e 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