A Fascinating Traitor

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

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BOOK II.

"A DEVIL FOR LUCK."

CHAPTER VI.

THE MYSTERIOUS BUNGALOW.

If the fates favored Major Alan Hawke upon this eventful day, for
as he was contentedly awaiting the news of Ram Lal's departure for
Allahabad, the card of Captain Harry Hardwicke, A. D. C., and of
the Engineers, was sent up to him. With a neat bit of Indian art,
old Ram Lal had sent the carriage around to report, as a mute signal
of his own departure. It was a flood tide of good fortune!

In ten minutes, the Major and his welcome guest were spinning along
in the cool of the evening, toward the deserted ruins of the old
city of Delhi! As they passed through the Lahore gate, Hardwicke's
pith helmet was doffed with a jerk, as a superb carriage passed
them, proceeding in a stately swing. Major Alan Hawke bowed low as
he caught the cold eye of the would-be Sir Hugh Johnstone.

"Who are the ladies, Hardwicke?" laughed the Major, as he saw the
young officer's face suddenly crimson. "For a man who won the V.
C. in your dashing style, you seem to be a bit beauty-shy!" They
were hardly settled yet for their cozy chat. Hardwicke lit a cheroot
to cover his evident confusion.

"I know" he slowly answered, "that one of them is Miss or Madame
Delande, old Fraser's house duenna--I will still call him Fraser,
you see--the other is the mystery of Delhi. Popularly supposed
to be the old boy's daughter, and his sole heiress, Miss Nadine,"
concluded the young aid-de-camp. "The old curmudgeon keeps her
judiciously veiled from mortal ken. No man but General Willoughby
has ever exchanged a word with her. The dear old boy--his memory
does not go back beyond his last B. and S.--he can't even sketch her
beauty in words. And she is as hazy, even to the Madam-General--our
secret commanding officer. There is a continuous affront to society
in this old monomaniac's treatment of that girl."

"You would like to storm the Castle Perilous, and awaken the
Sleeping Beauty?" archly said Hawke, as they rolled along under a
huge alley of banyan trees.

"Not at all," gravely said Hardwicke. "She is only a girl, like other
girls, I presume; but, this old fool is only fit for the old days,
when the kings of Oude flew kites and hunted with the cheetah; or,
half drunken, dozed, lolling away their lives in these marble-screened
zenanas, with the automatic beauties of the seraglio. Our English cannon
have knocked all that nonsense silly. Here is a high-spirited,
Christian English girl, shut up like a slave. It's only the
unfairness of the thing that strikes me." Hawke eyed the blue-eyed,
rosy young fellow of twenty-six with an evident interest. Stalwart
and symmetrical in figure, Hardwicke's frank, manly face glowed in
indignation.

"You've won your spurs quickly out here," said Hawke. "You have not
been long enough in India to case-harden into the cursed egotism
of this hard-hearted land, and remember, age, crawling on, has
indurated old 'Fraser-Johnstone.' He was never an amiable character.
What do the ladies of the city say of this strange social situation?
I never knew that the old beast had a daughter till to-day."

Captain Hardwicke wearily replied: "They all hold aloof, of course,
after some very rough rebuffs, as I believe the old boy will clear
out for good when he gets his baronetcy. It's possible that the
girl is half a foreigner after all," mused Hardwicke. "The duenna
is surely a continental."

"Yes; but she seems to be a very nice person. I was there to-day
at tiffin," finally said Major Hawke,

"She had very little to say, and cleared out at once. I did not
see Miss Johnstone." They fell into an easy, rattling chronicle of
things past and present, and before the two hours' ride was over,
the astute Major felt that he had divined General Willoughby's
object in sending his pet aid-de-camp to reconnoitre Hawke's lines
and pierce the mystery of his rumored employment.

"I suppose that you will come up and duly report to the Chief,"
rather uneasily said Captain Hardwicke, as they neared the Club on
their return. Hawke cast a glance at the superb domes of the Jumma
Musjid towering in the thin air above them, as he slowly answered:

"I am only here on a roving secret commission. I shall call, of
course, and pay my personal respects to His Excellency, the General
Commanding. I am an official will-o'-the-wisp, just now, but my
blushing honors are strictly civil, and, by the way, in expectancy.
Where does your promotion carry you?"

"Oh, anywhere--everywhere," laughed Hardwicke. "I may be sent home.
I'm entitled to a long leave--there's my wound, you know. I've only
stayed on here to oblige Willoughby." It was easy to see that the
frank, splendid young fellow was but awkwardly filling his role
of polite inquisitor, for they talked shop a couple of hours over
a bottle at the Club, and Hardwicke at last took his leave, no whit
the wiser.

"If he did not post me as to the heiress, at least, old Willoughby
gets no valuable information," laughed the Major, that night. "The
boy seems to be ambitious and heart-whole. Old Johnstone will soon
clear out to the Highlands, I suppose, with this hidden pearl."
But Major Hawke laughed softly when the morning brought to him a
personal invitation to dine "informally" with General Willoughby.
"Wants to know, you know," laughed the Major. "All I have to do is
to keep cool and let him drink himself jolly, and so, answer his
own questions."

"That Hardwicke is an uncommonly fine young fellow." So decided
the Major as he splashed into his morning tub. There was one man,
however, in Delhi who now viewed Hawke's presence with a secret
alarm, amounting to dismay. It was the stern old miserly Scotsman
who had paced his floor half the night in a vain effort to
reassure himself. "What does he know? I must have old Ram Lal watch
him," mused Hugh Johnstone. "I was a fool not to have cleared out
from here months ago, before these spies were set upon me. First,
Anstruther; now this fellow, Hawke, and, perhaps, even Hardwicke.
If it were not for the old matter I would go to-morrow, and let the
Baronetcy go hang--or find me in the Highlands. But, I must make
one last attempt to get them out. I must--" and the old man slept
the weary sleep of utter exhaustion.

Before the nabob awoke, Captain Henry Hardwicke, swinging away
on his morning gallop, had reviewed the strange attitude of Major
Hawke. "He is very intimate with Hugh Johnstone, and he is a man
of the world, too. I will yet see this charming child, when the
ban of her prison seclusion is lifted." He vaguely remembered the
one timid and girlish glance of the beautiful dark eyes, when he
had been presented, pro-forma, to the Veiled Rose upon that one
memorable state visit. He then rode out of his way to gaze at the
exterior of the great marble house, and was rewarded by the sight
of a graceful woman walking there under her governess's escort in
the dewy freshness of the early morn.

He doffed his helmet as Miss Justine paused among the flowers,
and then Miss Nadine Johnstone looked up to see the graceful rider
disappear behind the fringing trees.

"That was Captain Hardwicke, was it not?" asked the lonely girl.
Miss Justine was busied in dreaming of her meeting of the morrow.

"Yes, it was," she absently replied.

"They tell me that he nobly risked his life to save his wounded
friend," dreamily continued Nadine. "He gave back to a father the
life of an only son at the risk of his own. How brave--how noble."
And Justine gazed at her charge in surprise, as the beautiful Nadine
bent her head to greet her sister flowers.

The resolute Major Hawke, at his cheerful breakfast, was busied with
thoughts of the coming arrival of Hugh Johnstone's secret foe. "I
must have money from her at once to swing Ram Lal's Private Inquiry
Bureau and to mystify these quid nuncs here. For I must entertain
the clubmen a bit. It's as well to begin, also, to pot down a bit
of her money for the future. She shall pay her way, as she goes."
And, with a view to the further cementing of his rising social
pyramid, he planned a very neat little dinner of half a dozen of
the most available men whom he had selected as being "in the swim."
"The next thing is to discover what the devil she really wants of
old Johnstone! She must show her hand now, and then soon call on
me for help."

He gazed at his little memorandum of "pressing engagements." "A
pretty fair book of events. First, old Johnstone's dinner--more
of the boring process--then to welcome my strange employer, and,
after that, Mademoiselle Justine! Later, I'll have my own little
innings with General Willoughby, and, finally play the gracious
host while Ram Lal watches Madame Louison's cat-like play upon her
victim. Money I must have, her money first, to pay the piper,"
he laughed, which proposed liberality was destined to doubly bribe
the wily old jewel merchant. At that very moment Ram Lal, securely
hidden away in the native compartment of the train, rushing on from
Allahabad toward Delhi, was dreaming of the long-deferred triumph
of a life!

"If he has them--if they can be traced--they shall be mine if
every diamond gleams red with his heart's blood! Perhaps these two
strange people have brought them. Who knows? They are rich; it may
be the jewels!" And Ram Lal dreamed of a tripartite watch upon the
three principal figures of the opening drama. "The jewels were a
king's ransom. But I shall know all," he softly smiled, for every
attendant of the beautiful recluse now burning to meet her advance
spy was a sworn confederate of Ram Lal in a dark brotherhood whose
very name no man even dared to lisp! And so the long, blazing day
wore away, bringing the hunter and the hunted nearer together. The
mysterious bungalow was now alive with the slaves of luxury, while
Alan Hawke secretly inspected the last finishing touches, for he,
alone, was master of the private entrance once used by a man whose
glittering rank had lifted him presumably above all human weaknesses!

Major Hawke departed for the Club in a very good humor, after his
hour of inspection of the jewel box bungalow now ready for his
fair employer. It was a perfect cachette d' amour, and its superb
gardens, so long deserted, were now only a tangled jungle of luxuriant
loveliness! The light foot of the beauty for whom this Rosamond's
Bower had been prepared had wandered far away, for a substantial
block of marble now held down the great man, who had in the old
days found the welcome of his hidden Egeria so delicious in this
long-deserted bungalow. For the dead Numa Pompilius slept now with
his fathers, in far away Merrie England, and--as is the wont--the
mortuary inscriptions on his tomb recorded only his virtues. But
both his virtues and failings were of no greater weight now to a
forgetful generation, which knew not the departed Joseph, than the
drifted leaves in the garden alleys where the romance of the old
still lingered in ghostly guise! "There were no birds in last year's
nest," but the mysterious bungalow had been hastily arranged for
the lovely successor to the vanished queen of a cobweb Paradise.
The bungalow, itself, was adroitly constructed with a special
reference to seclusion as well as comfort. An Indian Love's Labyrinth.

"Just the very place!" murmured Alan Hawke, as he hastened away to
dress for the diner de famille, with his timorous secret foe, Hugh
Johnstone. "I wonder if my canny friend, in his humble days as Hugh
Fraser, ever assisted at lespelits diners de Trianon here?

"Probably not, for friend Hugh was ever apter in squeezing the
nimble rupee than in chanting sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow.
How the devil did he ever catch a wife, such as Valerie Delavigne
must have been? Either a case of purchase or starvation, I'll
warrant!"

Ram Lal Singh was growing dubious as to the perfect sweep of his
hungry talons over Madame Louison's future expenditures. He had
noted, with some secret alarm, a grave-faced, sturdy Frenchman,
still in the forties, who was cast in the role of either courier
or butler for the beautiful Mem-Sahib, whose loveliness in extenso
he so far only divined by guess-work.

In the stranger lady's special car there was also, at her side, a
truculent Parisienne-looking woman of thirty, whose bustling air,
hawk-like visage, and perfect aplomb bespoke the confidential
French maid. "I must tell Hawke Sahib of this at once," mused Ram
Lal. "We must, in some way, get rid of these foreign servants."
The man had a semi-military air, heightened by the sweeping scar--a
slash from a neatly swung saber. This purple facial adornment was
Jules Victor's especial pride. In these days of "ninety" he often
recurred to the stroke which had made his fortune in the dark reign
of the Commune.

As a wild Communard soldier he had risked his life vainly to save
the aged Colonel Delavigne from a furious mob, for the red rosette
in the old officer's buttonhole had cost him his life in an awkward
promenade, and this sent the orphans, Valerie and Alixe Delavigne,
adrift upon the mad maelstrom of Paris incendie. While Ram Lal
glowered in his dissatisfaction, Madame Berthe Louison complacently
regarded her two secret protectors on guard in the special car. For
the strange turn of Fortune's wheel, which had left Alixe Delavigne
alone in the world, and rich enough to effect her special vengeance
upon her one enemy, had given to Jules Victor and his wife Marie
a sinecure for life as the personal attendants of the soi-disant
Madame Berthe Louison.

Marie was but a wild-eyed child of ten when Jules had picked her
up in the flaming streets of Paris, and they had graduated together
from the gutters of Montmartre into the later control of Madame
Louison's pretty little pied d' terre in Paris, hard by Auteuil,
in that dreamy little impasse, the Rue de Berlioz. Neither of these
attendants were faint-hearted, for their young hearts had been
attuned early to the wolfish precocity of the Parisian waif. And
they had followed their resolute mistress in her weary quest of
the past years.

Berthe Louison smiled in a comforting sense of security, as she
gazed listlessly out upon the landscape flying by.

The two servants, modestly voyaging out to Calcutta, on a telegraphic
summons, to embark at Marseilles, had preceded the Empress of India
by ten days. So, neither friendless, nor without untiring devotion,
was the wary woman who had thus secretly armed herself against any
"little mistake" on the part of Major Alan Hawke. Certain private
instructions to the manager of Grindlay & Co., at Calcutta, had
caused that respectable party to open his eyes in wonder.

"Of course, Madame, our local agent at Delhi will act in your
behalf, with both secrecy and discretion. I have already written him
a private cipher letter in regard to your every wish being fulfilled."

Such is the potent influence of a letter of credit, practically
approaching the "unlimited."

"If I could only use Jules in the double capacity of gentleman and
factotum, I would dress him up a la mode and let him approach Hugh
Johnstone," mused the beautiful tourist, but I must be content to
use this cold-hearted adventurer Hawke, for he has at least a surface
rank of gentleman, and, moreover, he knows my enemy! I must keep
Jules and Marie every moment at my side, for some strange things
happen in India by day as well as by night. Sir Hugh may dream of
some 'unusually distressing accident' as a means of safely ridding
himself of a long slumbering specter."

"Of course, this sly jeweler is Alan Hawke's spy! A few guineas
extra, however, may buy his 'inner consciousness' for me," she
mused. And so it fell out that Ram Lal Singh was destined to drop
into the secret service of both Hawke and the fair invader! And,
as yet, neither of his intending employers could divine the dark
purposes of the oily rascal who had stealthily watched Hugh Fraser
for long years to slake the hungry vengeance of a despoiled traitor
to the last King of Oude.

Major Hawke found the tete e tete dinner with Hugh Johnstone a mere
dull social parade. There was no demure face at the feast slyly
regarding him, for while the two watchful secret foes exchanged
old reminiscence and newer gossip, Justine Delande was cheering
the lonely girl, whose silent mutiny as to her shining prison life
now reached almost an open revolt. It was a grateful relief to the
Swiss woman, whose agitated heart was softly beating the refrain:
"To-morrow! to-morrow! I shall see him again!" She feared a
self-betrayal!

While the governess mused upon the extent of her proposed revelations to
the handsome Major, that rising social star had adroitly exploited
his long tete e tete with Captain Hardwicke to his host, and
gracefully magnified the warmth of General Willoughby's personal
welcome.

"You see, Johnstone," patiently admitted the man who had dropped
into a good thing, "They all want to delve into the secrets of my
mission here. You, of all men," he meaningly said, "cannot blame
me for throwing the dust into their eyes. I detest this intrusion,
and so in sheer self-defense I am going to give a formal dinner
to a lot of these bores, and then cut the whole lot when I've once
done the decent thing." Circling and circling, and yet never daring
to approach the subject, old Hugh Johnstone warily returned to the
suspended baronetcy affair, at last revealing his secret burning
anxieties. But when Alan Hawke heard the train whistles, announcing
the arrival of his beautiful employer, he fled away from the
smoking-room in a mock official unrest.

"I am expecting dispatches from England, and also very important
detailed secret instructions. I've had a warning wire from Calcutta."

He had broken off the se'ance brusquely with a design of his own,
and he rejoiced as Hugh Johnstone brokenly said: "Let me see you
very soon again. I must have a plain talk with you." The old nabob
was in a close corner now. There had been a few bitter queries
from the half-distracted girl which showed, even to her stern old
father, that his position was becoming untenable.

"Damn it! I must either talk or send her away," he growled when
left alone. "I've half a mind to telegraph Douglas Fraser to come
here and convoy this foolish young minx home to Europe. She may
grow to be a silent rebel like her mother." His scowl darkened.
"And yet, where to send her? I ought to go with them. Can I trust
the Delandes to find a safe place to keep her till I come?" He was
all unaware that his daughter Nadine was now a woman like her bolder
sisters of society, but it was true. The chrysalis was nearing the
butterfly stage of life and beating the bars with her wings.

The secret exultation of Justine Delande in her shadowy hold on
Major Alan Hawke caused her to furtively lead Nadine Johnstone to
the head of the great stairway, when Hawke made his adieux.

"He is a handsome young officer," timidly whispered the girl,
shrinking back out of sight. "What can he have in common with my
father? I thought he was some old veteran." And the awakened heart
of Justine Delande bounded in delight. She would have joyed to tell
Nadine of her own romantic budding friendship, but a wholesome fear
tied her tongue, and she was only happy when caressing the diamond
bracelet that night, which encircled her arm, while with dry and
aching eyes she waited for the dawn.

While Hugh Johnstone paced the veranda of his lonely marble palace
that night, a prey to vague fears, and unwilling to face the accusing
eyes of his daughter, Major Alan Hawke, with a sudden astonishment,
stood mute before the splendid woman who received him in the
mysterious bungalow. There was scant ceremony of greeting between
them, for Berthe Louison impatiently grasped his hands.

"He is here, and the girl, too," she said, with blazing eyes. She
stood robed as a queen before her secret agent. "Where were you?
You left me here to wait in a torment of anxiety."

"I have just come from his dinner table," quietly said the startled
Major. "They are both here, and well. I am already intimate at the
house, but I have not seen the girl. I feared being followed or I
would have met you at the train." He marveled at her royal beauty.
She was conscious now of the power of wealth, and some hidden fire
glowed in her veins. "What can I do for you? He watches me. I can
only come at night."

"Ah!" the lady sternly said, "we must then play at hide and seek!"

Ringing a silver bell twice, Madame Louison sank into a chair. Alan
Hawke started up, inquiringly, as Jules and Marie entered the room
from an ante-room, whose door was left ajar.

"Jules! Marie!" calmly said Madame Louison. "This gentleman is my
secret business agent. He will call here in the evenings very often.
He has pass keys of his own, and you need not announce him. He is
the only person who has the right to be in my house--at all times."
The husband and wife bowed in silence and, at a gesture from their
mistress, departed silently, having mentally photographed the
newcomer.

Gazing in open-eyed astonishment, the surprised Major faltered,
"Who are these people? Why did you do this strange thing?"

"To assure myself of safety," quietly smiled Berthe Louison. "They
are my personal servants, whom I brought on from Calcutta, and I
have reason to believe that Jules is both alert and courageous. He
is a veteran of the Tonquin war, and that pretty scar was a present
from the Black Flags. They were selected by one who knows the wiles
of my desperate enemy Johnstone."

"Now, Major Hawke, let us to business" calmly continued Berthe,
secretly enjoying Alan Hawke's dismay. "Tell me your whole story.
Only the events since your arrival here. The rest counts for nothing.
We are all on the ground here and I propose to act quickly. I
learned some matters in Calcutta which have greatly enlightened
me." The facile tongue of the renegade was slow to do the bidding
of his unready brain. "Damme! But she's a cool one!" the ex-officer
concluded, as he caught his breath. But, conscious of her watchful
eye, he related all his adventures, with a judicious reserve as to
Justine Delande. The burning eyes of Berthe Louison were steadily
fixed upon the relator's face, and she was coldly noncommittal when
Hawke paused for breath and a mental recapitulation. The Major now
gazed upon her immovable visage. There was neither joy nor sorrow,
neither the flush of anger nor the trembling of rage, awakened by
the businesslike presentment of the social facts. "She is a human
icicle," he mused. "She has some deadly hold on him!"

"Can you trust this Ram Lal Singh?" the woman demanded in a
business-like tone. Alan Hawke nodded decisively.

"He knows Hugh Fraser Johnstone well?" queried Berthe.

"They have been companions in the mixed line or Delhi since the
mutiny," earnestly replied Hawke, slowly concluding: "And Ram Lal
has been Johnstone's broker in selecting his almost unequaled Indian
collection. Ram is a thief, like all Hindus, but he is square to
me. I hold him in my hand. You can trust to him, but only through
me!" Berthe Louison raised her eyes and then fixed a searching
glance upon Alan Hawke, as if she would read his very soul.

"And, can I trust you?" she said, almost solemnly.

"You remember our strange compact, Madame," coldly said Alan
Hawke. "Here, face to face with the enemy, I expect to know what
is required of me--and also what my future recompense will be."

"Ah, I forgot," mused the strange lady of the bungalow. "You have
the right to teach me a lesson, in both manners and business. I
forgot how sharply I had drawn the line, myself. Well, Sir, I will
trust to you without any assurance on your part." She rang the
silver bell at her side, once, and the silent Jules appeared, as
attentive as Rastighello in the boudoir of the Duchess of Ferrara.
"My traveling bag, Jules," said the lady, in a careless tone. There
was a silence punctuated only by Alan Hawke's heavy breathing,
until the silent servitor returned, bowing and departing without
a word, as he placed the bag at Madame Louison's side. With
a businesslike air, the lady handed Alan Hawke a sealed letter,
addressed simply:

HUGH FRASER JOHNSTONE, ESQ., DELHI.

Near at hand, in the opened bag, the watchful Major saw the revolver
and dagger once more which he had noted, at Lausanne.

"Let Ram Lal deliver that personally to the would-be Baronet,
to-morrow morning at eight o'clock. He is to say nothing. There will
be no reply," measuredly remarked the strange woman whose life as
Alixe Delavigne had brought to her the legacy of an undying hatred
for the man whom she was about to face. "This will bring Hugh
Johnstone to me at once!"

"That is all?" stammered Alan Hawke, as he received the document,
respectfully standing "at attention."

"No, not quite all!" laughed Berthe Louison. "Pray continue a career
of judiciously liberal social splendor here, an external 'swelling
port' just suited to a man whose feet are planted upon a financial
rock. But do not overdo it! It might excite Hugh Johnstone's alarm.
Here is five hundred pounds in notes. There will be no accounts
between us."

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