The spoiled patrician boy carelessly shoved out sixty pounds in notes and rummaging over his portmanteau produced a check book. “There, I think that’s right. Check on Grindlay, 11 and 12 Parliament Street, for four hundred and twenty-eight.” Hawke bowed gravely with the air of a satisfied duelist, and then carelessly swept the check and notes into his breast pocket.
“Tell me, what sort of a girl is this Nadine Johnstone,” the wanderer said, by way of a diversion.
“I can’t tell you! Only old General Willoughby has pierced the veil. Of course, Johnstone could not refuse a visit from the Commander of Her Majesty’s forces. In fact, Harry Hardwicke, of the Engineers, accompanied Willoughby. The old chief treats Hardwicke as a son since he bore the body of the dear old fellow’s son out of fire in the Khyber Pass, and won a promotion and the V. C. Harry says the girl is a modern Noor-Mahal! But, she is as speechless and timid as a startled fawn! Now, Major, you will excuse me. I have to leave you!” There was a fretful haste in the passionate boy’s manner. The hour was already near midnight.
“Shall I not see you to-morrow?” politely resumed Hawke. “You will not spend your whole morning with the stern damsel in spectacles and steel-like armor of indurated poplin?”
“Do you know I’m afraid I shall miss you,” earnestly said the aide. “Hugh Johnstone wishes me to urge Mademoiselle Euphrosyne to allow her sister to remain in India, in charge of the Rose of Delhi until the old eccentric returns. Of course, the girl left alone would be an easy prey to every fortune hunter in India, should anything happen!” There was a ferocious, wild gleam in Alan Hawke’s eyes as the aide grasped his hat and stick. “I wish to probe the family records and find out what I can of the ‘distaff side of the line,’ as Mr. Guy Livingstone would say. I have some really valuable presents, and I am on honor to the Viceroy in this, for, of course, a baronetcy must not be given into sullied hands. Johnstone will probably hermetically seal the girl up till the Kaisar-I-Hind has spoken officially. Then, if this delicate matter of the hidden booty of the King of Oude is settled, the old fellow intends to return to the home place he has bought. I’m told it’s the finest old feudal remnant in the Channel Islands, and magnificently modernized. The government does not want to press him. You see they can’t! The things went out of the hands of the hostile traitor princes, and Hugh Fraser, as he was, cajoled them from the custody of the go-betweens. We have never gone back on the plighted word of a previous Governor-General! The Queen’s word must not be broken. I have a bit of persuading to do, and some other little matters to settle!”
“Well, then, Anstruther, we may meet again on the line of the Indus,” said Hawke, with his lofty air. “I have always preferred the secret service to mere routine campaigning, for, really, the waiting spoils the fighting! Poor Louis Cavagnari! He confirmed my taste for silent and outside work! I was sent out from Cabul by him as private messenger just before that cruel massacre, a faux pas, which I vainly predicted. He taught me to play ecarte, by the way!”
“Then he was a good teacher, and you—a devilish apt scholar!” laughed Anstruther, as he politely held the door open for the man who had coldly fleeced him.
Alan Hawke’s pulses were now bounding with the thrill of his unlooked-for harvest! He experienced a certain pride in his marvelous skill, and, restraining himself, he soberly paced along the corridor. The excited aid-de-camp stood for a moment with his foot on the stair, and then slowly descended. “He suspects nothing!” the amatory youth murmured, as he passed out upon the broad Quai du Leman.
He walked swiftly along, gayly whistling “Donna e Mobile,” with certain private variations of his own, until he reached the splendid monument erected to the miserly old Duke of Brunswick, who showered his scraped-up millions upon an alien city, to spite his own fat-witted Brunswickers, and so escaped the blood-fleshed talons of the hungry-Prussian eagle.
Duke Charles I hovered amiably in the air, over a comfortable carriage wherein the “other little matters” were most temptingly materialized in the person of a lovely woman waiting there with burning eyes, her splendid face veiled in a black Spanish lace scarf. It was the old fate—“Unlucky at cards, lucky in love!” The staff officer’s abrupt command to “drive everywhere, anywhere,” until “further orders,” was implicitly obeyed by the stolid cabby, who set off at once for a long round of the mild “lions” of fair Geneva, nestling there by the shimmering lake.
The click of the horses’ feet upon the deserted roadway kept time to the murmurs of a most coy Delilah, who molded as wax in her slender hands the ardent military Samson, who was all unmindful of his flowing locks! And the silent moon shimmered down upon the waste of waters!
Alan Hawke was seated for an hour alone in his room, enjoying the cigars offered up by the “Universal Provider,” who had yielded up so liberally. The strong brandy and soda had at last restored his shaken nerves, for he had played with his life staked upon the outcome! He then grimly counted up his winnings. “Four-hundred and eighty-eight good pounds! That will take me back to Delhi in very good shape,” he soliloquized. “I wonder if there is anyway to get at that girl? If I mistake not, she will have a half a million! The old Commissioner always liked me, too. By God! If I could only get in between him and this baronetcy I might creep in on the girl’s friendship! But the old curmudgeon keeps her locked up! Rather risky in India!” He leaned back, enjoying memories of the women with pulses of flame and hearts of glowing coal whom he had met in the days when he was “dead square.” This strange woman! Who is she? What does she know?
He dozed off until the clattering return of the Misses Phemie and Genie Forbes, of Chicago, aroused him. His broad grin accentuated the easily overheard strident remark: “Say, Genie, I wish we had had those two English Lords at our opera supper. They are just jim-dandies, that’s what!”
“As long as the world is full of such fools, I can afford to live,” he pleasantly remarked, as he turned in. A new campaign was opening to him. Far away, up the shores of the moon-transfigured lake, a hot-headed young fool was showering kisses on the hand of a woman, who sweetly said: “Remember my conditions! Prove yourself my friend, and I will meet you in Paris! Now, take me home.” Samson was shorn of his locks, and the delighted Alan Hawke found a little note slipped under his door in the morning.
CHAPTER II. AN OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE ALLIANCE.
When the now buoyant Major Alan Hawke was awakened by the golden lances of morning which shivered gayly upon the Pennine Alps he proceeded to a most leisurely toilet, having first satisfied himself that his winnings of the night before were not the baseless fabric of a dream. He smiled as he fingered the crisp, clean notes, and gazed lovingly upon the dingy-looking but potent check drawn on the old army bankers.
“No nonsense about that signature,” he cheerfully said. “Anstruther is no welsher,” and, as he rang for his hot water and a morning refresher, he picked up the little note with an eager curiosity.
“By Gad! she is a cool one! This is no vulgar darned occasion! I need all my wits to-day!” He was studying over the brief words when the ready waiter took his order for a cosy breakfast. He had deliberately moved out all his lines to an easy comfort, throwing out a line of pickets against any appearance of social shabbiness. “She said that she had money,” he murmured, as he read the note again. “What the devil does she want, then, if she has all the money she needs! Perhaps some discarded mistress! Bah! The old man’s heart is as hollow as a sentrybox, and, besides, he has not been in Europe for nearly twenty years. Ah, I see! Perhaps a bit of blackmail—some early indiscretion! She did speak about the girl! Then I must be the silent partner of her future
