She would
not know. You would not wish anything to happen to her?" The old
jewel merchant's voice was darkly suggestive.
"No! Devil take her!" cried Hawke. "What I want to know is hidden
in her crafty head and stony heart. Death would bury it forever.
Nothing must happen either to her or to him. It would spoil the
whole game. Don't you see, Ram Lal, there's money in this for you
and me just as long as we keep them all here under our hands. If
they separate--even if one goes to Europe--you can watch one and I
the other. You can always frighten money out of old Johnstone if
we tell each other all, and I can follow that woman over Europe and
dog her till she is driven crazy. She will fear me just as long as
old Hugh Johnstone is alive, for I could sell her out to him. No
one else cares. They must both live to be our bankers. Now tell
me, why did either or both of them go to Calcutta--what for?" Ram
Lal figuratively washed his hands in invisible water.
"Running water, passing silently, leaves no story behind, Sahib,"
he said, simply. "We have not caught our eels yet. But they are
both coming back into our eel pot." And as the days dragged on
Alan Hawke beguiled the time with the most energetic inroads into
Justine Delande's heart.
"Some one must break the line of the enemy," darkly mused Alan Hawke,
as in the unrestrained intimacy of their long, morning rides, he
influenced the Swiss woman's heart, love-tortured, to a greater
passionate surrender.
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