"I will do the honors alone for you, my departed friend," he sneered, "for I am the master here now." The absence of all articles of value, the disappearance of Johnstone's three superb ruby shirt-studs, and his magnificent single diamond cuff-buttons, told of the greed of the robbers, presumably familiar with his personal ornaments, while the terrific stab in the back showed that the heavy knife had been driven through the back up to its very hilt.
"We must find the dagger!" pompously said the civil magistrate.
"Major Hawke, will you give orders to have the whole house and grounds searched ?" And with a faint smile the Major politely rose and set all his myrmidons in motion.
Even then the telegraph was clicking away a message to Johnstone's lawyer and bankers in Calcutta, and to his young relative, Douglas Fraser, of the great P.and O.steamship service.

Before night the crafty Calcutta lawyer had notified Professor Andrew Fraser, in the far-away island of Jersey, and before Major Hawke himself received the Viceroy's orders, through General Willoughby, Mademoiselle Euphrosyne Delande, of Geneva, and the household at No.

9 Rue Berlioz, Paris, both knew that the defiant old nabob had sailed the dark sea without a shore.
Most of all surprised was Captain Anson Anstruther in London, who pondered long at the United Service Club over an official message from the Viceroy, telling him of the startling murder.

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.