A Fascinating Traitor

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

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"Between a father with a secret to keep, and this strange woman
with a purpose, there is a pretty girl and a vast fortune at issue,
besides the prospective pickings of Madame Berthe Louison." These
musings of the Major led him up to the question of his employer's
false name, as he swept down to the nearby Montreux station. "She
evidently had traced the child to Switzerland, and was upon a still
hunt to find out the home of the growing heiress, and,--for what
purpose? Ah! One day after another," he pleasantly exclaimed, as
he saw the artist awaiting him. "Peu apeu I'oiseau fait son nid."
He had already evolved a scheme to permanently separate Casimir
Wieniawski from his own beautiful employer, who was now dashing
along well on her way toward Munich. Alan Hawke was startled at the
distinguished appearance of the musician. An aristocratic pallor
refined his face, he was neatly booted and gloved, the elegant
lines of the Pole's supple figure were displayed in a morning frock
coat, and his chapeau de soie was virginal in its gloss.

"Some of my own twenty pounds," mused Alan Hawke, as he gayly sprang
out and saluted his dupe. "Ah! There you are. You look to-day the
old Casimir. Let us have a few last words before the boat arrives."

Hardened as he was, Alan Hawke was surprised at the childlike
lightness of the Pole's manner when they encountered the fresh
young beauties who were already the cynosure of all eyes upon the
morning boat. The storm of emotion had spent itself, and while
Alan Hawke squired, the aggressive Miss Genie, Casimir Wieniawski
was bending over the slightly dreamy and more romantic Miss Phenie!
They distributed themselves in open order, as they strolled along
toward the drawbridge of that most hospitable of old horrors,
Chillon Castle.

It was a day of days, and the artful Hawke laughed as he smoked his
cigar upon a rustic bench in the castle Garden. Miss Genie was at
his side, pouting, petulant, provokingly pretty and duly agnostic
as to the Polish prince.

A week later, Alan Hawke stood on the deck of the Sepoy, as that
reliable vessel steamed out of Brindisi harbor for Bombay. He was
watching a lace handkerchief, waved by a graceful woman, standing
alone upon the pier. The adventurer drew a silver rupee from his
pocket, and then gayly tossed it into the waves, crying, "Here's
for luck!" as he watched the slender, distant, womanly figure move
up the pier. There lay the Empress of India with steam now curling
from her stacks, ready to follow on to Calcutta. "I have not broken
her lines yet," murmured Major Hawke as he paced the deck, "but
I have her pretty well surrounded, cunning as she is!" and so he
complacently ordered his first bottle of pale ale.

CHAPTER IV.

THE VEILED ROSEBUD OF DELHI.

The October winds were whirling the pine needles down the mountain
defiles in the bracing Alpine autumn, as Alan Hawke sped on past
Suez, gliding on through the stifling furnace heat of the Red Sea,
past Mocha, and dashing along through the Bridge of Tears, to Aden.
He left at Suez, and also at the Eastern Gibraltar of haughty Albion,
the brief letters for his mysterious employer, and he mentally
arranged the social gambit of his reappearance at Delhi in the nine
days before the Sepoy steamed into the island-dotted bay of Bombay.

Sternly shunning, on his arrival, the local sirens, whose songs of
old fell so sweetly upon his ear, the determined Major sped away at
once for Allahabad. He was on shaking social quagmires at Bombay.
There were sundry little threads of the past still left hanging
out in the shape of stray urban indebtedness, and he now scorned to
throw away a single one of the crisp Bank of England notes showered
upon him by Fortune. He was growing sadly wise. He had lately mused
over the old motto, "Lucky at cards--unlucky in love!" The cool
provision of the funds at Lausanne by Berthe Louison, her separate
route to Delhi, her business-like coldness in their strangely frank
relations, all these things proved to him that he was to be only
an intelligent tool; not a trusted friend in the little drama about
to open at the old capital of Oude.

Alan Hawke had already abandoned the idea of any sentimental
advances upon Alixe Delavigne. "Strange, strange," he murmured; "a
woman can sometimes easily be flattered into a second conjugation
of the verb 'To Love,' but an internal previous evidence of man's
unreliability can do that which no personal sorrow can effect.
The key to this woman's behavior is in the story of her sister's
shadowed life.

"The hiatus from Hugh Fraser to Pierre Troubetskoi covers the tragedy
of Valerie Delavigae's life, the death blow was then struck, and
the central figure is the child. So, with the strangely acquired
fortune at her beck and call, Alixe Delavigne has consecrated
herself to that most illogical of human careers--a woman's silent
vengeance! That achieved, will the furnace fires of her stormy
heart be lit by the hand of passion?"

He ruminated sagely over these matters as he sped on over the Great
Indian Peninsula Railway. The western Ghauts were now far behind
him and their dark basalt crags. Bombay, Hyderabad, Berar, the
Central Provinces, Central India, and the southern prong of Oude
was reached. He was, however, no whit the wiser when he reached
the Ganges and hastily sought the telegraph station at Allahabad.
But he felt like a prince in the direct line of succession with his
net eight hundred pounds still to the good. His first care was to
telegraph to Madame Berthe Louison, to the care of Grindley, at
Calcutta: "Waiting at Allahabad for your letters, and news of your
safe arrival." While rushing past the Vindhia Mountains he had
encountered several of his old Indian acquaintances. The mere hint
of a secret governmental employ of gravity satisfied the languid
curiosity of the qui hais. For a week he lingered in the "City of
God," and daily haunted the post and telegraph offices.

He had sent on to the Delhi Club a note for the maw of the local
gossips, and also had dispatched a skillfully constructed letter
to the unsuspecting Hugh Johnstone. With a veiled flattery of the
old civilian's wisdom and experience, he referred to his desire to
consult him as to a secret journey in the direction of the Pamirs.
The opportune windfall of Anstruther's ecarte and Berthe Louison's
liberal advance enabled Major Alan Hawke to maintain a dignified and
easy port as he wandered through Allahabad. Strolling by the waters
of the Ganges and Jumna, he invoked anew the blessings of the
goddess Fortuna, as he gazed out upon the majestic heaven descended
stream. The daily tide of travel toward Delhi brought on each day
some familiar faces, and yet Alan Hawke lingered gently, declining
their traveling company. "Waiting orders," he said, with the sad,
sweet smile of one enjoying a sinecure. His swelling outward port
thoroughly proved that the days were gone when he was to be scanned
before the morning salutation. Les eaux sout basses, the impecunious
Frenchman mourns, but there was a swelling tide bearing Alan Hawke
onward now.

A hearty welcoming letter from the ci-devant Hugh Fraser was
a good omen, for rumor of a thousand tongues had already invested
the returning Major with an important secret mission. His epistolary
seed planted in Delhi had brought forth fruit as rapidly as the
magic of the Indian conjuror's mango-tree trick. It was already
rumored even in Allahabad that "Hawke had dropped upon a decidedly
good thing." The Major was busied, however, in analyzing the motives
of Alixe Delavigne, in her change of name, her separate journey,
her choice of the Calcutta route, and the inner nature of her
projected enterprise.

"A woman in her position, easy as to fortune, will stoop to none
of the arts of the blackmailer; she could choose a life of soft
luxury, for she is yet in the bloom of vigorous early womanhood.
To her the personality of Hugh Fraser is surely nothing. There
are but two objects of attack--his proposed social elevation, the
nattering title, and the peace of mind and future of the daughter,
this lovely veiled Rose! Love, a natural love, even for the stranger
child, would ward away the blow; but only an unslaked vengeance
would point the shaft! The reproduction of her sister's face seemed
to touch her to her very bosom's core. There is some fixed purpose
in this cold-hearted woman's coming! Not a lingering annoyance, but
some coup de main, a bolt to be launched at Hugh Johnstone alone!"

"I do not know how I can break her lines, unless she shows me
some weak point," he mused. "But either her fortune or Johnstone's
shall yield me a heavy passing toll. And, there is always the girl!
There, I would have to meet Berthe Louison as a determined enemy!"
In recognizing the fact that his employer must make the game at
last, that she must lead out and so uncover herself, he saw his
own masterly position between the two prospective foes.

"I can play them off the one against each other, at the right time,
and, if they fight each other, with the help of Justine Delande,
I may even make a strong running for the girl. I think I now see
a way!" He felt that his wandering days were over. The dark days
of carking cares, of harassing duns, of frequent changes of base,
driven onward by the rolling ball of gossip and innuendo.

He felt strangely lifted up in the familiar scenes of his years
of wanderings. For he was at home again. Alixe Delavigne, however
carefully watched for her eastern adventure, was socially helpless
in a land of strange alien races, of discordant Babel tongues, of
shifting scenes, a land as unreal as the visions of a summer night.

But to Alan Hawke all this Indian life was now a second nature. The
scenes of Bombay recalled his once ambitious youth, the days when
he first delightedly gazed upon the wonders of Elephanta, and
the gloomy grottoes of Salcette. From his very landing he had set
himself one cardinal rule of conduct, to absolutely ignore all the
lighter attractions of native and Eurasian beauty, and to let no
single word fall from his lips respecting the sudden occultation
of Miss Nadine Johnstone--this new planet softly swimming in the
evening skies of Delhi. He felt that he was beginning a new career,
one in which neither greed nor passion must betray him. It was the
"third call" of Fortune, and he had wisely decided upon a golden
silence. "If I had only met the favored Justine, instead of that
withered Aspasia, Euphrosyne, then, the girl's heart might have
been easily made mine," was the unavailing regret of the handsome
Major. "If I could have come out with them," he sighed. He well knew
the softening effect upon romantic womanhood of a long sea voyage
where the willing winds sway the softer emotions of the breast, and
the trembling woman is defenseless against the perfidious darts of
Cupid.

"My time will come," he murmured as the train rushed along through
the incense breathing plantations. A richer nature than foggy
England was spread out before him in treacherous Hindostan with its
warring tribes, its dying creeds, its dead languages, its history
sweeping far back into the mists of the unknown. For every problem
of the human mind, every throe of the restless heart of man is worn
old and threadbare in Hindostan, with its very dust compounded of
the wind-blown ashes of dead millions upon millions. Gross vulgar
Gold reigns now as King on the broad savannas where spice plantations
and indigo farms vary the cotton, rice, and sugar fields. Wasted
treasures of dead dynasties gleam out in the ornamentation of the
temples abandoned to the prowling beast of prey. And riches and ruin
meet the eye in a strange medley. Dead greatness and the prosaic
present.

Modern bungalows, where the faltering conqueror watches the
tax-ridden ryots dot the landscape, and an overweighted official
system brings its haughty military, its self-sufficient civilians,
its proud womanhood, to drain the exhausted heart of India. And
the ryot groans under many taskmasters.

Lingering with a restless heart, in Allahabad, Alan Hawke roused
himself as at a bugle call, when he received a telegram announcing
the safe arrival of the Empress of India at Calcutta.

"La danse va commencer," he muttered, as he read the brief words
of his employer: "Go on to Delhi, await me there. Telegrams to you
there at private address. Leave letters." The signature "Lausanne"
was a new spur to his well-considered prudence. And, so, the next
day, Major Hawke sedately descended at Delhi.

There was nothing to distinguish Hawke from any other well-to-do
European, as he stood gazing around the station, in his cool
linens, his pith helmet and floating puggaree. The prudent air of
judicious mystery lately adopted sat easily upon him as his eye roved
over the familiar scenes of old with a silent gleam of recognition,
he followed a confidential attendant who salaamed, murmuring "My
master awaits the sahib whom he delights to love and honor."

"There is one card I must play at once," murmured Hawke, as the
carriage sped along. "Mademoiselle Justine Delande must be my secret
friend! I wonder if Euphrosyne really swallowed the bait! If she
has fallen into the trap and written to her sister, then--all is
well!"

His eyes roved over the familiar scene of the broad Chandnee Chouk,
sweeping magnificently away from the Lahore gate to the superb
palace. The sun beat down with its old ferocious glare on shop and
bazaar. Grave merchants lolled over their priceless treasures of
gold and silver work, heaped up jewels and bullion-threaded shawls
for princely wear. Under the awnings lingered the familiar polyglot
groups, while beggary and opulence jostled each other on every
hand.

"It's the same old road in life!" murmured Alan Hawke, "whether
called Inderput, Shahjehanabad, or Delhi--the same old game goes
on here forever, here by the sacred Jumna!"

He was dreaming of the artful part which he had to play in the fierce
modern race for wealth. "They used to fight for it like men in the
old days," he bitterly murmured. "Now, the only gold that I see
before me is to be had by gentlemanly blackmail! Right here--between
old Hugh Johnstone and this flinty-hearted woman avenger--lies
my fortune. And I swear that nothing shall stop me! I will be the
prompter of the little play now ready for a first rehearsal!" His
eyes lighted up viciously as he was swept along past the great
marble house, gleaming out in the shady compound, where the Rosebud
of Delhi was hidden.

"Cursed old curmudgeon! To lock the girl up!" muttered the handsome
young rascal. "Old Ram Lal must do a bit of spying for me!" Hawke
could see on the raised plateau of marble steps all the evidences
of the sumptuous luxury of the haughty Briton, "who toils not,
neither does he spin." But, the dozen pointed arches on each face
of the vast palace house of the budding baronet showed no sign
of life. The clustered marble columns stretched out in a splendid
lonely perspective, and the square inner castellated keep rose up
in the glaring sun, but with closed and shaded windows. Dusky shapes
flitted about, busied in the infinitesimal occupations of Indian
servitors, but no graceful woman form could be seen in the witching
gardens where a Rajah might have fitly held a durbar.

"I'll warrant the old hunks has Bramah locks and Chubb's burglar
proofs to fence this beauty off!" growled the Major, as he sank back
in the carriage. "I fancy, though, that a liberal dose of Madame
Louison's gold, judiciously administered by me, in her interest,
to Justine Delande, may open the way to the girl's presence! The
mother's story may serve to win the girl's heart. If I can only busy
old Hugh and the Madame in watching each other, then I can handle
Justine."

"Yes," the satisfied schemer concluded, "the old man's game is the
bauble title. Berthe Louison's must be some studied revenge. She is
above all blackmail. I know already half the story of this clouded
past. Madame Alixe Delavigne must yield up the other half, bit by
bit. By the time she arrives, my spies will have posted me. I will
have opened rny parallels on the Swiss dragon who guards the lovely
Nadine. Now to make my first play upon the old nabob."

Major Alan Hawke had studied skillfully out his gambit for an attack
upon Hugh Johnstone's vanity. When he descended at the hospitable
doors of his secret ally, Ram Lal Singh, he plunged into the seclusion
of a luxurious easy toilet making. A dozen letters glanced over,
a comforting hookah, and Alan Hawke had easily "sized up" the
situation. For Ram Lal's first skeleton report had clearly proved
to him that the coast was clear. "Thank Heavens there are as yet
no rivals," Hawke murmured. "Neither confidential friend of the old
boy, no dashing Ruy Gomez as yet in the way." Hawke viewed himself
complacently in the mirror. He was severely just to himself, and
he well knew all his own good points. "Pshaw!" he murmured, "any
man not one-eyed can easily play the Prince Charming to a hooded
lady all forlorn, a mere child, a tyro in life's soft battles of
the heart. I must impress this pompous old fool that I know all
the intrigues of his proposed elevation. He will unbosom, and both
trust and fear me. These pampered civilians are as haughty in their
way as the military and be damned to them," mused Hawke, cheerfully
humming his battle song, those words of a vitriolic wit:

"General Sir Arthur Victorious Jones, Great is vermillion splashed
with gold."

"This old crab has quietly stolen himself rich, and now forsooth
would tack on a Sir Hugh before his name. Ah! The jewels! I
must delicately hint to him that I am in the inner circle of the
cognoscenti."

And then Alan Hawke cheerfully joined his obese and crafty friend
and host, Ram Lal Singh. For an hour the soft, oily voice of the
old jewel merchant flowed on in a purring monologue. The ease and
mastery of the Conqueror's language showed that the usurer had well
studied the masters of Delhi. Sixty years had given Ram Lal added
cunning. A crafty conspirator of the old days when the mystic
"chupatties" were sent out on their dark errand, the sly jewel
merchant had survived the bloody wreck of the throne of Oude, and
from the place of attendant to one of the slaughtered princes,
dropped down softly into the trade of money lender, secret agent,
and broker of the unlawful in many varied ways.

It was Ram Lal's easy task to purvey luxuries to the imperious
Briton, to hold the extravagant underlings in his usurious clutches,
to be at peace with Hindu, Moslem, Sikh, Pathan, Ghoorka, Persian,
and Armenian, and to blur his easy-going Mohammedanism in a generous
participation in all sins of omission and commission. A many-sided
man!

Alan Hawke heaved a sigh of easy contentment when he had brought
the chronique scandahuse of Delhi down to the day and hour.

"You say that she is beautiful, this girl?"

"As the stars on the sea!" nodded Ram Lal.

"And the Swiss woman?"

"Never leaves her for a minute. They see no one, for all men say the
old Commissioner will take her home, to Court when he is gazetted!"

"None of the great people go there?" keenly queried Hawke.

"Not even the fine ladies," laughed Ram Lal. "The old fellow may
have his own memories of the past. He trusts no one. The girl is
only a bulbul in a golden cage and with no one to sing to." Hawke
cut short Ram Lal's flowery figures.

"Does the Swiss woman trade with you?" he demanded.

"Yes, she buys a few simple things--my peddlers take the Veiled
Rose many rich things. The old Sahib is very generous to the child.
And the dragon loves trinkets, too!" Then Alan Hawke's eyes gleamed.

"She knows your shop here?"

"Perfectly," replied Ram Lal, "and comes alone--on the master's
business. You know I had many dealings with Sahib Hugh Fraser in
the old days," mused the jeweler. "He always admits my men. I have
valued gems for him for twenty years."

"Good!" cried the happy Major. "I want to send a man now to her
with a note. I am going to put up at the United Service Club, but
I must see this woman first. I don't like to send a letter, though.
If I had any one to trust--"

The merchant promptly said: "I will go myself! They are always in
the garden in the afternoon. I can easily see her alone."

"First rate! Then I will give you a message," answered Hawke. "I
must see her to-morrow early, for old Hugh will surely ask me to
tiffin. And, Ram, you must at once set your best man on to watch
all that goes on there. I have a good fat plum for you now--to set
up a neat little house here for a friend of mine who is coming, and
you shall do the whole thing!" The merchant's dark eyes glistened.
"A new officer of rank?" he queried.

"It's a lady--a friend of mine--rich, too, and she wants to live
on the quiet! She will stay here for some time!" The oily listener
had learned a vast prudence in the days when he trod the halls of
the last King of Delhi, so he held his peace and wondered at the
suddenly enhanced fortunes of that star of graceful wanderers,
Allan Hawke!

"I'll go over to the club now and get a room! Send all my things
over!" said the Major. "I wish to let Hugh know that I am here.
I will give you the directions about the house to-morrow. Make no
mistake with this message now!" Whereat Alan Hawke repeated a few
words which would awake the slumbering curiosity in the woman-heart
of the lonely Justine Delande!

"Now, I will return and await your success," concluded Hawke as
he read over a dozen times Madame Berthe Louison's long dispatch,
ordering him to prepare her pied de terre in Delhi. "Gad! Milady
means to do the thing in style," he murmured. "She is a deep one,
and she must have a pot of money!" He lit a cheroot and sauntered
away to show up officially at the club. Major Hawke soon became aware
that nothing succeeds like success. Not only did all the flaneurs
of the Chandnee Chouk seize upon him, but, from passing carriages,
bright, roguish eyes merrily challenged him as the hot-hearted
English Mem-Sahibs whirled by.

Rumor had magnified the importance of Major Alan Hawke's secret
service appointment, and the wanderer was astounded when the highest
official of the Delhi College gravely saluted him.

"By Gad! I believe that I am really becoming respectable!" laughed
the delighted major. His uncertain past seemed to be fast fading
away in the glow of the skillfully hinted official promotion. "I
wonder now if old Ram Lal has a hold on my canny friend, Hugh Fraser
Johnstone--Sir Hugh to be! Perhaps they are like all the rest of
us--rascals of the same grade, but only in different ways. The old
jewel matters! I must look to this and watch Ram Lal!" The returned
Anglo-Indian carelessly nodded to the group of men gathered in the
club's lounging-room as he entered. Designedly, he loudly demanded
to know if his traps had arrived. "Left all my odds and ends in
store," he murmured to a friend, as he called for a brandy pawnee.
"Beastly bore! Must wait orders here for some time!"

Skilled at tossing the ball of conversation to and fro, Major Alan
Hawke, while at luncheon, artfully planted seeds here and there,
to be neatly dished up later for that incipient baronet, Hugh
Johnstone. And yet a graceful shade of dignified reserve lent
color to his rumored advancement, and the schemer leaned over the
writing table with quite a foreign-office air as he indited his
diplomatic note of arrival to his destined prey.

With a grave air he selected his rooms and accommodations to suit
his swelling port, and even the club stewards nodded in recognition
of the tidal wave of Alan Hawke's mended fortunes.

With due official gravity the man "who had dropped into a good
thing," disappeared, to allow the gilded youth of Delhi to carry
the gossip to mess and bungalow. It was a welcome morsel to these
merry crows!

It was late when the handsome Major returned to find a small pyramid
of notes on his table and many letters in his box. He was in the
highest good humor, for the wary Ram Lal had most diplomatically
acquitted his task of opening a secret communication.

"Just as I thought," laughed the Major, as he sipped his pale
ale in Ram Lal's spacious room of pleasaunce. "They all protest,
woman-like, but they all come!"

The watchful Swiss exile's heart fluttered tenderly in the far-off
Lotos land at the arrival of a secret friend of her sage sister.
She longed for the morning to meet her new friend. Alan Hawke's
irresistible attractions had pointed the praises which flowed
smoothly over the double crossed letter which had preceded him!
The oily Ram Lal, a veteran observer of many an intrigue, scented
a budding rose of romance in the Major's adroit coup, and the
arrival of the only lady whom Alan Hawke had ever socially fathered
in Delhi.

"In three days I will be all ready! So you can telegraph to-night,"
reported the merchant, when the Major carefully went over all the
details of the proposed temporary establishment of the disguised
Alixe Delaviarne.

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