CHAPTER XVI

AMBER ON PROSPECTUSES

THE RIVER OF STARS, LTD.

Share Capital, £800,000. 100,000 Ordinary Shares of £5 each. 30,000 Deferred Shares of £10 each.

DIRECTORS:

Augustus Lambaire, Esq. (_Chairman_). Felix White, Esq. The Hon. Griffin Pullerger. Lord Corsington.

Such was the heading of the prospectus which found its way into every letter-box of every house of every man who had speculated wisely, or unwisely, in stock exchange securities.

Both Lambaire and Whitey shirked the direct appeal to the public which city conventions demand. I think it was that these two men, when they were confronted with a straightforward way and a crooked way of conducting business with which they might be associated, instinctively moved towards the darker method.

When they had arrived in England they had decided upon the campaign; they came with greater prestige than they had ever dared to hope for--the discovery, astonishing as it had been to them at the moment, of the diamonds in Sutton’s knotted handkerchief,--gave support to their story, which was all the stronger since the proof of the mine’s existence came from the enemy.

On the voyage to England they had grown weary of discussing by what mysterious process, by what uncanny freak of fortune, the stones had been so found, and they had come to a condition of mind where they accepted the fact. The preparation of the prospectus had been a labour of love; there was no difficulty in securing a name or two for the directors. They had had the inestimable advantage of a Press sensation. They might, indeed, have chosen the latter-day method of publishing in the newspapers. Their prospectus was very feasible.

There were not wanting critics who were curious as to the exact location of the diamond field of fabulous wealth, but this difficulty they had got over in part by the cunning constitution of the company, which allowed of a large portion of working capital for purposes of exploration; for the further development of “Company Property,” and for the opening up of roads to the interior. The Company was registered in Jersey; the significance of that fact will be appreciated by those acquainted with Company procedure.

City editors, examining the prospectus, shook their heads in bewilderment. Some damned it instanter, some saw its romantic side and wrote accordingly. Not a few passed it unnoticed, following the golden precept, “No advertisement: no puff.”

There is a type of shareholder who loves, and dearly loves a mystery. He lives in the clouds, thinking in millions. His high spirit despises the 2½ per cent. of safety. He dreams of fortunes to come in the night, of early morning intimations that shares which cost him 3_s._ 9_d._ have risen to £99 2_s._ 6_d._ He can work out in his head at a moment’s notice the profit accruing from the possession of a thousand such shares as these. It was from this class that Lambaire expected much, and he was not disappointed.

The promise of the River of Stars was not explicit; there was a hint of risk--frankly set forth--a cunning suggestion of immense profit.

“Rap-rap!” went the knocker of fifty thousand doors as the weighty prospectus dropped with a thud upon the suburban mat ... an interval of a day or so, and there began a trickle of reply which from day to day gathered force until it became a veritable stream. Lambaire, in his multifarious undertakings, had acquired addresses in very much the same way as small boys collect postage stamps. He collected addresses with discrimination. In one of the many books he kept--books which were never opened to any save himself, you might see page after page as closely written as his sprawling caligraphy allowed, the names of “possibles,” with some little comment on each victim.

“In many ways, Lambaire,” said Whitey, “you’re a wonder!”

The big man, to whom approval was as the breath of life, smiled complacently.

They sat at lunch at the most expensive hotel in London, and through the open windows of the luxurious dining-room came the hum of Piccadilly’s traffic.

“We’ve got a good proposition,” said Lambaire, and rubbed his hands comfortably, “a real good proposition. We’ve got all sorts of back doors out if the diamonds don’t turn up trumps--if I could only get those stones of Sutton’s out of my mind.”

“Don’t start talking that all over again--you can be thankful that things turned out as they did. I saw that feller Amber yesterday.”

With a return to civilization, Amber had receded to the background as a factor. They now held him in the good-natured contempt that the prosperous have for their less prosperous fellows.

There was some excuse for their sudden arrogance. The first batch of prospectuses had produced an enormous return. Money had already begun to flow to the bankers of the “Stars.”

“When this has settled down an’ the thing’s finished,” said Whitey, “I’m goin’ to settle down too, Lam! The crook line isn’t good enough.”

They lingered over lunch discussing their plans. It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Lambaire paid the bill, and arm in arm with Whitey walked out into Piccadilly.

They walked slowly along the crowded thoroughfare in the direction of Piccadilly Circus. There was a subject which Lambaire wished to broach.

“By the way, Whitey,” he said, as they stood hesitating at the corner of the Haymarket, “do you remember a little memorandum we signed?”

“Memorandum?”

“Yes--in the Alebi forest. I forget how it went, but you had a copy and I had a copy.”

“What was it about?”

Lambaire might have thought, had he not known Whitey, that the memorandum had slipped from his mind--but Lambaire was no fool.

He did not pursue the subject, nor advance the suggestion which he had framed, that it would be better for all concerned if the two tell-tale documents were destroyed. Instead, he changed the subject.

“Amber is in London,” he said, “he arrived last Saturday.”

“What about the girl?”

“She’s been back months,”--Lambaire made a little grimace, for he had paid a visit to Pembroke Gardens and had had a chilling reception.

“You wouldn’t think she’d lost a brother,” he went on, “no black, no mourning, theatres and concerts every night--heartless little devil.”

Whitey looked up sharply.

“Who told you that?” he asked.

“One of my fellers,” said Lambaire carelessly.

“Oh!” said Whitey.

He took out his watch. “I’ve got an appointment,” he said, and jerked his head to an approaching taxi. “See you at the Whistlers.”

Whitey was a man with no illusions. The wonder is that he had not amassed a fortune in a line of business more legitimate and more consistent than that in which he found himself. Since few men know themselves thoroughly well, and no man knows another at all, I do not attempt to explain the complexities of Whitey’s mind. He had ordered the taxi-driver to take him to an hotel--the first that came into his head.

Once beyond the range of Lambaire’s observation, he leant out of the carriage window and gave fresh instructions.

He was going to see Cynthia Sutton. The difference between Lambaire and Whitey was never so strongly emphasized as when they were confronted with a common danger.

Lambaire shrank from it, made himself deaf to its warnings, blind to its possibilities. He endeavoured to forget it, and generally succeeded.

Whitey, on the contrary, got the closer to the threatening force: examined it more or less dispassionately, prodded it and poked it until he knew its exact strength.

He arrived at the house in Pembroke Gardens, and telling the chauffeur to wait, rang the bell. A maid answered his ring.

“Miss Sutton in?” he asked.

“No, sir.” The girl replied so promptly that Whitey was suspicious.

“I’ve come on very important business, my gel,” he said, “matter of life and death.”

“She’s not at home, sir--I’m sorry,” repeated the maid.

“I know,” said Whitey with an ingratiating smile, “but you tell her.”

“Really, sir, Miss Sutton is not at home. She left London last Friday,” protested the girl; “if you write I will forward the letter.”

“Last Friday, eh?” Whitey was very thoughtful. “Friday?” He remembered that Amber had returned on Saturday.

“If you could give me her address,” he said, “I could write to her--this business being very important.”

The girl shook her head emphatically.

“I don’t know it, sir,” she said. “I send all the letters to the bank, and they forward them.”

Whitey accepted this statement as truth, as it was.

Walking slowly back to his taxi-cab, he decided to see Amber.

He was anxious to know whether he had read the prospectus.

* * * * *

Many copies of the prospectus had, as a matter of fact, come to Amber’s hands.

Peter ... a dreamer, dabbled in stock of a questionable character. Amber called to see him one morning soon after his return to England, and found the little man, his glasses perched on the end of his nose, laboriously following the adventures of the explorers as set forth in the prospectus.

Amber patted him on the shoulder as he passed at his back to his favourite seat by the window.

“My Peter,” he said, “what is this literature?”

Peter removed his glasses and smiled benignly.

“A little affair,” he said--life was a succession of affairs to Peter. “A little affair, Amber. I do a little speculation now and then. I’ve got shares in some of the most wonderful wangles you ever heard tell of.”

Amber shook his head.

“Wangles pay no dividends, my Crœsus,” he said reproachfully.

“You never know,” protested Peter stoutly. “I’ve got fifty shares in the Treasure Hill of the Aztec Company.”

“Run by Stolvetch,” mused Amber, “now undergoing five of the longest and saddest in our royal palace at Dartmoor.”

“It was a good idea.”

Amber smiled kindly.

“What else?” he asked.

“I’ve got a founder’s share in the El Mandeseg Syndicate,” said Peter impressively.

Amber smiled again.

“Sunken Spanish treasure ship, isn’t it? I thought so, and I’ll bet you’ve got an interest in two or three gold-recovery-from-the-restless- ocean companies?”

Peter nodded, with an embarrassed grin.

“Let me see your prospectus.”

The romantic Peter handed the precious document across the table.

Amber read it carefully--not for the first time.

“It’s very rum,” he said when he had finished, “very, very rum.”

“What’s rum, Amber?”

The other drew a cigarette-case from his pocket: selected one and lit it.

“Everything is rum, my inveterate optimist,” he said. “Wasn’t it rum to get a letter from me from the wild and woolly interior of the dark and dismal desert?”

“That was rum,” admitted Peter gravely. “I got all sorts of ideas from that. There’s a tale I’ve been readin’ about a feller that got pinched for a perfe’ly innercent crime.” Amber grinned. “He was sent to penal servitude, one day----”

“I know, I know,” said Amber, “a fog rolled up from the sea, he escaped from the quarry where he had been workin’, friend’s expensive yacht waitin’ in the offin’--‘bang! bang!’ warders shootin’, bells ringin’, an’ a little boat all ready for the errin’ brother--yes?”

Peter was impressed.

“You’re a reader, Amber,” he said, with a note of respect in his voice. “I can see now that you’ve read _Haunted by Fate, or, The Convict’s Bride_. It’s what I might describe as a masterpiece. It’s got----”

“I know--it’s another of the rum things of life--Peter, would you like a job?”

Peter looked up over his spectacles.

“What sort of a job?”--his voice shook a little. “I ain’t so young as I used to be, an’ me heart’s not as strong as it was. It ain’t one of them darin’ wangles of yours----”

Amber laughed.

“Nothin’ so wicked, my desperado--how would you like to be the companion of a gentleman who is recovering from a very severe sickness: a sickness that has upset his memory and brought him to the verge of madness----” He saw the sudden alarm in Peter’s eyes. “No, no, he’s quite all right now, though there was a time----”

He changed the subject abruptly.

“I shall trust you not to say a word to any soul about this matter,” he said. “I have a hunch that you are the very man for the job--there is no guile in you, my Peter.”

A knock at the door interrupted him.

“Come in.”

The handle turned, and Whitey entered.

“Oh, here you are,” said Whitey.

He stood by the door, his glossy silk hat in his hand, and smiled pleasantly.

“Come in,” invited Amber. “You don’t mind?”--he looked at Peter. The old man shook his head.

“Well?”

“I’ve been lookin’ for you,” said Whitey.

He took the chair Amber indicated.

“I thought you might be here,” he went on, “knowing that you visited here.”

“In other words,” said Amber, “your cab passed mine in the Strand, and you told the driver to follow me at a respectable distance--I saw you.”

Whitey was not embarrassed.

“A feller would have to be wide to get over you, Captain,” he said admiringly. “I’ve come to talk to you about----” He saw the prospectus on the table. “Ah! you’ve seen it?”

“I’ve seen it,” said Amber grimly--“a beautiful production. How is the money coming in?”

“Not too well, not too well,” lied Whitey, with a melancholy shake of the head. “People don’t seem to jump at it: the old adventurous spirit is dead. Some of the papers....” He shrugged his shoulders with good-natured contempt.

“Very unbelievin’, these organs of public opinion,” said the sympathetic Amber, “fellers of little faith, these journalists.”

“We didn’t give ’em advertisements,” explained Whitey--“that’s the secret of it.”

“You gave the _Financial Herald_ an advertisement,” reflected Amber, “in spite of which they said funny things--you gave the _Bullion and Mining Gazette_ a good order, yet they didn’t let you down lightly.”

Whitey changed direction.

“What I want to see about,” he said slowly, “is this: you’ve had convincin’ proof that we’ve located the mine--would you like to come into the company on the ground floor?”

The audacity of the offer staggered even Amber.

“Whitey,” he said admiringly, “you’re the last word in refrigeration! Come in on the ground floor! Not into the basement, my Whitey!”

“Can I speak to you alone?” Whitey looked meaningly in the direction of Peter, and Amber shook his head.

“You can say what you’ve got to say here,” he said, “Peter is in my confidence.”

“Well,” said Whitey, “man to man, and between gentlemen, what do you say to this: you join our board, an’ we’ll give you £4,000 in cash an’ £10,000 in shares?”

Amber’s fingers drummed the table thoughtfully.

“No,” he said, after a while, “my interest in the Company is quite big enough.”

“What Company?” asked Whitey.

“The River of Stars Diamonds, Ltd.,” said Amber.

Whitey leant over the table and eyed him narrowly.

“You’ve no interest in our Company,” he said shortly.

Amber laughed.

“On the contrary,” he said, “I have an interest in the River of Stars Diamond Fields, Ltd.”

“That’s not my Company,” said Whitey.

“Nor your Diamond Field either,” said Amber.