age told the story of a sudden jaunt. A wave of the hand and the
secret-service man was gone. Hawke growled: "Damned young jackanapes,
I'll fool you, too; but what does old Johnstone want?" He was reading a
telegram just received: "Come to meet me at Allahabad. Have brought the
drafts. Want you for a few days down here."

At ten o'clock next morning, Simpson, his voice all broken, his old eyes
filled with tears, dashed into Captain Hardwicke's office. "Dead?"
cried the young soldier, springing up in a sudden horror. "No. Gone over
night--both the women--God knows where, but they left secretly, by the
Master's orders!" And then Hardwicke sank back into his chair with
a groan. But, at Allahabad, Major Alan Hawke was raving alone in a
helpless rage. There was no Johnstone there, and Ram Lal Singh had
telegraphed him: "The daughter and governess went away in the night by
the railroad--special train. A man from Calcutta took them away."

"You shall pay for this, you old hound!" he yelled, "Yes, with your
heart's blood.'"

CHAPTER IX. ALAN HAWKE PLAYS HIS TRUMP CARD.

When the Calcutta train rolled into Allahabad, two days after Harry
Hardwicke's crushing surprise, Major Alan Hawke, the very pink of
Anglo-Indian elegance, awaited the dismounting of the returning
voyagers. He had passed a whole sleepless night in revolving the various
methods to play oft each of his wary employers against each other, and
had decided to let Fate make the game.

"The devil of it is, I'm not supposed to know anything of the flitting!"
he mused, after digesting Ram Lal Singh's carefully worded telegrams.
All the light in his shadowy mental eclipse was the positive information
that a special train had been made up for Bombay at the station, "on
government secret service."

"The old man is preparing to fight, now," he decided. "His 'wooden
horse' is within Berthe Loiuson's camp. If she is not wary, she may
never leave India, Johnstone can be very ugly. But what must I do? Shall
I warn Berthe, now? If I do, she will both doubt me and make a scene.
Old Johnstone will then know at once that I have betrayed him." An
hour's cogitation led Alan Hawke to decide to let the "high contracting
parties" fight it out themselves at Delhi.

"I'll secretly join the winner and then bleed them both. I must be
unconscious of all. Johnstone's money I want first, then, Berthe must
pay me well for my aid." With an exquisite nosegay of flowers, he
awaite