The wily scoundrel shivered when the Major, with his left hand, pushed over to him five sets of Bills of Exchange for a thousand pounds each. Ram Lal’s eyes dropped under the brave villain’s steady gaze, and he slowly read the first paper. He well knew the drawer’s writing: DELHI, August 15, 1890. L 1,000. Thirty days after sight of this first of exchange (second and third unpaid), pay to the order of Alan Hawke one thousand pounds sterling, value received. HUGH FRASER JOHNSTONE. To Messrs. Glyn, Carr and Glyn, London. “What do you wish me to do, Sahib?” tremblingly faltered the old usurer, as he carefully noted the fifteen papers. A sinking at the heart told him that he was in the power of the one man in India whom he knew to be as merciless as himself, for a kindred spirit had fled when the drawer of the Bills of Exchange died alone in the dark, his bubbling shriek stopped by his heart’s blood. The Major sternly said in an icy voice, as he fixed his eyes full on his victim: “I wish you to indorse, every one of those papers. I wish you to make each one of them read five thousand pounds. You have done that trick very neatly before, and to put the additional Crown duty stamps upon them.” Ram Lal had started up, but he sank back appalled as he looked down the barrel of Hawke’s revolver. “Keep silence or I’ll put a ball through your shoulder, and then drag you up to General Willoughby. He will hang you in chains if I say the word.” Alan Hawke was tiger-like now in his rapacity. “I will leave the first set with you, and you will now give me your check on the Oriental Bank for five thousand pounds. The other drafts you will have all ready for me to-morrow and bring them to me at the Marble House.” The jeweler groaned and swayed to and fro upon his seat in a mute agony. “I cannot do it. I have not the money,” he babbled. “You old lying wretch. You have screwed a quarter of a million pounds out of Christian, Hindu, and Mohammedan here,” mercilessly said the torturer. “I will not! I cannot! I dare not!” cried Ram Lal, dropping on the floor and trying to bow his head at Hawke’s feet. “Get up! You old beast!” commanded Hawke. “By God! I’ll shoot and disable you now and then arrest you! Tell me! Do you know that dagger?” With a quick motion, still covering the cowering wretch with his pistol, Hawke drew out the package from his bosom, clumsily tearing off a silk neck scarf-wrapper with his left hand. He laid down on the table the blood-incrusted dagger of Mirzah Shah. The golden haft, the jeweled fretwork and the broad blade were all covered with the life tide of the great man whom no one mourned in Delhi. “Mercy! Mercy!” hoarsely whispered Ram Lal, with his hands clasped, as in prayer.