changeful, passionate, and burning with the flames
of Love and Life, I was, at once, their idol and their plaything,
their hero, and their willing slave.

"For then, the spirit of old Poland rang out in my numbers, and
I waked the quivering echoes of woman's heart at will. It was in
seventy-three that I was sent on a special mission to Prince Pierre
Troubetskoi's splendid chateau at Jitomir in Volhynia. The crafty
Russians were watching us even there, and were busied in assembling
troops secretly, at Kiev and Wilna. To another was given the proud
place of secret spy over the higher circles of Wilna, while my
duty was to watch Jitomir and Kiev. Troubetskoi was a bold gallant
fellow, an ardent Muscovite, and had secretly returned from a
long sojourn in Paris. He was in close touch with the Governors of
Volhynia, Kiev, and Podolia, and we feared his sword within, his
Parisian connections without. An evil star brought me into his
household as his guest. For nearly a year I was kept vibrating
between the points of danger to us, my personal headquarters being
at the Chateau of Jitomir. And there I lived out my brief heart-life,
for there I met Valerie Troubetskoi. No one seemed to know where
Pierre had found her, but later I learned her story from her own
lips.

"That is, all of the story of a woman's heart-life which is ever
unveiled to any man! She was beautiful beyond--compare, her wistful
tenderness shining out as the moon, softer than the fierce noonday
glare of the passion-transfigured faces of our Polish beauties. For
they loved, for Love's own sake, and Valerie Troubetskoi offered
up the chalice of her own heart in silent sadness. I never saw so
lovely a being."

"Did she look like that?" suddenly demanded Hawke, thrusting a
photograph before the haggard eyes of the broken artist. He gasped,
and tears gathered in his lashes. "Valerie, herself, and, as I knew
her only before her fatal illness had marked her down. Did Alixe
give you this?" He clutched at it with his trembling hands.

"Go on," harshly said Alan Hawke, "the hour is late!"

The Pole buried his face in his thinned hands, and then brokenly
resumed: "The old story--the only one you know. She was about my
own age; Troubetskoi was nearly always away; perhaps he thought
to trap all my traitorous circle through me, or else he was in the
secret service of the hungry Russian eagle. Valerie roamed silently
through the great halls of Jitomir, saddened and lonely, for their
union was childless. My heart spoke to her own in my music; she
knew the prayer of my soul, though my lips were silent. For I madly
adored her. Then, then, I was a man! My life belonged to Poland,
my soul to art, but my heart was a sealed temple of love, a temple
where Valerie, the beloved, the secretly worshiped, sat alone on
her throne.

"One day a woman, radiant in youth, and reflecting Valerie's own
beauty, was brought to the chateau by Troubetskoi, who had journeyed
on to Vienna. It was Alixe Delavigne, the woman whom I saw last with
you. A month later Valerie called me to her side: 'My poor Casimir,'
she said, as I knelt at her feet, 'I am dying! The struggle will
not be a long one. I know the secret of your boyish heart. Your
eyes have spoken and your music has reached my heart. Your love is
written in your songs without words. When you have forgotten me,
there is Alixe; she is alone upon earth. Let me seal your heart to
hers, and even in death I shall feel that I love you both.' Then,"
the artist sobbed, "I lost my head. I told her all in mad, burning
words. She raised her eyes to mine, and softly said: 'I shall see
you no more unless Alixe is with us, for I love Pierre and he loves
me. When I am gone, Alixe will be the only one who knows the secret
of my life.'

"It was two months later--for I would not leave her side, even Pierre
Troubetskoi could not see her passing away, for it was a mysterious
malady--when a sudden alarm brought me to my senses. My secret
society work was done, and yet I lingered there, at the very steps
of the scaffold. Alixe Delavigne burst into my room at midnight.

"'Hasten!' she cried. 'Even now the Cossacks are surrounding the
house!' She let me out through the secret passage of the old Chateau.
A cloak was thrown over me by the Intendant. He was a Pole--and one
true to the old blood. Alixe pressed a purse upon me. An address
in Paris was whispered. 'I will write! Go! For Valerie's sake, go!'

"Forty-eight hours later I crossed the Galician frontier at Lemberg
disguised as a Polish peasant. My guardian, the Intendant, turned
me over to our friends in the valley of the Styr. After six months of
wandering, I finally reached Paris in safety. There were sorrowful
letters awaiting me. Valerie was hidden forever in the yawning
tombs of the gloomy old chapel of Jitomir, and Alixe herself wrote
of Pierre Troubetlskoi's generous blinding of the pursuit. I was,
however, prosecuted and hunted. I fled to America, for all our
plans of revolt were miserably wrecked--and by Polish traitors!

"Two years later, I learned from a fellow refugee that Pierre
Troubetskoi had been killed by accident in a great forest battle.
And to Alixe Delavigne, all the wealth which would have been
Valerie's was left by the lion-hearted man who awoke too late to
the early doom of his beloved.

"I knew naught of the family history save that the sisters were
the daughters of Colonel Delavigne, a gallant French officer, who
was murdered by the Communists in seventy-one." Alan Hawke was now
sternly eyeing the musician, who abruptly concluded: "I have never
met Alixe Delavigne since. I dare not return to Poland. My own
course has been steadily downward, and, beyond knowing that she
still possesses the splendid domains of Jitomir, we are strangers
to each other. Polish refugees have told me that she has always
administered the vast estate with liberal kindness to all. And now
you will tell me of her?" The tremulous hand of Wieniawski raised
a brimming glass of brandy to his lips. He stared about vacantly
when Hawke said:

"Madame Delavigne left Lausanne this evening on a special mission.
Her life is a sealed book to all, and a mere business interest has
drawn us together." The Englishman went callously on: "There are
a couple of mountainously rich American girls coming down here
to-morrow at nine o'clock to spend the day at Chillon with me. I
need a running mate. Will you then meet me at the Montreux Landing?
You can have a day off, and these young fools are fat pigeons,
ardent, and enthusiastic." Hawke saw the hesitation on the man's
face.

"You can say to Madame Frangipanni that you are with me and that
I will explain later at the dinner." With a glance at his watch,
Alan Hawke rang for the Oberkellner. He was extending his hand in
goodnight, when the refugee cried imploringly, "I must see her once
more! Tell me of her journey!" and Major Hawke deliberately lied
to the poor vaurien artist, the wreck of his better self. "The
through train to Paris is her only address. I presume that Madame
Delavigne will spend some time in a sanitarium after this heart
attack, and she has my banker's address. It is only through them
that we meet to arrange some affairs of business. Whether maid, wife,
or widow, I know not, for you know what women are--sealed books to
their enemies, and to their husbands and lovers--only enigmas!

"But fail not to meet me. I'll give you a pleasant day. You will
find the two Americans both gushing and susceptible." Then as
Major Alan Hawke stepped lightly away to the sedately closed Hotel
Faucon, Casimir Wieniawski staggered back into the cafe.

His fit of passionate sorrow was brief, for in a half hour he was
the king of a mad revel, where his meaner sycophants divided Alan
Hawke's bounty. The cool Major strode along happy hearted to his
rest, quietly revolving the plan of campaign.

"There was then a sealed chapter in Valerie Troubetskoi's life.
And the key of that is in Berthe Louison's keeping. Now, my fair
employer, it is diamond cut diamond. I think that I have done a
fair day's work." And he thanked his lucky stars for the precipitate
flight of his mysterious employer. "She evidently feared the noble
Casimir following upon the trail. Strange--strange pathways! Strange
footprints on the sands of Time! It is a devilish funny world,
but, after all, the best that we have any authentic account of."
And so he slept the sleep of the just, for he was making the woes
of others the cornerstones of his newer fortunes.

Major Hawke arose with the lark, by a previous arrangement with the
Hotel Bureau. His face was eminently businesslike in its gravity,
as he summoned the porter and dispatched all his luggage to the
care of the Chef du Gare, Geneva. "Business of extreme importance
awaiting upon Madame's complete recovery had caused her to depart
to consult an eminent specialist. Thank you, there will be no
letters," said the Major, as he pocketed both receipted bills. He
amused himself while watching for the morning boat, as the mountain
mists, lifting, revealed the glittering lake, in sending a very
carefully sketched letter to Mademoiselle Euphrosyne Delande, No.
123 Rue du Rhone, Geneva. This letter was of such moment that it
went on to London, to be posted back duly stamped with good Queen
Victoria's likeness. A very careful Major!

The lofty semi-official tone, in which the writer spoke of a possible
return to India "under the auspices of the Foreign Office," was
well calculated to fill the spinster's bosom with the flattering
unction that a mighty protector had been raised up for the adventurous
Justine, now supposed to be environed with all the glittering snares
of society, as well as enveloped in the mystic jungle.

A week later, when Euphrosyne Delande laid down the pen and abandoned
her unfinished "Lecture Upon the Influence of the Allobroges, Romans,
Provencal Franks, Burgundians, and Germans Upon the Intellectual
Development of Geneva," she read Alan Hawke's letter with a thrill
of secret pride.

The smooth adventurer had written: "If I have the future pleasure
of meeting Mademoiselle Justine Delande I only hope to find a
resemblance to her charming and distinguished sister. As my movements
are necessarily secret, pray write only in the utmost confidence
to Mademoiselle Justine. I hope to soon return and enjoy once more
the hospitalities of your intellectual circle." The address given
for India was "Bombay Club." Miss Euphrosyne gazed up at the stony
lineaments of Professor Delande, her marble-browed and flinty-hearted
sire, locked in the cold chill of a steel engraving. He was
as neutral as the busts of Buffon, Cuvier, Laplace, Humboldt, and
Pestalozzi, which coldly furnished forth her sanctum. She thought
of the eloquent eyed young Major and sadly sighed. She proceeded
to enshrine him in her withered heart, and then wrote a crossed
letter of many tender underlinings to her distant sister. And thus
the pathway was made very smooth for the artful wanderer, who had
already stepped upon the decks of the Sepoy.

Major Hawke had dispatched an excellent breakfast before he stepped
into the carriage to be whirled away to Montreux. His bridges
were burned behind him. There was not a vestige of Madame Berthe
Louison left to give the needy Pole a clue. "They are separated,
and Anstruther and the Swiss schoolmistress are harmless. I have
only my play to make upon the lovely Justine, and to retake up
my old friendship with Hugh Fraser. Then I am ready to bit by bit
unravel the story of Valerie Delavigne's child--the Veiled Rose of
Delhi."

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