LITMIR.BIZ

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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 my 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

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