The young
gallant's heart beat in a strange agitation as he examined the
previous dispatches of both Berthe Louison and the Viceroy.
"She had no hand in it, thank God!" mused the young aide-de-camp.
"Perhaps he was paid off for some of his old Shylock transactions--some
local intrigue, or the jealous lover of some Eurasian beauty,
dragged to his lair, has finished all, and revenged the accumulated
brutalities of thirty years."
There was a loud outcry of horror and surprise sweeping on now
from the social circles of Delhi to the clubs of Lucknow, Cawnpore,
Allahabad, Benares, and Patna to Calcutta.
In a day or two, men from Lahore to Hyderabad, from Bombay to
Nagpore and Madras, and in all the clubs from Calcutta to Simla,
had paused over their brandy pawnee to murmur, "Well! The poor old
beggar is gone, and now he'll never get his Baronetcy! Some of the
niggers did the trick neatly for him at last. They must have got
a jolly lot of loot!"
In which general verdict the glittering-eyed Ram Lal, hidden in
his zenana, did not share. For, when he had rifled and destroyed
the two mahogany boxes he summed all up his pickings with baffled
rage. "A couple of thousand pounds of notes, a few scattered jewels,
the sly old dog has spirited away his vast stealings! My work was
all in vain, save the vengeance!" And the oily Ram Lal, in the
zenana, drew a willing beauty of Cashmere to his bosom, and hid
his face from the chatterers of street and shop.
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