ce set your best man on to watch all that goes on
there. I have a good fat plum for you now--to set up a neat little house
here for a friend of mine who is coming, and you shall do the whole
thing!" The merchant's dark eyes glistened. "A new officer of rank?" he
queried.

"It's a lady--a friend of mine--rich, too, and she wants to live on the
quiet! She will stay here for some time!" The oily listener had learned
a vast prudence in the days when he trod the halls of the last King
of Delhi, so he held his peace and wondered at the suddenly enhanced
fortunes of that star of graceful wanderers, Allan Hawke!

"I'll go over to the club now and get a room! Send all my things over!"
said the Major. "I wish to let Hugh know that I am here. I will give
you the directions about the house to-morrow. Make no mistake with this
message now!" Whereat Alan Hawke repeated a few words which would
awake the slumbering curiosity in the woman-heart of the lonely Justine
Delande!

"Now, I will return and await your success," concluded Hawke as he read
over a dozen times Madame Berthe Louison's long dispatch, ordering him
to prepare her pied de terre in Delhi. "Gad! Milady means to do the
thing in style," he murmured. "She is a deep one, and she must have a
pot of money!" He lit a cheroot and sauntered away to show up officially
at the club. Major Hawke soon became aware that nothing succeeds like
success. Not only did all the flaneurs of the Chandnee Chouk seize
upon him, but, from passing carriages, bright, roguish eyes merrily
challenged him as the hot-hearted English Mem-Sahibs whirled by.

Rumor had magnified the importance of Major Alan Hawke's secret service
appointment, and the wanderer was astounded when the highest official of
the Delhi College gravely saluted him.

"By Gad! I believe that I am really becoming respectable!" laughed the
delighted major. His uncertain past seemed to be fast fading away in the
glow of the skillfully hinted official promotion. "I wonder now if old
Ram Lal has a hold on my canny friend, Hugh Fraser Johnstone--Sir Hugh
to be! Perhaps they are like all the rest of us--rascals of the same
grade, but only in different ways. The old jewel matters! I must look to
this and watch Ram Lal!" The returned Anglo-Indian carelessly nodded
to the group of men gathered in the club's lounging-room as he entered.
Designedly, he loudly demanded to know if his traps had arrived. "Left
all my odds and ends in store," he