politely rose and set all
his myrmidons in motion.

Even then the telegraph was clicking away a message to Johnstone's
lawyer and bankers in Calcutta, and to his young relative, Douglas
Fraser, of the great P. and O. steamship service. Before night the
crafty Calcutta lawyer had notified Professor Andrew Fraser, in the
far-away island of Jersey, and before Major Hawke himself received the
Viceroy's orders, through General Willoughby, Mademoiselle Euphrosyne
Delande, of Geneva, and the household at No. 9 Rue Berlioz, Paris, both
knew that the defiant old nabob had sailed the dark sea without a shore.

Most of all surprised was Captain Anson Anstruther in London, who
pondered long at the United Service Club over an official message from
the Viceroy, telling him of the startling murder. The young gallant's
heart beat in a strange agitation as he examined the previous dispatches
of both Berthe Louison and the Viceroy.

"She had no hand in it, thank God!" mused the young aide-de-camp.
"Perhaps he was paid off for some of his old Shylock transactions--some
local intrigue, or the jealous lover of some Eurasian beauty, dragged to
his lair, has finished all, and revenged the accumulated brutalities of
thirty years."

There was a loud outcry of horror and surprise sweeping on now from the
social circles of Delhi to the clubs of Lucknow, Cawnpore, Allahabad,
Benares, and Patna to Calcutta.

In a day or two, men from Lahore to Hyderabad, from Bombay to Nagpore
and Madras, and in all the clubs from Calcutta to Simla, had paused over
their brandy pawnee to murmur, "Well! The poor old beggar is gone, and
now he'll never get his Baronetcy! Some of the niggers did the trick
neatly for him at last. They must have got a jolly lot of loot!"

In which general verdict the glittering-eyed Ram Lal, hidden in his
zenana, did not share. For, when he had rifled and destroyed the two
mahogany boxes he summed all up his pickings with baffled rage. "A
couple of thousand pounds of notes, a few scattered jewels, the sly old
dog has spirited away his vast stealings! My work was all in vain, save
the vengeance!" And the oily Ram Lal, in the zenana, drew a willing
beauty of Cashmere to his bosom, and hid his face from the chatterers of
street and shop. He was safe from all prying eyes in the Harem.

But, while the triumphant English Mem-Sahibs, of Delhi, shuddered at the
bloody details of old Hugh Johnstone's taking off, they found abundant
reaso