"It seems that fortune favors us," tremblingly said Alixe Delavigne. "This prying and curious Yankee, Professor Hobbs, also seems to have fallen at once into the trap! Captain Murray's description of his 'interview,' at the Royal Victoria, with Alaric Hobbs, is a crystallized work of humorous art!"

"Of course the Yankee savant will write columns to the Waukesha Clarion, describing this Asiatic lion, Prince Djiddin, and exploit him in the States as an 'original discovery' of his own. His eagerness to arrange an interview between the Prince and Professor Fraser is most ludicrously fortunate for us," said Captain Anstruther.

The entrance of the butler with a telegram disturbed "Prince Djiddin" and his lovely confidential staff officer. "An answer, please, Captain," formally continued the household factotum.

"Hurrah!" cried Hardwicke, when the little conclave gathered around the red light. "Simpson has arrived, and now Nadine and I have some one whom we can both trust!" The further information that the "Moonshee" would arrive forthwith to conduct "Prince Djiddin" to the safe haven where that fascinating bride, Mrs. Flossie Murray, awaited her beloved truant, was a call to prompt action. "I am ready! I shall drop the Royal Engineers and live up to my 'blue china' as a Prince!" cried Hardwicke.



CHAPTER XIV. THE COUNCIL AT GRANVILLE.



When Major Alan Hawke returned, three weeks later, to the Hotel Grand National, at Geneva, he was sorely wearied and dispirited. A round of inspection of all the principal jewel marts of the continent had been only a fruitless, solitary tourist promenade. And the ominous silence of Captain Anson Anstruther, A. D. C., boded no good to the military future of the adventurer. "Damn me, if I don't think that I have been hoodwinked!" growled Major Hawke, on his re-turn from Moscow and St. Petersburg, whither he had been ordered, as a last resort, to see the Court jewelers.

From Warsaw, he wrote to the Hotel Faucon, at Lausanne, to send all his letters to meet him at Berlin, where Jack Blunt had given him the address of the safest "fence" in all Kaiser Wilhelm's broad domain. He had his own jewels valued there in Russia, but dared not sell them.

With a sudden inspiration, born of a growing fear for the stability of his house of cards, so flimsy in construction, he ran down to Jitomir, and the half-crazed adventurer only lingered an hour with the Intendant of Madame Alixe Delavigne's grand old domain. He found the bird flown. Had he been duped? A permission to view the old chateau was courteously accorded, and then Alan Hawke soon realized that he was betrayed. For the fact that Madame was still absent, "traveling around the world," and had not visited her Volhynian estate for a year, proved to him now that he had been doubly tricked. "Ah! By God! I have it!" he cried, as he set his teeth in a white rage. "That fool, Anstruther, is bewitched by her Polish wiles, the mongrel inheritance of La Grande Armee's visit to Russia!" Straight as the crow flies, Alan Hawke then pressed on to Lemberg, and hastened to Berlin, having sent on his last official report to Captain Anstruther, at London. In Berlin, a letter from Jack Blunt decided his whole career. There was news of moment, which set his hot blood boiling in his veins.

"Simpson, the old body servant, has arrived from India," wrote the disguised ex-convict. "And he's mighty thick with your shy bird, too. There is some strange game going on here, which I can't make out. The cute Yankee professor is furious, for old Fraser has temporarily given him the 'dead cut.' The American is totally neglected, for the old idiot spends half his time, now, shut up in his study with a visiting nigger prince from India, and the yellow fellow's half-breed interpreter. I send you a dozen cuttings from the papers. The Prince, however, seems to be all O. K. He never even notices the shy bird. He probably buys his women at home. How could he, for he does not speak a single damned word of English. But I've caught sight of this Moonshee fellow trying to do the polite to the heiress. Old Simpson keenly watches the whole goings on, and I've tried to pull him on! No go! But he sneaks off himself, gets roaring full, down at Rozel Pier, with a little French peddler fellow, that he has picked up. And, I don't like this French chap's looks. Too fly, and far too free with his money. There's no one else who has, as yet, showed up here. Not a woman, no other human being but a London lawyer. And I'm told now the guardian and niece are soon going over to London to deposit all the papers that Simpson brought home and to do 'a turn' at Doctor's Commons. Now's your very time—the dark of the moon. Better cut your job and come over to me at Granville; and why can we not turn the place up-while they are away? To do that, we must do Simpson 'for fair,' and I now know his nightly trail. Send money, plenty of it, and come on. I am 'on the beachcomber's lay,' now, down at the Jersey Arms, Rozel Pier. Write or telegraph me a line, and I'll instantly meet you at Granville, at the Cor d'Abondance."

A loving letter from Justine Delande inclosed a notice of a registered letter waiting at the Agence du Credit Lyonnais, Geneva. It is marked "Tres Important," she wrote, and then added: "I have received a letter from Nadine, who says that her guardian is now half crazy with excitement over the finishing of his 'History of Thibet, and Memoir Upon the Lost Ten Tribes,' for he has an Indian visitor of princely rank, and he even proposes to take this Prince Djiddin and his 'Moonshee' into the house, so as to shut the world out from the wonderful disclosures of the only visitor of rank who ever left Thibet."

Alan Hawke's brow was gloomy when he read the last letter, which was a brief note from Captain Anstruther, informing him that his final instructions would be forwarded "in a week." The ominous silence of "Madame Berthe Louison," the living lie of her pretended visit to Russia, the trick of the letters sent on from Jitomir to his Parisian address, now only confirmed his jealous rage.

"They are living in a fool's paradise together, this dapper aide and the wily woman, hiding in England! One has betrayed me, and the other will now coldly abandon me! I'll soon raise a hornets' nest about their ears!" So, with a simple telegraphed word "coming," dispatched to "Joseph Smith," he sped on to Geneva from his "Leipsic defeat" at Berlin, but only to meet a ghastly "Waterloo" at the Grand Hotel National. He had ordered the letters from the Hotel Faucon to be sent on there to Miss Justine, and when he had freed himself from her clasping arms he read a curt official note from the Viceroy's aid-de-camp which left him livid in a paroxysm of fury. On his way from the station he had only stopped long enough at the Agence du Credit Lyonnais to receive an official-looking document. "My accounts, I presume," he had muttered, thrusting them in his pocket. But, when he had read Captain Anstruther's formal note, he tore open the letter of the great French Banking Company. The two letters curtly illustrated the old saw, that "it never rains, but it pours!" With a fluttering heart poor Justine Delande watched her undeclared lover's blackening face.

"Hell and furies!" he cried, "the whole world is leagued against me. I've got to go back to India now, Justine, and go alone. Luck is dead against me now." And the whitening face of the woman who hung on his every glance made the infuriated man even more reckless. "Damn them, I'll grind them all to powder!" he growled. For the tide was on the turn, and it was dead water again at Geneva, the tide fast receding, and the man who was "a devil for luck" was soon left on the rocks of a silent despair.

Alan Hawke's eyes gleamed out with a murderous sheen as he scanned both letters carefully. "It is his work—the low dog—and he shall die. Wait till Jack Blunt and I get a hack at him," he mused, with a sudden conviction that he dared not now show himself at St. Heliers, nor openly approach the Banker's Folly. "I stand to lose all and win nothing. I must work in the dark. I cannot dare to brave this Anstruther. They would simply drive me from India. But, Simpson and Ram Lal shall pay! And, Berthe Louison—Ah! By God! I will strike her to the heart now! I see the way!"

The official words of Captain Anstruther were few but crushing in there stern brevity. And Alan Hawke's heart sank as he read them over again. "By the orders of His Excellency, the Viceroy, I have the honor to inform you that he has withdrawn your temporary rank, and all powers heretofore delegated to you will cease on the receipt of this letter, which please acknowledge. On reporting to me in London in person, you will receive the payment of all your accounts with your back pay and transportation back to Calcutta, the place of your temporary appointment. All the Consuls in continental Europe have now been notified of the cessation of your powers, and you will therefore, in no way act in the future in regard to the confidential business once in your hands. The inquiry has been finally abandoned by the order of the Indian Government.

"Please do report as soon as possible, and deliver over all papers and vouchers now remaining in your hands. With assurance of my consideration, Yours,

"ANSON ANSTRUTHER, Captain and A. D. C."

"Official,

"Confidential."

The letter of the Credit Lyonnais was even more menacing in its tone. The Direction G'entrale referred to a formal letter of the solicitors of the estate of Hugh Fraser Johnstone, deceased, totally repudiating the four unaccepted drafts of five thousand pounds sterling each, and legally notifying the Direction of an intended suit to recover from the payee and the in-dorser, the first draft for five thousand pounds paid before Executor Andrew Fraser had filed his objections with Messrs. Glyn, Carr & Glyn. "The arrival from India of the papers of the deceased, and the testimony of his body servant Simpson, as well as the Calcutta Banker and solicitors, proves that no such considerable withdrawals as twenty-five thousand pounds were ever contemplated by the deceased, who had sent the most minute business instructions to his agent and later executor."

"I shall have to throw this all back on Ram Lal." mused Alan Hawke, who hastily bade Justine an adieu, until he could conjure up an explanation for the Geneva agents of the Credit Lyonnais. The closing words of the Paris Derection were semi-hostile. "Be pleased. Monsieur, to call at once upon our Geneva branch and explain these imputations. We are forced to withhold your present deposits to cover any reclamation and legal expenses, and we therefore beg you to discontinue the drawing of any drafts upon us until the solicitors of Messrs. Glyn, Carr & Glyn and the Executor notify us of the settlement of this distressing imputation upon the regularity of our actions as your business agents."

"That leaves me only the jewels, and about a thousand pounds ready cash on hand, and that is due from Anstruther," gloomily decided Alan Hawke, when he was safely locked in his rooms at the National.

"Tricked by this double-faced devil Louison-Delavigne, thrown out of my future rank, held for the five thousand pounds already advanced, and, with eleven thousand embargoed in that Paris pawnbroker shop of a Credit Lyonnais, I've but one course left to me now."

He took counsel of the brandy bottle, and then, ignoring all else, he sent off a careful letter to Joseph Smith. "I'll jolly poor Justine a bit, so as to leave one faithful friend to watch and get all my letters here. Jack can raise money on the jewels now for us both. I must tell these fellows of the French Bank here that I go to London to see my own lawyers. I'll go over, settle with Anstruther, and then just quietly disappear. The next blow shall come out of the blackness of night, and I'll strike them all at once!"

In the evening, Major Alan Hawke drove with Justine Delande to the restaurant garden, where, long months before, he had first learned the daring hardihood of his fair employer—the acute woman who had fooled him at every turn. His heart was saddened with all the fresh hopes which had failed him. He had frankly told Euphrosyne Delande that a return journey to India, and a long and bitter struggle now lay between him and the rank and competence which he would need to make her loving sister his wife.

Three hours later Justine Delande's arms clung desparingly around the handsome outcast, as he was leaving her to be escorted home by the adroit Francois, already in waiting without the restaurant with a closed carriage. The presage of sorrow weighed upon her loving heart.

"Alan, My God, I can not let you go. You are the one brightness of my life. My heart of hearts. My very soul," sobbed the wretched woman. "I have fears for you. They will kill you in that far land, these powerful enemies. That mysterious devil woman who bends all to her will will ruin you." And then, really touched at heart, the desperate trickster drew off his finger a superb diamond, the nonpareil, the choicest stone of Ram Lal's unwilling tribute. "Wear this always, and think of me, Justine," he said. "You are the only woman who ever loved me, and, if I succeed, I swear you shall share my better fortunes—if not, then—" he crushed her to his breast and ran out of the room, before she could drag him back. "Go in, Francois, quickly to Miss Justine," cried Hawke, thrusting a hundred-franc note in the butler's open hand. The rattle of departing wheels was heard as Francois supported the half-fainting woman to her carriage.

"Now for London," growled Major Hawke as the train dashed down the Rhone valley. "I've got a clear alibi here. All my letters sent to Justine will be forwarded to the Delhi Club. One day in London, then to Granville, and Jack Blunt. They will only get Justine's story if they shadow me, and if I can only hit it off right, at Calcutta. Yes! there is the king luck of all. To give the whole thing away to the baffled Viceroy. Then denounce Ram Lal to him as the early confederate and later assassin of Hugh Fraser Johnstone! These jewels that I have 'innocently received' will connect old Ram Lal with Hugh Fraser's betrayed trust. I will hold the murder business back at first.

"Ram Lal or his estate will be finally forced to cash my drafts. It is clear that Johnstone and Ram Lal have either divided or hidden the jewels. Yes! By God! I have it. If I can wring them out of the old professor, or find them, I will then hide them away and secretly report the whole affair to the Viceroy, in my chosen colors as a friend of the Crown, and they'll give me a huge reward; my permanent army rank will soon follow. So, if Justine only holds to my alibi, by God! I will marry her, for she would be a badge of respectability. I'll take no more chances after this—not another single chance! I've got money enough to satisfy Jack Blunt. He shall secretly sell the jewels for me—a small lot, here and there, a few at a time."

"There is just one frightful risk to run," he muttered, as he reached out for his brandy flask. "Ram Lal might go in to save his twenty-five thousand pounds, for the Johnstone estate will never pay these disputed claims which I cannot prove in law. Good in honor, but bad in law! And if he should denounce me privately to the Viceroy, as the real murderer of Hugh Fraser? He is there on the ground. I did not denounce him. I did not produce the dagger. I dare not to explain why I concealed the crime. An accessory! He might seek to turn Queen's evidence, and even try to hang me. He is rich, sly, smart. By God! they may even now be shadowing me. Once on English soil, I am at Anstruther's mercy." He was still white-faced and unmanned as he took the Boulogne boat the next evening. "I must face Anstruther, get my money, and then telegraph to Justine my departure for India from London. I'll wire the poor woman from here now. A few loving words will cheer her. Her true heart is the only jewel I have that I have not stolen. Poor girl! she will miss me sorely!" And the handsome blackguard sighed over the ruin he had wrought—an honest woman's shattered peace of mind. It weighed heavily upon him now.

For there came back to him now strange shadowy glimpses of his own stormy past! Dashing on, to face unknown dangers, the dauntless adventurer, with a softened heart, recalled the days when he could gaze, without a secret shudder, upon the battle-torn colors of the regiment from which he had been chased by that suddenly discovered sin, once so sweet!

He "looked along life's columned years, to see its riven fane—just where it fell." And, sadly alone in life now, his heart gnawed with a growing remorse, he saw in the mirror of memory, once more, the bright faced boy who had "filled the cup, to toast his flag and land." Alan Hawke, in all the bright promise of his youth, the darling of women, the envy of men!

Under the swiftly gliding current of his tortuous past, he plainly saw now the fanged reefs which had wrecked him! With a smothered groan, he recalled all that he had lost, and this bitter introspection brought up to him, among his deeds of passion, the one needless cruelty of his reckless life! "Poor Justine! There is such a thing as woman's love after all!" he sighed, for he knew that the steadfast woman had poured out the wine of her life all in vain. "She loves me!" he cried!

Woman, born to be man's sport and plaything, is doomed to be the unconscious avenger of her sex in every tragedy of the heart! The treason of some callous lover is repaid with vengeance meted out to some defenseless man who comes all unguarded "into the arid desert of Phryne's life, where all is parched and hot." And, Alan Hawke, the innocent Lancelot, had suffered for some recreant's past crime!

Among the visions of the burning Lotos Land, the bright phantasmagoria of his unstained youth, there came back now to Alan Hawke all the glories of his first Durbar, the unforgotten day when he had fallen under the spell of the woman whose fatal touch had withered the "very rose and expectancy" of his brilliant promise. His mind strayed backward through all the misty years to that gorgeous scene of Oriental pomp. He closed his eyes and pictured again the brilliant pageant.

The huge masses of serried troops, the lines of stately elephants, the castled background of the temples of Aurungzebe. The blare of trumpets smote once more upon his ear, and hordes of jewel-decked Asiatics swept along before the pompous military representatives of the Empress, who wears the Crown of the Seas.

There was a quickening of "Love's extinguished embers" as he lived over again the moment, when "side by side, with England's pride," he rode with his sword lowered in knightly salute before the clustered banners of the Imperial military throne. And the hour of his fate sounded when the eyes of a woman rested upon him in a mute appeal! Their glances told him all.

For, then and there, the young officer had seen the wonderful beauty of the woman who had lured him on and then, in after days, sold his unstained soul to shame! A fair-faced Lilith, her glowing beauty enshrined in all the borrowed splendor of majesty, a woman of gleaming golden hair, a later, all too willing, Guenevere! The soft subtle invitation of her eyes of sapphire blue had called him to her side, in that unspoken pact which needs no words! He was her slave from the first moment! With a last pang of his quivering heart, Hawke recalled the sly skill of the faithless wife who had drawn the young officer into her net, for the passing amusement of her idle hours! Too late he knew all the artful craft of his being bidden to the Grand Ball, of the "veiled interest" which had "detailed him, for special duty," of the self-protecting maneuvers which had placed him on the staff of the faded valetudinarian general who had given his spotless name to the woman whose lava heart glowed under a snowy bosom. It was the wreck of a soul!

And then, with a gasp, he recalled his mad fever to win every honor under her glowing eyes. The forgotten deeds of desperate valor—all useless now, and stained forever with the bar sinister of his treason. He shuddered at the unforgotten delights of the hour when they had met in her seraglio bower of shaded luxury, and "the fairest of Laocoons" had answered his passionate whisper, "Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die," with the faltered words: "Alan, you are all the world to me!"

Fondly blind, he had drifted along in a Fool's Paradise, at her bidding, until the crash came! He never knew the military Sir Modred, who had betrayed the open secret, but his blood boiled when he recalled the cruel abandonment to the rage of a jealous and awakened spouse!

All in vain had been his manly sacrifice to save the woman whom he had loved more than life. He had cast away every protection for himself. Duped and tricked, he had remained mute before the storm of abuse heaped on him by the General, and his papers sent in, at a momentary summons, had carried him in dishonor out of the band of laureled soldier knights, to dream no more "the dream that martial music weaves!" And the smiling woman Judas tricked him to the very last!

How hollow her faith, how lying the mute pleading of her eyes, he knew now, for had he not paused at the door for one despairing glance of farewell, to hear her murmur to her placated lord: "After all your goodness to him, to dare to offer me insult! You have punished him rightly, but, he is a fascinating traitor, after all!" Deprived of his sword, shunned by his associates, and lingering near her in hopes of the last interview pledged him by her lying eyes, he had only been undeceived when he vainly tried to reach her carriage for a last farewell on a star-lit lonely drive.

The cold cutting accent of her voice smote him as the edge of a sword. "Drive on, Johnson!" she sharply cried. "These vagabond people must face the General himself." Then came the insane self-sacrifice of his reckless downfall, but he had spared her to the very last.

He bowed his head in his hands, and a storm of agony swept over him as he recalled the word "traitor," branded upon his brow as a badge of shame, and again he wandered along that devious path which had led him year by year downward. Too bitterly self-accusing to palliate his past, he only knew that in all the long years of social pariahhood he had learned to despise all men and to trust no woman! For had not Friendship been a lie to him, Love only a hollow cheat, and woman's vows of deathless loyalty but writ in sand to be washed out by the next wave of passion?

And yet, stained with crime, there was one breath of truth which swept over his soul as fresh as the voice of the "pines of Ramoth Hill!" His eyes were misty and his breath choked in a sorrowing gasp of manly remorse, as the winsome face of the true-hearted Justine rose up before him in this hour of lonely agony! Her devotion had touched the wayworn wanderer, and, pure and unselfish, her love had been the one bright star of all these darkened years!

"By Jove! She is a royal soul! If I could only save her the shock of the awakening," he murmured. His heart beat generously in a thrill of pride recalling Justine's steadfast devotion to the motherless girl whom he had sought to entangle. "Far above rubies!" he cried, and the memory of the fond woman who was watching for him at Lausanne, swept over his stormy soul to bring unbidden tears to eyes which had never flinched before the red flash of the grim cannon.

"There are still good women in the world!" he muttered, "and, God bless you, you have taught me this, Justine!" Drawing her picture from his bosom, he gazed fondly at the face of the gentle-hearted daughter of the Alps. A vain and passionate regret racked his bosom—the last struggle of his wavering soul! "Shall I turn back?" he doubtfully cried. And then in the rush of his onward course, a dull hopeless feeling came over him. "Kismet!" he cried. "It is too late now. If they had only trusted me! If they had told me all and given my fighting soul a chance to redeem the lost promise once written on my brow. I have played a man's part before! I might, perhaps, have won this girl's gratitude and earned Justine's love to be a shield and a buckler to me. But—" his head, overweaned with care, drooped down, and in the company of strange visions and and dreams of ominous import, the hunted soldier of fortune forgot alike the echoing voice of his better angel, and lost from view, the shadowy faces of both the woman who had lured him to a living death, and the tender-hearted one whose heart was glowing at Lausanne in all the fervor of her unrequited devotion. Over Alan Hawke, sleeping there, as he was swiftly borne away, hovered, in sad regret, his good angel, with sorrowing eyes, for the stern, self-accusing man had not sought, in the last hours of this sorrow, even the poor consolation that his life had been wrecked to feed the fires of vanity burning in the jaded heart of the beautiful Faustine, whose cold desertion had sold his youth to shame!

Twenty-four hours later Major Alan Hawke was again a stormy petrel on Life's trackless ocean. The cold politeness of Captain Anson Anstruther at the brief interview at the Junior United Service Club in London at once decided the wanderer to make for India as soon as his "pressing engagements" would allow. There was no seeming menace, however, in Anstruther's wearied air of perfunctory courtesy.

"The whole affair being officially dropped, Major Hawke," said Anstruther, "I only ask for your personal receipt for my individual check. You will observe that this eleven hundred pounds is not in any way government funds. And, on behalf of the Viceroy himself, I thank you for your energy shown in the inquiry, which is now permanently abandoned." To Major Hawke's murmured request, Anstruther replied:

"Certainly! Drive around to Grindlay's in Parliament Street with me and they will at once give you notes or their own circular check for this money." In ten minutes, when Hawke had lightly announced his intention to return to India, the Captain observed: "I may not meet you for some years. If the Viceroy returns to England, my promotion will probably carry me with his Embassy to Paris as Major and Military Attache." And then they parted as mere casual acquaintances.

"Damn his cool impertinence," mused Alan Hawke, as he caught a passing cab, after telegraphing his greetings and intended departure to Justine Delande.

"Write one letter to Hotel Binda, Paris, then all to the P. & O. Agency, Brindisi; after that, to Delhi," were the lying words which reached the Swiss woman, whose loving breast was now given over to a tumult of sighs.

Major Hawke was not free from secret apprehensions until he landed at Calais, upon the next morning. "Now for a last 'throw off' at Paris!" he exclaimed. "Damn England! I hope I shall never see it again!" he growled, unmindful of the pitiless Fates ever spinning the mysterious web of Destiny. "I'll first show up at Berthe Louison's, at No. 9 Rue Berlioz. They shall have my next address given to them as Delhi. The real Major Hawke dives under the troubled sea of Life at Paris, only to emerge at Calcutta! Ram Lal is like all his kind, a coward at heart! He has not denounced me, for, if he had, Captain Anstruther would have nabbed me in England. He acts by the Viceroy's private cabled orders. No! The coast is all clear for my dash at the enemy's works!"

Before the morning dawned on the sea-girt coast of La Manche, Marie Victor had duly telegraphed Major Hawke's impending departure for India to the beautiful recluse who now cheered the lonely bride of "the Moonshee," at the old Norman chateau, embowered in its splendid gardens, within a league of the Banker's Folly.

Alan Hawke, closely shaven, and masquerading in a French commis-voyageur's modest garb, was seated at ease in Etienne Garcin's death-trap at the Cor d'Abundance, in foggy Granville. His darkened locks and nondescript garb thoroughly effaced the "officer and gentleman." One of the old French villain's wickedest and prettiest woman decoys was coquettishly serving Hawke's breakfast as he read the burning words of Justine Delande's message from the heart. The last greeting, tear-blotted, and promptly sent to the Hotel Binda.

"It's a wild day, a wild-looking place, and a wild enough sea," grumbled Major Hawke, gazing out of the grimy window at the rolling green surges breaking, white-capped, far out beyond the new pier, where the black cannon were drenched and crusted with the salty flying scud. Far away, a little side-wheel steamer was laboring along over the strait from the blue island of Jersey, rising and dipping half out of sight, with a trail of intermittent puffs of dense black smoke.

"There is the enemy's stronghold, and now for Jack Blunt's plan of campaign! I wonder if he'll come over to-day, or to-morrow? He must have had my telegram last night!" Alan Hawke amused himself with the bold, black-eyed French girl's vicious stories of olden deeds done there in Etienne Garcin's gloomy spider's den. He even laughed when the red-bodiced she-devil laughingly pointed down at the loosened floor-planks in the back room, underneath which mantrap the swish of the throbbing waves could be heard.

Then the sheeted, cold driving rain hid the promontory, with its heavy, lumpy-looking fort, the old gray granite parish church, and the clustered ships of the harbor, now dashing about and tugging wildly at their doubled moorings, soon to be left high and dry on the soft ooze when the thirty-foot tide receded. "There's where we find our best customers," laughed the French wanton, as Alan Hawke drew her to his knee, and they laughed merrily over the golden harvest of the sea, the price of the recovered dead. Through the narrow stone fanged streets lumbered along the heavy French hooded carts, driven by squatty men in oil skins and sou'westers, and laden down with the spoils of the whale, cod, and oyster fisheries. Stout women in huge blue aprons, with baskets on their rounded arms, gossiped at the protecting corners, while the shouts of Landlord Etienne Garcin's drunken band of sea wolves now began to ring out in the smoky salle a boire.

It was two o'clock when the burly form of Etienne Garcin was propelled unceremoniously into Alan Hawke's room. A grin of satisfaction spread over the bullet-headed old ruffian's face, and his round gray pig eyes twinkled, as he noted the already established entente cordiale between Jack Blunt's pal and the wanton spy who was the absent Jack's own especial pet. But, Alan Hawke was temporarily blind to the universally offered charms of the soubrette as he read Joseph Smith's careful report.

"That's the talk!" joyously cried Hawke. His heart bounded in a fierce thrill. "By God! Simpson shall be 'done up' in short order. The drunken old dog. He cut off the payment of my drafts with his blabbing tongue!

"Yes, over the cliffs he goes, and we will make sure of him—forever—before he takes his last tumble! Jack! Jack! You are a hero!" he mused, as the triumphant words of Jack Blunt's great discovery were read again and again. And then, he carefully burned the letter, before the astonished eyes of the tempting companion of his waiting hours. "These fools of employers!" cheerfully muttered Alan Hawke. "They always think that 'Servant's Hall' has no eyes. That the maid in her cap and apron has not the same burning passions as idle Madame in her silks and laces. That the man has not his own easy-going vices just as alive and masterful as the base appetites of the swell master."

While Alan Hawke thus exulted at Granville, there was gloom and jealousy in the heart of Prof. Alaric Hobbs, of Waukesha University, Wisconsin, U. S. A.

A tall, lank, bespectacled "Westerner," nearly thirty-five years of age, the blue-eyed country boy had dragged himself up from the obscurity of a frontier American farm into the higher life. Uncouth, awkward, and yet resolute and untiring, he had justified his first instructor's prediction:

"He has the head of a horse, and will make his mark!" Newspaper trainboy, chainman, assistant on Government frontier surveys, and frontier scout, he early saved his money so as to complete a sporadic university curriculum. A trip to Liberia, a dash down into Mexico, and a desert jaunt in Australia, had not satisfied his craving for adventure. With the results of two years of professional lectures, he was now imbibing continental experiences, and plotting a bicycle "scientific tour of the world." Hard-headed, fearless, devoted, and sincere, he was a mad theorist in all his mental processes, and had tried, proved, and rejected free love, anarchy, Christian science, and a dozen other feverish fads, which for a time jangled his mental bells out of tune. A cranky tracing of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel down to the genial scalpers of the American plains had thrown him across the renowned Professor Andrew Fraser, who had, on his part, located these same long mourned Hebrews in Thibet, ignoring the fact that they are really dispersed in the United States of America as "eaters of other men's hard-made 'honey'" in the "drygoods," clothing, and "shent per shent" line. For, a glance at the signs on Broadway will prove to any one that the "lost" have been found in Gotham.

Smoking his corncob pipe the Professor paced his rooms at the Royal Victoria, and mentally consigned Prince Djiddin and his indefatigable Moonshee to Eblis, the Inferno, Sheol, or some other ardent corner of Limbo. "How long will these two yellow fellows keep poor old Fraser enchanted?" mused the disgruntled American, mindful of his hotel bill running on. "The old man is crazy after the two Thibetans, and I can't see his game. He does not wish me to publish my own volume first. That is why he has given me the 'marble heart,' and taken them into his house. Their wing of the Banker's Folly is now an Eastern idolaters' temple. If I could only hook on to the 'Moonshee,' I might make a 'scoop'—a clean scoop—on old Fraser. God! how my book would sell if I could only get it out first. And yet I dare not offend this old scholar, Andrew Fraser. He must be true to me. He has read to me all the original manuscript of his own half-finished work. He must trust to me, and he has promised to give me a resume of their disclosures also after they leave. The Thibetan Prince will only be here two weeks longer."

"Then old Fraser will take me to his heart again." Alaric Hobbs reflected on his vain attempt to try the Tunguse, Chinook, Zuni, Apache, Sioux, and Esquimaux dialects on the handsome Prince Djiddin, whose Oriental magnificence was even now the despairing admiration of the two pretty housemaids.

"My august master cannot speak to any one but the great scholar whom he came here to see. He soon returns to his retirement in his palace in the Karakorum Mountains. And he never will emerge thence!" solemnly said the Moonshee, adding in a whisper: "He may, by the grace of Buddha, be re-incarnated as the Dalai-Lama. He springs from the loins of kings. I dare not break in upon his awful silence." The Moonshee's significant gesture of drawing a hand across his own brown throat had silenced the pushing American professor.

"By hokey!" he groaned, "it is hard to have to play second fiddle to this purblind old Scotchman." Alaric Hobbs had been a reporter upon that dainty sheet, The New York Whorl, in one of his "emergent" periods, and so he writhed in agony at being left at the post. "I must be content to tap old Fraser when he comes back from London with that embarrassing lump of beauty, his millionaire niece. She would make a fitting spouse for this Prince Djiddin, for she never speaks a word—at least to me. And this swell Prince, who comes 'only one in a box,' gets the same 'frozen hand.' Funny girl, that. But I must yield to old Fraser's moods." Alaric Hobbs then descended to the tap-room and instructed the pretty barmaid in the manufacture of his own favorite "cocktail," an American drink of surpassing fierceness and "innate power," which had once caused "Bald-headed Wolf," a Kiowa chieftain, to slay his favorite squaw, scalp a peace commissioner, and chase a fat army paymaster till he died of fright in his ambulance, after Alaric Hobbes had incautiously left a bottle of this "red-eye" mixture with his aboriginal host on one of the "exploring tours." A powerful disturbing agent, the American cocktail!

But for all Miss Nadine Johnstone's seeming aversion to men, and in spite of Prince Djiddin's inability to utter a word of any jargon save ninety-five degree Thibetan, "far above proof," on this very morning while the "Moonshee" was transcribing under the watchful eyes of the excited Andrew Fraser the disclosures of the evening before, the young millionairess was "getting on" very well in exhibiting the glories of the tropical garden to the august tourist from the lacustrine Himalayas.

Jules Victor adroitly busied the maid whom Janet Fairbarn had dispatched to "play propriety," and the other London girl had quietly stolen away to her own last rendezvous with her mysterious London lover, "Mr. Joseph Smith," otherwise "Jack Blunt, Esq., of the Swell Mob of the Thames."

The whispers of the stately young Prince brought crimson blushes to the face of the glowing girl, whose answering murmurs were as low as the siren voice of Swinburne's "small serpents, with soft, stretching throats." They had a double secret to keep now. A momentous, a dangerous one; for in the depths of the Tropical Gardens of Rozel, the passionate hearted Alixe Delavigne was hidden, waiting this very morning to clasp again the beautiful orphan to a bosom throbbing in wildest love. Prince Djiddin, always on his guard, artfully turned back and busied the maid, when she was released from Jules Victor's vociferous bar-gaining, with a half-hour's choosing her "fairing," out of the lively peddler's pretty stock. The woman's vanity made her an easy victim. The "descendant of Thibetan Kings" could not, of course, speak intelligibly, but the yellow sovereigns which he carried were the magic talisman which opened at once the pretty maid servant's softened heart.

It was a long half hour before the happy Nadine Johnstone returned to join the kinsman of the Maharajah of Cashmere. Her eyes were gleaming in a tender, dawning lovelight, her lips still thrilling with Alixe Delavigne's warm kisses. In her heart, there still rang out her mysterious visitor's last words: "Wait, darling! My own darling! Before another month the secret Government agent will have officially visited Andrew Fraser. We are all ready to act with crushing power when the happy moment safely arrives. And you shall then hear all the story of the past on my breast. You shall know how near you have been to my loving heart in all these weary years. The story of your own dear mother's life shall be my wedding present to you. Yet, a few days more of watchful patience," softly sighed Alixe.

"For we must not let Andrew Fraser wake for a moment from his frenzy of Thibetan study until we can force from him the permission which we will demand to visit you, and to free you from his control."

Prince Djiddin paced solemnly back toward the Banker's Folly, leaving the overjoyed maid to bundle up all her many gifts. A grateful wink to Jules Victor from the Prince rewarded the disguised valet, as he gayly sped away to meet his mistress, and to obtain her orders for the next day. This artful game of mingled Literature and Love had so far been safely played, but Jules Victor had secretly warned Nadine Johnstone against any confidences with her pretty London sewing woman. "She has found a sweetheart here. He is a curious looking fellow, he has money and is liberal, and, so, what you tell her she will surely tell her sweetheart. Trust to no one but the other maid, who is devoted to me," proudly said the dapper little Frenchman. Nearing the mansion, on this eventful morning, Prince Djiddin, at a hidden bend of a leafy path, whispered to his fair conductress, "For God's sake, darling Nadine, do not betray yourself! Those sweetly shining eyes are tell-tale stars! Your heart happiness will struggle for expression. Go to your rooms at once. Pour out your happy heart in song, lift up your voice. But, watch over your very heart-throbs! Only a single fortnight more, darling, and we will clip the claws of this old Scottish lion who has you in his clutches!

"Anstruther will soon make his coup de main, for Hawke has at last gone back to India, and we will have a deadly grasp soon on the frightened Andrew Fraser. He must either give up his legal tyranny and yield you to us, or else face a future which would appall even a braver man. I dare not to tell you our secret yet. Only the Viceroy and Anstruther know it. And, now, darling, above all, be sure not to betray yourself, in London. Remember that Anstruther will have you secretly watched, from this gate to the very moment when you return to it! Any false play of old Fraser would lead to his detention by the authorities, and you would be freed at once by the law!"

In the three weeks of their long masquerade, neither Prince Djiddin, his scribe and interpreter, or else the two, as studious visitors, never left Andrew Fraser alone a single moment! The old scholar was thrilled at heart with Eric Murray's solemn rehearsing of Frank Halton's valuable notebooks and ingenious theories. He eagerly enforced Prince Djiddin's request that no curious strangers should be allowed to force themselves on him, no matter of what lofty rank. Prince Djiddin was wrapped in the veil of a solemn personal seclusion.

And to this end Simpson, now the butler of the "Banker's Folly," was especially assigned to wait upon the austere "Prince Djiddin" as his "body servant." Only one visit of state was exchanged between "Prince Djiddin" and General Wragge, Her Majesty's Commander of the Channel Islands. The "Moonshee," with a sober dignity, had interpreted for the British Commander of the Manche, and in due state, a return visite de ceremonie to General Wagge's mansion and headquarters strangely found Captain Anson Anstruther, A.D.C. of the Viceroy of India, a pilgrim to St. Heliers, to arrange secretly for "Prince Djiddin's" safe conduct and return to Thibet. The curious society crowd and St. Heliers's beautiful women envied Captain Anstruther his three hours conference with the "Asiatic lion."

By day, in the vaulted library, Andrew Fraser pored over the weird stories of Runjeet Singh, of Aurung zebe, of King Dharma, and the Cashmerian priest who came with Buddha's first message to Thibet! The story of the marvelous royal babe found floating in the Ganges, in a copper box, a century before Christ, the tales of the "Konchogsum," the "Buddha jewel," the "doctrine jewel," and the "priesthood jewel" fed the burning fever of old Fraser's senile mind. He now felt that he lived but only in the past. At night, he labored alone till the wee sma' hours, depositing his precious manuscript in a secret hiding-place, where he now scarcely glanced at the "insured packet," which had been such a dangerous legacy of his dead brother. He had forgotten all his daily life and even his fears for the future in the fierce exultation of concealing his strangely gotten Thibetan lore from his rival, Alaric Hobbs.

"A remarkable mind," growled old Fraser, "but a Yankee—and so untrustworthy." At last, unwillingly, with a quaking heart, lest Prince Djiddin should decamp in his absence, he obeyed an imperative legal summons and proceeded to London with Nadine Johnstone, leaving his house under the charge of that sphinx-eyed Scottish spinster, Janet Fairbarn.

To the "Moonshee," and to the rubicund veteran Simpson, the departing Andrew Fraser said solemnly, "The Prince is to be the master here until my return." With a joyous heart the London sewing girl embarked as Miss Johnstone's one personal attendant, forgetful of her devoted lover, Joseph Smith, who had temporarily disappeared, gone over to France "on business." For she was herself going back to the dear delights of her beloved London, and her liberal lover had already given her his address at the Cor d'Abondance.

"You must telegraph to me, Mattie, where you are staying, and when you leave London to return. I may run over to Southampton and come back on the same boat with you. Write to me, my own girl, every day, and here's a five-pound note to buy your stamps with." On his sacred promise of honor to write to her himself every day, and to let no black Gallic eyes eclipse her "orbs of English blue," Mattie Jones allowed her lover an extra liberal allowance of good-bye kisses.

While Professor Andrew Fraser, Miss Nadine Johnstone, and the lovelorn Mattie Jones, were escorted to London by a head clerk of the estate's solicitors, Prince Djiddin and the "Moonshee" unbent their brows and rested from the nervous strain of the three weeks of continued deception.

While the happy "Moonshee" escaped to his own fair bride, Prince Djiddin, under Simpson's guidance, examined minutely the superb modern castle, and even microscopically examined all the beautiful surroundings of Rozel Head. "It may come in handy some day," mused Major Hardwicke, "especially if we have to aid Nadine Johnstone to escape." The pseudo-Prince was glad to often steal out alone to the headland overlooking Rozel Pier, and there watch the French luggers beating to seaward sailing like fierce cormorants along the wild coast of St. Malo. He was glad to fill his lungs with the fresh, crisp, salt air, and to commune in safety at length with the faithful Simpson.

Securely hid in an angle of the cliff, they talked over all the mystery of Hugh Fraser's bloody "taking off," and of the dreary three years of Death in Life left before Nadine.

"As for the old master, he was an out and out hard 'un," stolidly said Simpson. "Who killed him, nobody knows and nobody cares. I've always suspicioned that there Ram Lal and yer fancy friend, this Major Alan Hawke."

Hardwicke started in a sudden alarm. "Why so?" he demanded.

"I believe that they tried to blackmail him about some of his old Eurasian love affairs, or else some official secret they had spied out. You see the niggers in the marble house were all Ram Lal's friends, and any one of them could have left the murderers alone to do their work and then let 'em out of the house. I believe that Hawke did the job, and Ram Lal got away with some of the missing crown jewels. I'll tell you, Major Harry, General Willoughby and the magistrates had me under fire there for many a day."

"See here, Simpson," said Major Hardwicke, "a man who would murder the father, would rob the daughter! I'll give you a thousand pounds if you instantly notify me, if Hawke ever is found creeping around here. There may be some ugly old family secrets, you know."

"I'm your man! Pay or no pay!" cried Simpson. "Only they think of giving me a three months' leave on pay to visit my people."

"Don't go! Don't go! till I tell you!" cried the Major.

"I am glad this fellow Hawke, whom you say has been dropped, is now on his way back to India," said Simpson.

"Yes, but he might show up here devilish strangely," mused Hardwicke. "He is just the fellow for a dirty fluke. Watch over Nadine, Simpson," cried Hardwicke, "for I've sworn to make her my wife, within three months, uncle or no uncle!"

"I will," growled Simpson. "I've an old grudge to settle with the Major, and I'll tell you some day," said the veteran. "Let us go in. There are some curious people here. I'll tell you all when I'm your own man, and the young mistress is Mrs. Major Hardwicke!"

On this very evening, as the gray mists hid the Jersey outline from the windows of Etienne Garcin's den, Jack Blunt and Major Alan Hawke were seated in the Major's bedroom in the cabaret. They were cheerfully discussing two steaming "grogs," but there was doubt and a shifty lack of thorough confidence between the two scoundrels as yet.

"So you think the boat will do?" flatly demanded Jack Blunt, offering some exceptional cigars.

"Just the thing," carefully replied the Major. "And your terms for a two weeks charter?"

"Twenty-five hundred francs for the boat and outfit—the same sum for the gang, cash down. Two weeks, with the privilege of renewal for two more-at the same rate," doggedly said Blunt. "Now, you've got to make up your mind soon, Hawke," said Jack Blunt roughly. "I've told you the whole lay, and so far, have given you the worth of your money. If you can't 'come up,' then I'm going to run a lugger load of brandy and 'baccy over to the Irish coast. She's a sixty tonner and by God! fit to cross the Atlantic! Old Garcin, too, is getting impatient. Our being here, stops his 'regular business,'" gloomily said Blunt.

Hawke's impassive face angered Jack Blunt as he continued: "And you say that I can trust Garcin's brother Andre down at Isle Dial."

"Yes. Even if we had to stow one or both of these fools away down there."

"I am sure that Angelique and I could hide them away for a year or else safely forever there," cried Jack Blunt, in a hoarse whisper. "It's only a matter of money and damme if I believe you've got any! If you fool us, you'll never get out of here alive!" Major Hawke only smiled, and dropped his hands lightly on the butts of two heavy bull-dog revolvers ready there in his velveteen trousers' pockets.

"Jack! Don't be an ass!" he said. "I play this game to win. Do you think that I would bring my ready money into this murder pen? Now, tell me what you will take in cash, to tell me where the old miser has hidden the stuff I want? And how much will you take to do the job? I want to know when they return, and I want your help and the aid of the gang. You are to crack the crib—alone—while they are away, and then we, perhaps, may meet them, on their way home. The lugger lying off in that cove to the north of Rozel Head, below the old martello tower."

"Have you been over there?" amazedly cried Blunt.

"Oh! I know every inch of the place of old," laughed Hawke, still with his hands on his revolvers.

"Well, Major," said Jack, pouring out a cognac, "I'll take, first, five hundred pounds cash for the information. Another five hundred for the job, with a quarter of what we get. And this second sum you can put up with Etienne Garcin. You can pay him now the two hundred for the men and the boat, out of that, and give me the rest of the odd change later. We'll never lose sight of each other after we start. For the Hirondelle will not leave me in the lurch. I've sworn never to wear the widow's jewelry again." Jack Blunt's eyes were devilish in their glare.

"So, it's five hundred pounds down now, and I can order the expedition on, after the payment. You'll give me on the instant all the news from Mattie Jones of the intended return, for I propose to have some fun with the Professor."

"Honor bright," said Jack forcibly. "For we will all hang or 'go to quod' together, if there's a break once that we begin. We had better start when I get her next letter, for Mattie is to write me to the Jersey Arms and then telegraph there, too, from Southampton. I'll have one of the crew pipe them off from the pier home to the Tolly, and a half dozen of the boys will be in hiding, ready for work. So you can work your scheme as you will."

"It's a go, then. Come on, now, and get your money," said Hawke, as he led the way to the nearest fiacre. In ten minutes, Alan Hawke disappeared into the railway waiting-room, and returned after a visit to the luggage store-room. Jack Blunt was astonished at his pal's evident distrust. "Here you are, Jack," the Major cordially cried, as they sought the rear room of the neat cafe opposite the gare. "Now, count over your five hundred pounds. I'll give Garcin the other sum in your presence. Then, I suppose that I am safe," he coldly smiled. "Tell me now where has old Fraser hidden the stuff."

"In his study on the first floor, in a secret hiding place. The girl Mattie has watched the old fellow through the keyhole. I know just where to easily break in on the ground floor. These damned Hindus are far away in the other wing, so there's only Simpson to hinder. Now, I'll have a couple of the boys pipe him off at the Jersey Arms. Old Janet Fairbarn's strait-laced ways make him sneak out late at night for his toddy. When he is 'well loaded' and tired with climbing up the cliff, they will follow him and fix him, for good. One of the boys will come along with me, to my hiding place, and be 'outside fence' while the two others will watch the road and the gardener's quarters. The three men are two hundred yards away, in the porter's lodge. The old Scotch woman sleeps like a post. Then I make my way when I've done, at once to the Hirondelle, alone and hide my plant. The men relieved can rally on your party at the old martello tower, and so we will be ready to sail when your part of the job is done. Two on board, three with me, nine with you, will be plenty! My work is a quiet job! I can do the whole trick in five minutes! Yours, I leave for yourself. I know just where to lay my hand."

"But, should any trouble occur?" said Alan Ha wke, "any outcry, any pursuit?"

"Then I will bury the stuff on the shore, saunter back openly to the Jersey Arms, and just stay there as friend Joseph Smith, till I can get over to Granville by the steamer. The Hirondelle will not be seen by any one; there are fifty luggers always hovering around. She will first land us all in Bouley Bay in the morning, or drop half the men off at St. Catherine's Bay in the early afternoon. They all know every inch of the ground." In half an hour the chums in villainy dined gayly with "Angelique," and a running mate, rejoicing in the cognomen of "Petite Diable Jaune." The next day, a secret meeting with a confidential Jewish money-lender, enabled Major Alan Hawke to safely market the half of the jewels which he had extorted from Ram Lal Singh. In a waist belt, he wore a thousand pounds of Banque of France notes neatly concealed. Jack Blunt and Garcia had earned an extra bonus of a hundred pounds each in the jewel sale, and Alan Hawke laughed, as he laid away four thousand pounds in his safely deposited luggage, in the railway office. "I can trust to the French Republic—one and indivisible," he said, as he sent a loving letter to Justine Delande, and then mailed her the receipt for his valuable package, with his last wishes, "in case of accident." "These fellows might kill me for this, if they knew of it!" he growled.

Three days later, the stanch Hirondelle was beating up and down Granville Bay, while Alan Hawke awaited the letter of the faithful Mattie Jones. He had furnished the twenty-pound note which made that natty damsel doubly anxious to meet her faithful lover "Joseph Smith," to whom she now dispatched the news of the immediate return of the anxious Professor. Fraser was burning to take up the gathering of Thibetan pearls of hidden knowledge, while the artful and restless Professor Alaric Hobbs was stealthily waiting Prince Djiddin's departure, but kept busied with some personal tidal and magnetic observations on Rozel Head. In the deserted second floor of an old martello tower, he had made a lair for his evening star and planetory researches, and the ingenious Yankee concealed a rope ladder in the clinging ivy which enabled him to cut off all intrusion on his eyrie.



CHAPTER XV. THE FRENCH FISHER BOAT, "HIRONDELLE."



It was four o'clock of a wild November afternoon when Major Alan Hawke, cowering in a hooded Irish frieze ulster, crawled deeper into a cave-like recess in the little path leading from the Jersey Arms up to Rozel Head. The blinding rain was thrown in wild gusts by the howling winds, now lashing the green channel to a roughened foam. A sudden and terrific storm was coming on.

Half an hour before the disguised adventurer could see the ominous double storm signals flying in warning on the scattered coast guard stations, a signal of danger sent on from the Corbieres Lighthouse. But now not a single sail was to be seen, and huge banks of heavy blackening mists were rolling over the stormy channel. Not a stray sail was in sight!

"Where in hell is Jack?" raged the excited conspirator, swallowing half the contents of his brandy flask. As he returned it, the butts of his two revolvers and the handle of a huge couteau de chasse were plainly visible. "The fiends seem to be let loose to-day," he growled. "It would be the night of all nights! Ha!" The discharged officer noted two men in sou'westers and oilskins now toiling up the path. And his heart leaped up in a wild joy.

In another moment, he half dragged his drenched companions into the weather-worn cave. "What news?" he hoarsely demanded of Blunt, as he extended his flask.

"The best of all news," cheerily replied the mobs-man. "Here is Antoine. He raced down from St. Heliers, in a covered fly, and has brought the very latest news from Fort Regent. The Stella has lost the tide, cannot enter, and has, therefore, turned south, running down the channel. She can not dare to enter St. Heliers now till between ten and eleven to-night. Of course, she will not put back to Southampton, in the teeth of this southwest gale, the very heaviest known for twenty years. She has signaled the 'Corbieres,' and they have telegraphed over to the office at the pier. There's Mattie Jones's telegram. The three we want are on board, sure enough. And, thank God! the Hirondelle is riding safe and easy around the point. It's the one night of a million for my job and for yours."

"What's your final plan? We must get out of here soon," growled Hawke, shaking off the pouring rain like a burly water dog. "I have my two men already watching the little gardener's hut in the Tropical Gardens, where I hid my cracksman's outfit. Old Simpson is boozing away down at the Jersey Arms. I heard him tell pretty Ann, the barmaid, that he would have to be home by midnight, for the 'old man' would surely arrive in the morning. Now, will you stay here with this man, and 'do up' old Simpson? Mind you, there must be no stab or bullet wound. The 'life preserver,' and, then over with him! They will only think that rum and the fall did the business.

"I will make straight for the Hirondelle when I am done, and send a man to report to you at the old martello tower, where your gang are to meet you. This man can get over to the boat now and warn them to show up, carefully, one by one, and hide around there till dark. Not in the tower itself, for some of the coast-guard roundsmen might take shelter there and pitch into them for smugglers. I'll stay here till he comes back. If old Simpson should come along too early, why, you and I could hide him away here till it is dark enough to throw him over. And you'll surely catch old Fraser and the two women on the road between eleven and two. It will take over an hour to drive from the pier in this weather.

"All right!" sternly said Hawke. "Send your man right away. I will tell them what to do later, when I meet them. Let him send the boatswain and two men to meet us here, and wait and hide with the others around the tower. I will hunt in the bushes till I run on them. Stay! He can come back here to me with the three!"

It was already dark when the four men returned to where Alan Hawke lay perdu with his murderous mate. Not a light was now to be seen but the one glimmer below in the "Public," on the Rozel pier. And the very last words had been spoken between "Gentleman Jack Blunt" and his crafty employer. "Now, remember," said Jack, "Antoine here goes down with orders to come up the cliff ahead of old Simpson. You'll surely be warned of his approach. You can give the boatswain his orders; there'll be three to one. Your man leads you to your men at the tower. And I am to crack that crib and make for the Hirondelle!

"If chased, the boat runs out to sea, and you are both only honest, French fishermen storm-driven ashore in search of supplies!"

"That's it, Jack! You are to wait for me, if the house is not alarmed. I'll bring some 'passengers,' perhaps, on board. If I fail, you are just to run for Granville. We will all meet at Etienne's. I've got money to take care of all my men. You are to make no miss. I can wait and try again if I am disappointed. I'll take no chances. With your success, I can hold the old miser down, and your two thousand pounds is safe; besides, the swag is your security. You see, he will never dare to make any public outcry, for he secretly fears the Government! We take only the safest chances. He may stay down there all night at St. Heliers, and your lucky chance will never come again. Go ahead, and do not fail!"

The two men grasped hands in an excited clinch. "Do up Simpson for a dead man, and no mistake!" hoarsely whispered Jack Blunt.

"I'll fix the old blanc-bec," growled the boatswain, as the spy slid down the hill toward Rozel Pier.

"Take my flask, Jack!" said Alan Hawke.

"I don't drink on duty!" simply replied Blunt. "I shall get at work by eleven, and you'll hear from me by midnight! Then, look out only for yourself! The boat is mine, if there's any alarm. I'll send her back soon to Rozel Pier, if I have to run out to sea, and you are to be only honest fishermen. How long shall I wait in the cove for you?"

"Sail at three o'clock, if I'm not on board! Remember the hail, 'Saint Malo, Ahoy!'"

"This is dead square, for life and death!" cried Blunt.

"Dead square," echoed the renegade officer. Darkness now doubled its black folds, and the roar of the surf boomed sullenly upon the rocky Rozel beach. Crouching in their cave, the two French thugs eagerly watched the winding path below, and gathered a resentful vulpine ferocity in their hearts. With knife in one hand, and the heavy lead-weighted blackjacks in readiness, they cowered upon the path, waiting for the old soldier, whose thickened eyes were still sullenly gazing at the dingy clock in the Jersey Arms. He hated to leave the pretty, white-armed Ann.

Ten o'clock! The red-coated soldiery of Fort Regent and Elizabeth Castle, the guardians of Mont Orgueil, were all wrapped in slumber, save the poor, shivering sentinels. Ten o'clock! The drenched tide waiters at St. Heliers pier anathematized the still distant Stella, whose lights now blinked feebly, laboring far out at sea. "An hour yet to wait!" growled the bedraggled customs officers. Ten o'clock! The good burghers of St. Heliers had given up their whist, and taken their last drop of "hot and hot." In St. Aubin's Bay, from Corbin's Light, from mansion in town, and cot among the Druidical rocks, anxious eyes now gazed out on the wild sea, where Andrew Fraser tried to calm the terrified Nadine Johnstone.

Mattie Jones was lying senseless, a helpless mass of cowering humanity, while the anxious captain and pilot vigorously swore, as became hardy British seamen. The "Chief" had piped up "that the engines would be out of her," if they shipped another sea like the last. Prayer in the cabin, curses on the deck, fear in the hold, and misery everywhere; the stout Stella struggled shoreward, toward her dangerous landing at the pier, whose sheer sixty feet of masonry wall was now lashed by the wild waves. Black waters rose and fell in great surges. The shivering coastguards in the line of garrisoned martello towers, vowed that no such night had ever been seen since the "Great Storm."

Prince Djiddin had also given up all hope of the return of the faithful Moonshee whose plea of "business," had led him away to the society of his brave and beautiful bride. There was but one more day of "home life" before resuming the hoodwinking of the mentally excited historian of Thibet. "It's a fearful night on the Channel," thought Major Hardwicke as he waited in vain for Simpson's return to act as valet de chambre.

"God help all at sea! It's a fearful night," Prince Djiddin murmured as he closed his eyes, little reckoning that the beautiful girl whom he loved more than life was tempest-tossed off the Corbieres, while poor Mattie Jones literally "sickened on the heaving wave."

The great house was lone and still, and for the first time Prince Djiddin reflected upon the exposed situation of the old miser's home. "Poor old chap," he muttered, as he closed his eyes. "Somebody might come in and throttle him some night! No one would be here to stop it. I must speak to Simpson, yes, speak to Simpson—that is, if he is ever sober enough to listen. Poor old soldier! He will have his drink!"

There was a singular improvised bivouac going on in the ruined martello tower where Professor Alaric Hobbs had set up his instruments to take some interesting observations upon an occultation of Venus.

A coast-guard station at Bouley Bay and St. Catherine's Head rendered the further occupancy of the old martello tower at Rozel Head unnecessary, and only a few rats and bats now resented Alaric Hobbs' sequestration of the second story. He meditated a comparative memoir upon the "Tides of Fundy Bay, and the Channel Islands," with a treatise upon "Contracted Ocean Surface Currents." Astronomer, hydrographer, geologist, and all-round savant, his lank form was already familiar to the Channel Islanders. And, like the wind, he veered around "where he listed."

"Great Jupiter aid us!" cried the son of Minerva, "Venus is unpropitious to-night. All my trouble is vain." For when the black storm broke upon the little channel islet, Alaric Hobbs saw no way of a comfortable return to the Royal Victoria at St. Heliers. "I might leave all here and claim old Fraser's hospitality for a night. No one can get up to the second story," mused Hobbes, who now regretted having ordered the fly to come for him only at day-break. "Here is a wild night of inky darkness. The star occults only at three A.M. This hurricane ruins all. And old man Fraser may not have returned from London." So with a basket of luncheon, a roll of blankets, and a bottle of cocktails, the volunteer astronomer reluctantly sought the dryest corner of the second floor of the old tower for a night's camp. A square trapdoor hole whence the moldering ladder had fallen away, was in the middle of the old barrack room floor over the four embrasured gun room below. "I'll just draw up my ladder, have a pipe, and take a nap. It may clear off. If so the observation goes, and then the highest tide of the year, I can get the register in the morning."

He had brought down his light instrument from the battlemented parapet for safety, and now, pulling up his rope ladder, he coiled it on the floor. "I can drop down below if I wish to if the rain should drive me out of here," he cried as he curled up like a sleeping coyote.

Below him the heavy door of the tower swung on its massive hinges, banging and creaking mournfully when a swirling gust set it swinging. The man who had slept out on the Lolo trail and bivouacked alone in the canyon of the Colorado, laughed the howling storm to scorn. "Better than being out in a blizzard in the Bad Lands!" he gayly cried, as he dozed away, having finished a good meal and lowered the level of the "Lone Wolf" cocktails. From sheer frontier habit, he laid his heavy revolver near at hand, and his old-time hunting knife. "You see, you don't know what emergencies may arise," often sagely observed Alaric Hobbes. "Thrice is he armed that hath two six shooters and a knife!"

When half-past ten rang out from the old French hall clock at the Banker's Folly, Janet Fairbarn, a gray ghastly figure, made her last timid rounds of the lower part of the mansion. Her maids were all snugly nested for the night. Simpson, the erring one, she believed to be in close attendance upon that foreign heathen, Prince Djiddin, in their second-story wing. Miss Nadine and her maid had locked their apartments on departure, the Professor's study was the only room open and vacant, and so with a last timid glance at the darkened halls and great salons of the main floor, the Scotch spinster retired to her rooms adjoining the Master's study and bedrooms on the ground floor.

Minded to "read a chapter" and to "compose herself for the night," the housekeeper sat late rocking alone in her rooms, while the hollow tick of the hall clock sounded doubly lonely in the cheerless night. The modern castle's walls were proof against the wildest rain and even the blows of a catapult, and so the dashing storm never even stirred the heavy leaded diamonded panes. "Thanks be to God, auld Andrew never ventured to cross on this raging sea! He'll no be here the morrow, neither. I must send down for telegrams in the morning," she mused when she had finally laid her spectacles across her Bible.

It was nearing eleven o'clock when the two half-drowned thugs hiding on Rozel Head were roused by their returning mate stumbling wildly into the muddy cavern in the cliff. They sprang up as he muttered, "On vient, tout pres d'ici! Soyous tous prets!" A bottle extended was half drained by the two ruffians, who then eagerly loosened their black jaws with a mad desire to revenge their cheerless vigil.

"Lei has," whispered the spy, pointing to a black object creeping unsteadily up the steep path—Simpson, dreaming still of pretty Ann's rounded white arms! It was indeed Simpson, with unsteady steps, breasting the hill. A fear of Andrew Fraser's arrival led the half-fuddled old veteran to hasten homeward now. "I can say the telegram was late," he chuckled. "They never will know." And then feeling for his pocket-flask, filled by handsome Ann, "as a last night-cap," he turned into the little cavern, where the school-boys, on a Saturday outing, often played "pirates," for his breath was gone and his eyes were drenched with salt scud.

Then, a half smothered cry arose, as the three waiting thugs leaped upon their prey. Simpson was taken off his guard! His muscles were all relaxed by drink. He fell prone as the heavy black jacks descended upon his head, muffled in the hood of his "dreadnaught."

"Ah! V'la un affaire bien fini! Allons! Jettez-le!" growled the grim boatswain, dropping his loaded club, as all three spurned the prostrate body, and then, with a heavy lurch, it bounded off the sodden bank plunging downward, over the cliff.

For a moment, there was no sound! Then skirting the furze bushes of the headland, the three assassins dragged their stiffened limbs along in the darkness, hastening to where the stout Hirondelle rocked easily in the dead water of the one protected cove to the north of Rozel Point.

They were all safely stowed away in the forecastle before half an hour, and, with grunts of satisfaction, examined the largess of their mysterious employer, "C'est ungaillard—un vrai coq d'Anglais!" growled the boatswain, as his chums produced another bottle, and the three doffed their drenched clothing. Then cognac drowned their scruples against murder—for the price was in their pockets.

It was half past eleven o'clock when gaunt old Andrew Fraser led his half-fainting ward ashore from the Stella, at St. Heliers pier. But one covered carriage had remained on the storm-beaten pier, braving the rigors of this terrible night. "Never mind the luggage, man," shouted the Professor to the driver. "Here's ten pounds to drive us over to Rozel, to my home! And, I'll bait yere horses, put ye up, and give ye a tip to open yere eyes." The hardy islander whipped up his horses, and soon cautiously climbed the hill of St. Saviours, crawling along carefully over the wind-swept mows toward St. Martin's Church. The exhausted maid was fast asleep. Nadine Johnstone herself lay in a semi-trance, while the fretful old scholar consulted his watch by the blinking carriage lights, and then wildly urged the driver on. It was long after midnight when they reached St. Martin's Church, with three miles yet to go. A dreary and a dismal ride!

And all was silent, in the Banker's Folly where the old hall clock loudly rang out twelve, rousing Mistress Janet Fairbarn from her first beauty sleep. She started in terror as an unfamiliar sound broke upon the haunting stillness of the night. The hollow sound of a smothered cough in the Master's study, a man's deep-toned cough, unmistakably masculine, aroused the spinster whose whole life had been haunted by phantom burglars.

For the first time since her coming to the Folly, her loneliness appalled her. "My God! There is the plate! The master away, and no one near." Her nerves were thrilling with nature's indefinable protest against the dangers of the creeping enemy of the night. A sudden ray of hope lit up her heart. "Had the Professor returned?" He had the keys. It would be his way. Yes, there was the sign of his presence. And, so, timorously moving on tip-toe, she crept down the hall in her white robes, and barefooted. Yes, he had returned, for she had left the study door open. It was closed now. There was a pencil of light shining through the keyhole, and, yet, silently she stood at the door, and listened. There was the sound of muffled blows within. A panic seized upon her. "Thieves, thieves—at last!"

Scarcely daring to breathe, she fled, ghostlike, up the stair, and in a wild paroxysm of fear dashed into the room at the angle of the hall, where "Prince Djiddin" lay extended upon his couch of Oriental shawls and cushions. He was restless, and still dreaming, open-eyed, of his absent love.

The young man leaped to his feet as the frantic woman, with affrighted gestures, besought his aid and protection, pointing down to the stairway. Hardwicke's ready nerve failed him not.

Grasping a heavy revolver from under the pillow, a mechanical arrangement, a memory of his Indian life in the midst of untrusted subordinates, the officer seized in his left hand the Sikh tulwar, which was his own "property saber" of Thibetan royalty. Its naked, wedge-shaped blade was as keen as that of a razor.

Pointing to the key, he mutely signed to the woman to lock herself in. Then down the stair he crept, ready to face any unseen enemy. The light streamed out from Janet Fairbarn's open door. "Perhaps it was only old Simpson, drunk, or trying to gain a surreptitious entrance," he mused. But the woman had pointed to the light and the keyhole of the door. "Some one is in the old man's study!" Yes! There was the little tell-tale pencil of light flickering on the darkened wall opposite. And Hardwicke scented danger. "Was it Alan Hawke?"

Light-footed as the panther, the young soldier crept to the heavy oaken door. A moment in his crouching position showed to him a man, with his back toward him, raising one of the great red tiles of the study floor. Yes! There was only a moment of suspense, for the tile was slid aside, and a package was then eagerly clutched. With one mighty leap, the Major bounded to the man's side as the door swung open. The cold steel muzzle pressed the ruffian's temple as Hardwicke's hand closed upon the burglar's throat. There lay the sealed canvas package, covered with official Indian seals. In an instant, the Major's knee was on the scoundrel's breast.

"One single sound, and I blow your brains out!" hissed the disguised Englishman. And, astounded at the apparition of a stalwart Hindu warrior, Jack Blunt's teeth chattered with fear. Dragging the half-throttled wretch to his feet, Hardwicke tore off the sash of his Indian sleeping robe and bound the villain's arms behind him. Picking up his saber, he then cut the bell cord and lashed the fellow's legs to a chair. Then, giving the canvas package a closer glance of inspection, Hardwicke pressed the edge of his tulwar to Jack Blunt's throat, when he had closed the window, half raised, and shut the shutter so neatly forced with a jimmy. "What's in that package?" he said, with a sudden divination of Alan Hawke's overmastering influence.

"A lot of valuable jewels," the sneaking ruffian answered. "If you'll turn me loose, I'll now save what's dearer to you than all this diamond stuff that I was sent for. I've watched you here for three weeks. You're after the girl. By God! Hawkes got her now!"

"Do you speak the truth?" said Hardwicke. "If you deceive me, I'll butcher you! Speak quickly! You've got just one chance to save transportation for life now!"

The coward thief muttered: "The old man is on his way back from St. Heliers, and Hawke's got a dozen French fellows to run the girl off and perhaps 'do up' the old man. But he wanted this same stuff. He's a downy cove!"

While Jack Blunt worked upon the lover's fears, "Prince Djiddin's" hands, on an exploring tour, drew out a knife and two revolvers from the captured burglar's wideawake coat. He picked up the bulky bundle which the thief had dropped, and saw the bank seals of Calcutta and the insurance labels thereon. "I'll give you a show. Keep silent!" cried Hardwicke as he cut the cords on the fellow's legs. Then grasping him by the neck, he dragged him bodily to the door of the "Moonshee's" room, where he thrust him in. Then he locked the door, and knocking on his own, induced the frightened Janet Fairbarn to open at last. The poor woman screamed as "Prince Djiddin" calmly said: "Go and rouse up the girls. Send one of them to bring the gardener and his two men over here. I've got the thief locked up."

"My God! who are you?" screamed the affrighted Scotswoman, as the Prince dropped into English.

"I'm an English officer, madam. Don't be a fool. Rouse these people. There's been one crime already committed, and there may be another. There's no one else in the house. Get the three men over here at once to me. I'll stand guard over this thief." Then as Janet Fairbarn fled away shrieking and yelling, Harry Hardwicke locked the recovered package in his own trunk, which stood in his room. Bounding across the hall, he then dragged his captive over the way and thrust him in a helpless heap into a chair. Before Hardwicke was dressed, he had extorted the secret of the rendezvous at the old Martello tower.

"Now, sir, no one has seen you yet," said Hardwicke. "If you guide me there and save her, you shall cut stick. If you betray me, then, by God, you shall die on the spot." A groan of acquiescence sealed the bargain, as the three gardeners, armed with bili-hooks and pruning-knives, now burst into the room. "One of you stay here with the women. Light up the whole house now. Let no one leave it till I return. Now, you two, each take a pistol. Get your lanterns, at once, and a good club each. Come back instantly here."

The procession was descending the stair, when there was heard a vigorous knocking on the front door. As it opened, the excited "Moonshee" leaped into the hallway. "What's up?" he cried, forgetting his assumed character. "I came over, for I had a telegram that the Stella was in with old Fraser and Nadine. The General sent a special messenger to me."

"Run up and get my saber and your own pistol and join me! There's foul play here! The house is all right! Come on, for God's sake!" shouted Harry Hardwicke. He led his captive by the trebled bell cord passed with double hitches around the burglar's pinioned arms, and the Moonshee now leaped back—ready to take a man's part—for he easily divined the treachery.

Out into the wild night they hurried, leaving behind them the barricaded "Banker's Folly," now gleaming with lights. "Where in hell is Simpson?" demanded Eric Murray, as he struggled along clutching the gleaming tulwar tightly in his hand.

"Drunk at Rozel Pier, I suppose!" bitterly answered Hardwicke. "Come here and just prick this fellow up into a trot!"

As they hastened on, Prince Djiddin succeeded at last in convincing the two gardeners that he was not a ghost, but a reincarnated Englishman who had been larking disguised as a Hindu Prince. "What's the devilish game, anyway?" puffed out Captain Murray, still in the dark, as they struggled on in the darkness along the road.

"Hawke has tried to kidnap Nadine!" hastily cried Hardwicke.

"My God! what's that?" They soon came up to an overturned carriage. The traces had been cut, and the horses and driver were not visible. The gardener's lantern showed to them only the insensible form of the maid, Mattie Jones, who lay moaning in a sheer exhaustion of terror. "How far is it to the tower?" almost yelled Hardwicke, his heart frozen with a new terror. "They have murdered her, my poor darling!"

"The tower is now about three hundred yards away!" said the gardener, as Hardwicke sternly dragged his reluctant prisoner along.

"On, on!" he cried. "We may even now be too late!" They were only a hundred yards from the tower, when the sound of rapid pistol shots was heard, wafted down the wind, and a confused sound of cries on the cliff was wafted to them, as a dozen twinkling lantern lights appeared on the brow of the bluff.

"It's a rescue party!" joyously cried Murray. "Hurry! hurry on to the tower!"

With cheering cries, the pursuers neared the old Martello tower, and a clump of dark forms vanished quickly into the shrubbery as the three lanterns were flashed full upon the door. Eric Murray, sword in hand, was the first man at the entrance, as a desperate assailant leaped from the narrow door and sprang upon him, pistol in hand. There was the snap of a clicking lock and then the sound of a hollow groan, for the robber's pistol had missed fire, and Captain Murray ran the wretch through the body with the razor-bladed tulwar!

There was a silence broken only by the trampling of approaching feet, as Red Eric flashed the light in the face of his fallen foe, for the storm had spent its fury and the stars were gleaming out at last.

"By God! It's Hawke, himself!" he shrieked. "Alan Hawke, a midnight robber!" But, Harry Hardwicke, with the two men at his back, had dashed on into the gun-room of the old tower, leaving Murray with his prostrate foe—empty, not a sign of any human presence.

With one wild cry Hardwicke turned to the door, "Nadine! Nadine!" he yelled, and his voice sounded unearthly in the night winds.

And then, from over their heads, a cheery hail replied, "All right, on deck! The lady is safe up here with me. I am Professor Hobbs, the American. Who are you?"

"Friends! friends!" cried Hardwicke. "The house was attacked! Where is the Professor?"

"I reckon they have carried him off!" the nasal voice of the American answered. "If they've killed him it's a great loss to science, you bet! I'm coming down." And while the gun-room was soon filled with a motley crowd from Rozel Pier, Professor Alaric Hobbs long legs dropped dangling down his rope ladder. He gazed, open-mouthed, at the anglicized Prince Djiddin.

"Who are you—friends, also?" now demanded the astonished "Prince Djiddin" of the rescuers.

"We are friends of Simpson!" cried the nearest. "The smugglers bludgeoned him and then threw him off the cliff, but the banks were soft and wet, and his heavy coat saved him. He sent us up here to the rescue, for he crawled half a mile on his hands and knees. We've found the old Professor tied to a tree over there in the bushes. They are bringing him here. Simpson is at the 'Jersey Arms,' all safe."

"See here, stranger!" demanded the American, still standing amazed, pistol in hand, "I winged a couple of these damned robbers; they tried their best to get the girl away from me. I'm a pretty good shot. Now, are you a prince or a fraud? I suspicioned you from the first! If you are a fraud, then the History of Thibet is all damned rot! I suppose that you were just 'girl hunting.' The girl's yere sweetheart. I see it all now. Hoodwinked the old man! Who's this fellow that you've got tied up there, anyway? One of the Johnny-Bull-Jesse-James gang?"

"Why! It's Joe Smith, our friend!" chimed out a dozen friendly voices. Then Harry Hardwicke stepped up to the shivering wretch who stood gazing on Alan Hawke, now propped up on a doubled-up coat, and rapidly bleeding to death. "I'll keep your secret, and save you yet, if you will disclose the whole, and keep mum!" Jack Blunt nodded, and hung his head in shame.

But, on his knees beside the dying man, Eric Murray bent down his head to listen to the final adieu of the dying wanderer, whose luck had turned at last. "Justine Delande is to have all! The drafts, and my money, at Granville. Murray, I'll tell you everything now. Ram Lal Singh murdered old Hugh Johnstone to get the jewels that Johnstone stole. The same ones that this old scoundrel, Fraser, here, is hiding." The red foam gathered thickly on Hawke's trembling lips. "Tell Major Hardwicke all! He's a good fellow! The knife that Ram Lal killed old Fraser with is in my own trunk at Granville, stored in Railroad Bureau. He got in through the window. I was in the garden, and caught him coming out. I was watching old Johnstone, for fear he would give me the slip. I didn't tell—I wanted to come over here and get the jewels myself. Hang old Ram Lal! He's a cowardly murderer! Telegraph to the Viceroy to arrest the jewel seller; he will break down and confess at once. Make him pay poor Justine Delande all my drafts—Johnstone gave him that money for me to keep me silent about the stolen crown jewels. Now—now, all grows dark! Lift me up high—higher!" he gasped. "I played a hard game, but the luck turned—turned at last! That woman, Berthe Louison was too much—too much for me! Poor Justine! Tell her—tell her—" His voice grew fainter and fainter.

"Do you know this man, Hawke?" whispered Hardwicke, forcing Jack Blunt's face down to the dying renegade's glance.

"Never—saw him—before!" gasped Alan Hawke. "Poor Justine, tell her—" and with a sighing gasp, his jaw dropped, and at their feet, the fool of fortune lay dead, with a last lie on his lips.

"By God! He was dead game!" muttered Jack Blunt, kneeling there, by the stiffening form of the wreck of a once brilliant Queen's officer. He dared not lift his craven eyes!

"He had the making of a gallant soldier in him!" cried Hardwicke, as he turned to the American, and motioned to the rope ladder. "We must not let Miss Johnstone see the body. Some of you run and get a ladder or some other means to aid her descent. And rouse up the nearest farm people. Get a carriage and bring the old Professor and maid here!"

While a dozen volunteers darted away to bring a conveyance, the rest hastily covered Hawke's body with their coats. The gun-room was now lit up, and in five minutes the waylaid carriage was drawn by hand to the door of the lonely tower. Within it lay the bruised and exhausted old scholar, bareheaded and ghastly, in the light of the flickering lanterns, while pretty Mattie Jones, with a shriek of terror, ran to the side of her sweetheart, his arms still bound with Prince Djiddin's sash. Jack Blunt's "swell mob" assurance stood him in good stead.

"It's all a mistake, my girl," bluntly said the mobs-man, feeling safe now that Alan Hawke's lips were sealed in death. While the old Professor was revived with copious draughts of "usquebaugh," Jack Blunt saw the flash below him, on the darkened seas, of a red light above a white one. And he heaved a great sigh of relief,

"There goes the Hirondelle now, driving along out to sea with the whole gang," he murmured. "Now, by God, I am safe if this yellow masquerader only plays the man!" There was a hubbub of cackling voices, as on the night when the geese saved Rome! Above them, on the barrack room floor of the Martello tower, Harry Hardwicke was already holding Nadine Johnstone's drooping head upon his breast, while the lanky American gazed at the strange picture before him. The girl's arms were clasped around her lover's neck. "Do not leave me—not a moment!" she moaned. Alaric Hobbs, with quick forethought, tossed his blankets down below, with a significant gesture.

"Darling! You will be mine for life, now!" cried the happy soldier, as he covered her shivering form with his coat. Alaric Hobbs had promptly descended and hastened the necessary preparations for departure. "Damn the explanations. Let's get the whole party out of this!" he said to Captain Murray, and then rejoined Hardwicke.

"Tell me all, quickly!" said Hardwicke. "I am a Queen's officer and shall telegraph to the Home Guards and send for General Wragge. I must report this by cable to the Indian Government. There is justice yet to be done!"

"I was taking some private star observations here," whispered Hobbs, bending down at Hardwicke's warning signal. "Storm bound, I waited for the return of my wagon at dawn. I was aroused from sleep by the sounds of a struggle below.

"Some one had dragged this young woman screaming and wailing into the tower below. She soon fainted. I heard the followers tell the leader of the gang that the coachman had just cut the traces and decamped with the horses. He then bade them gather all the gang waiting in hiding so as to carry her down to some boat below, and then closing the door, he stood on guard outside. They were, however, baffled. Some of the scoundrels had taken the alarm and fled, seeing the lights of the other party moving up from the pier. Then the desperate leader tried to lead a party to steal a horse from the nearest farmhouse. They were busied in their quarreling. I dropped my ladder down, and while they wrangled, cried softly to the imprisoned woman to mount the ladder. She knew my voice at once, as I had been a visitor at her uncle's house. With my help, she got up into the barrack room, and, you bet, I quickly pulled up my rope ladder. In ten minutes more, the door was opened. The trick was discovered. They tried a pyramid of men to reach the nine feet. But I waited till they were all good and blown with their exertions and then, shot a couple of them! You'll find those fellows lingering somewhere in the bushes. I had stowed the girl safely away in the middle of the pier, over the doorway, between two pillars. She was game enough. I let them just shoot away a bit. I kept my powder and lead to kill. I've even now four cartridges left.

"But when you came on the ground, the whole coward gang skedaddled at once, and the brave chap you killed got his dose for good, for he stood his ground like a man! The girl didn't bother me. She fainted in good shape when the close fighting began. I was a dead winner from position. I could have stood them off for hours!"

"You are a hero!" warmly cried Harry Hardwicke.

"Let's all get out of this!" replied Alaric, modestly.

The American offered Hardwicke his cocktail bottle. "Let's get her down. I hear carriage wheels now. Would you just tell me your real name, now, the name you use when you are not doing your 'character' song and dance." The young officer smiled at the American's rough address.

"Major Harry Hardwicke, Royal Engineers, and, this lady's future husband," confidently remarked Prince Djiddin.

"Oh, yes," grinned Alaric Hobbs, "the last part I'll take for gospel truth. Well, Major, I'm glad to know you." And he then, very practically, aided the descent of Miss Nadine Johnstone, for a dozen stout arms now held up the ponderous old ladder which had been purposely dislodged by the Coast Guardsmen. Alaric Hobbs surveyed his battle ground.

"If they had only dared to use lights, I might have had a harder fight," chuckled Alaric Hobbs, as he descended the very last one. "Major," said he huskily, "I've got my things corraled up there, and the instruments, and so on. Leave me a couple of men, and get your own people back now to the Folly. I'll 'hold the fort' here, till you bring the proper authorities. Our man won't run away now. He is 'permanently fixed' for a long repose from 'further anxieties.'"

But fiercely bristling up, old Andrew Fraser now loudly demanded to be allowed the ordering of all. "This is an outrage," he babbled. "You are a cheat, a fraud, an impostor, in league with the robbers." So, fiercely addressing Major Hardwicke, he tried to drag away Miss Nadine Johnstone, at whose feet the stout Mattie Jones was blubbering and wailing.

"Captain Murray," sternly cried Major Hardwicke, "take Miss Nadine and her maid to the Folly. Leave the two gardeners on guard. Return here as soon as you can, for the Professor and myself. I will come over with him. Have a horse at once saddled and bring a man to take my dispatches to General Wragge and for London. Bring me some writing materials. This must be reported at once."

"Go now, dearest Nadine," her lover implored. "I will join you at once. Trust to me, all in all. I will never leave you again," and then and there, before her astounded guardian, Nadine Johnstone threw her ams around her lover in a fond embrace. "You will come?"

"At once," cried the Major, as he cried out hastily, "Drive on!"

Old Andrew Fraser writhed in vain in Hardwicke's grasp. "Be quiet, you damned old fool!" pithily said Alaric Hobbs. "They saved your life for you!"

"You shall never darken my doors," raged Andrew Fraser.

"I will go there to-night, and at once remove my property," coldly answered Hardwicke. "After that I care not to visit you, save to lead your niece to the altar. But I will have a reckoning with you! Don't fear!"

"You shall never marry her," the old pedant cried. "You shall answer to me for this whole dastardly outrage."

"All right," coolly said Hardwicke. "It's man to man, now. I will marry your niece within a month, and, with your written permission!" And not another single word would the disgusted Hardwicke utter—while old Fraser clung to Alaric Hobbs, whining in his wrath. In an hour, a motley cortege slowly left the door of the martello tower. Murray and Hardwicke walking, armed, beside the carriage, where Mr. Jack Blunt, still bound, was the sullen companion of the half-crazed Professor Fraser.

To the demands of "Joseph Smith's" friends Hardwicke replied: "He will undoubtedly be released tomorrow by the proper authorities if there is a mistake."

A smart groom was already half-way to St. Heliers, galloping on with a sealed letter to General Wragge, the commander of the Channel Island forces. "That will bring Anstruther over at once. He must act now!" said Hardwicke. "In two days Ram Lal will be in irons at Delhi, and I think that we will prepare a crushing little surprise for this defiant old fool and miser, Professor Andrew Fraser." And Red Eric Murray now inwardly rejoiced to see the end of all his masquerading as the Moonshee. He received a parting salute, also. "You are no gentleman, a vile swindler, sir," raved old Andrew, as Captain Murray allowed him to descend and enter his own door. The "History of Thibet" fraud rankled in old Fraser's mind.