the Chandnee Chouk. "All right, now," he laughed,
as he bade the sly merchant set a private guard to prevent all intrusion
upon their privacy. "I think that I have thrown these fellows off the
track very neatly!" he laughed. "No one knows of your rear entrances at
the club, I am sure!" It suited the luxurious old jewel merchant to hide
the opulence of his secret life, and to veil the graceful lapses of his
private code from the sober austerities of a dignified Mohammedanism.

"Look alive now, Ram Lal!" said Hawke, briskly, as he handed his
confederate the telegram from Berthe Louison. "You see that the lady
will arrive here tomorrow night! Some one must go down to Allahabad for
her! Are you all ready for her coming?"

"Perfectly!" smiled Ram Lal. "The Mem-Sahib could give a dinner of
twenty covers in an hour after her arrival! You know that the bungalow
was fitted up for--" he bent his head and whispered to Major Hawke, who
laughed intelligently and viciously.

"All right, then! Here is the address in Allahabad, where the lady is to
wait for her conductors. She seems not to wish me to come down. I will
be at the bungalow, then, on your arrival! I will give you a letter
for her," said Hawke. Ram Lal's eyes gleamed in anticipation of the fat
pickings of the Mem-Sahib. He pondered a moment over the case.

"Then, I will go down myself," complacently said Ram Lal, with an eye
to future business. "You can tell her to trust to me in all things. She
shall travel like a queen!"

"That is better, and so I will telegraph to her, at Allahabad, this
afternoon, that I have sent you to meet her! Have a covered carriage
awaiting her here, and no one must be allowed to follow her to her
hidden nest. It is the making of your fortune with her!" cried Hawke, as
he lit a cheroot.

"Trust to me, Sahib!" answered the wily jewel merchant, relapsing into
an expectant silence. He already connected the arrival of the beautiful
foreigner with the destiny of the opulent man whom he had revengefully
watched for twenty years. Hugh Fraser Johnstone had heaped up a fortune,
but it was not yet successfully deported to England.

"And the Swiss woman, when may I see her; this morning?" demanded the
adventurer, as he dropped into a cool, Japanese chair.

"My man will bring you the news of her coming!" answered the oily old
miscreant. "I told him to watch her, and run on to warn me!" Ram Lal was
a wily old Figaro of much experience.

"Good! Then g