e-coming at Delhi. Then,
you jade," he growled, "Ram Lal shall do the business for you, even if
it costs me ten thousand pounds!" which proves that an old tiger may be
toothless and yet have left to him strong claws to drag his prey down.
"Money will do anything in India or anywhere else!" the old nabob
growled, forgetting that even all the yellow gold of the Rand or the
gleaming diamonds of the Transvaal will not avail to fill the burned-out
lamp of life!

The prolonged absence of the embryo Sir Hugh Johnstone was a matter of
public comment in Delhi, while the knowing ones winked significantly at
the almost triumphal departure of Madame Berthe Louison, whose special
car and ample retinue made her a modern European Queen of Sheba. "Tell
you what, fellows," said "Rattler" Murray, otherwise known as "Red
Eric, of the Eighth Lancers," "the old Commissioner will return superbly
'improved and illustrated' with her, a new edition of the standard old
work. You see, there's a French Consul-General at Calcutta, and then
and there the matrimonial obsequies will be performed. But I'll give him
just a year's life," and the gay lieutenant struck an attitude, quoting
the menacing jargon in "Hamlet":

"In second husband, let me be accurst; None wed the second, but who
killed the first."

"What infernal rot you do gabble, Murray!" suddenly cried Alan Hawke,
dropping a double barrier of the newest Times, as he prepared to
leave the clubroom in disgust. "Hugh Johnstone was only called down to
Calcutta on some important financial business some days ago, and he went
there simply to rearrange some of his large investments. Madame Louison
is only a stranger here, a tourist traveling incognito, and connected
with some of the best noble families of France." With great dignity
Major Hawke stalked away to his rooms, leaving the club for a long drive
in disgust.

By the next evening Madame Berthe Louison had been discovered to be a
noble relative of the Comte de Chambord, "traveling incognito," and then
the clacking tongues of gossip rose up in a shrill chorus of greater
intensity. Immense investments of the Orleans fortunes in Indian
properties to be managed by Major Alan Hawke were discovered to be the
object of her Indian tour, with wise old Hugh Johnstone as an infallible
financial adviser. But Alan Hawke smiled his superior smile and said
nothing.

All this and more soon reached the ears of Capt. Harry Hardwicke, whose
fever of gnawin