CHAPTER VI

IN FLAIR COURT

No word was spoken by Lambaire or Whitey as a taxi-cab carried them through the city to the big man’s office. They had taken a hurried and disjointed farewell of Sutton and had left immediately after Amber.

It was after business hours, and Grene had gone, when Lambaire snapped the lock of his private room behind him, and sank into his padded lounge chair.

“Well, what do you think?”

Whitey looked down at him keenly as he put the question.

“Phew!” Lambaire wiped his forehead.

“Well?” demanded Whitey sharply.

“Whitey--that fellow’s got us.”

Whitey’s thin lips curled in a contemptuous smile.

“You’re dead easy to beat, Lambaire,” he said in his shrill way, “you’re Flab! You’re a Jellyfish!”

He was lashing himself into one of his furies, and Lambaire feared Whitey in those moods more than he feared anything in the world.

“Look here. Whitey, be sensible; we’ve got to face matters; we’ve got to arrange with him, square him!”

“Square him!” Whitey’s derision and scorn was in his whistling laugh. “Square Amber--you fool! Don’t you see he’s honest! He’s honest, that fellow, and don’t forget it.”

“Honest--why----”

“Honest, honest, honest!” Whitey beat the desk with his clenched fist with every word. “Can’t you see, Lambaire, are you blind? Don’t you see that the fellow can be a lag and honest--that he can be a thief and go straight--he’s that kind.”

There was a long silence after he had finished. Whitey went over to the window and looked out; Lambaire sat biting his finger-nails.

By and by Whitey turned.

“What is the position?” he asked.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

“Things are very bad; we’ve got to go through with this diamond business: you’re a genius, Whitey, to suggest the boy; if we send him to carry out the work, it will save us.”

“Nothing can save us,” Whitey snapped. “We’re in a mess, Lambaire; it’s got beyond the question of shareholders talkin’, or an offence under the Companies Act--it’s felony, Lambaire.”

He saw the big man shiver, and nodded.

“Don’t let us deceive ourselves,” Whitey kept up a nodding of head that was grotesquely reminiscent of a Chinese toy, “it’s twenty years for you, and twenty years for me; the police have been searching the world for the man that can produce those bank-notes--and Amber can put ’em wise.”

Again a long silence. A silence that lasted for the greater part of an hour; as the two men sat in the gathering darkness, each engaged with his own thoughts.

It was such an half-hour that any two guilty men, each suspicious of the other, might spend. Neither the stirrings of remorse nor the pricking of conscience came into their broodings. Crude schemes of self-preservation at any cost--at whose expense they cared not--came in irregular procession to their minds.

Then--“You’ve got nothing here, I suppose?” said Whitey, breaking the long silence.

Lambaire did not answer at once, and his companion repeated the question more sharply.

“No--yes,” hesitated Lambaire, “I’ve got a couple of plates----”

“You fool,” hissed the other, “you hopeless Mug! Here! Here in the first place they’d search----”

“In my safe, Whitey,” said the other, almost pleadingly, “my own safe; nobody has a key but me.”

There was another long silence, broken only by the disconnected hissings of Whitey.

“To-morrow--we clear ’em out, d’ye hear, Lambaire; I’d rather be at the mercy of a Nut like Amber, than have my life in the hands of a fool like you. An’ how have you got the plates? Wrapped up in a full signed confession, I’ll take my oath! Little tit-bits about the silver business, eh? An’ the printing establishment at Hookley, eh? Full directions and a little diagram to help the Splits--oh, you funny fool!”

Lambaire was silent under the tirade. It was nearly dark before Whitey condescended to speak again.

“There’s no use our sitting here,” he said roughly. “Come and have some dinner, Lambaire--after all, perhaps it isn’t so bad.”

He was slipping back to the old position of second fiddle, his voice betrayed that. Only in his moments of anger did he rise to the domination of his master. In all the years of their association, these strange reversals of mastery had been a feature of their relationship.

Now Lambaire came back to his old position of leader.

“You gas too much, Whitey,” he said, as he locked the door and descended the dark stairs. “You take too much for granted, and, moreover, you’re a bit too free with your abuse.”

“Perhaps I am,” said Whitey feebly. “I’m a Jute Factory on Fire when I’m upset.”

“I’ll be more of a salvage corps in future,” said Lambaire humorously.

They dined at a little restaurant in Fleet Street, that being the first they found open in their walk westward.

“All the same,” said Whitey, as they sat at dinner “we’ve got to get rid of those plates--the note we can explain away; the fact that Amber has it in his possession is more likely to damage him than us--he’s a Suspected Person, an’ he’s under the Act.”[2]

“That’s true,” admitted Lambaire, “we’ll get rid of them to-morrow; I know a place----”

“To-night!” said Whitey definitely. “It’s no good waitin’ for to-morrow; we might be in the cart to-morrow--we might be in Bridewell to-morrow. I don’t like Amber. He’s not a policeman, Lambaire--he’s a Head--he’s got Education and Horse sense--if he gets Funny, we’ll be sendin’ S.O.S. messages to one another from the cells.”

“To-night, then,” agreed Lambaire hastily; he saw Whitey’s anger, so easily aroused, returning to life, “after we’ve had dinner. And what about Amber--who is he? A swell down on his luck or what?”

Throughout these pages there may be many versions of the rise and fall of Amber, most, indeed all but one, from Amber’s lips. Whether Whitey’s story was nearer the truth than any other the reader will discover in time.

“Amber? He’s Rum. He’s been everything, from Cow-boy to Actor. I’ve heard about him before. He’s a Hook because he loves Hooking. That’s the long and the short of it. He’s been to College.”

“College,” to Whitey, was a vague and generic term that signified an obscure operation by which learning, of an undreamt-of kind, was introduced to the human mind. College was a place where information was acquired which was not available elsewhere. He had the half-educated man’s respect for education.

“He got into trouble over a scheme he started for a joke; a sort of you-send-me-five-shillings-and-I’ll-do-the-rest. It was so easy that when he came out of gaol he did the same thing with variations. He took up hooking just as another chap takes up collecting stamps.”

They lingered over their dinner, and the hands of Fleet Street’s many clocks were pointing to half-past nine before they had finished.

“We’ll walk back,” said Lambaire; “it’s fortunate that there is no caretaker at Flair Court.”

“You’ve got the key of the outer door?” asked Whitey, and Lambaire nodded.

They passed slowly up Ludgate Hill, arm in arm, two eminently respectable city men, top-hatted, frock-coated, at peace with the world to all outward showing, and perfectly satisfied with themselves.

Flair Court runs parallel with Lothbury, and at this hour of the night is deserted. They passed a solitary policeman, trying the doors of the buildings, and he gave them a civil good night.

Standing at the closed door of the building in which the office was situated, Whitey gave his companion the benefit of his views on the projected Sutton expedition.

“It’s our chance, Lambaire,” he said, “and the more I think of it the bigger chance it is: why, if it came off we could run straight, there would be money to burn--we could drop the tricky things--forget ’em, Lambaire.”

“That’s what I thought,” said the other, “that was my idea at the time--I was too clever, or I might have brought it off.”

He blew at the key.

“What is the matter?” demanded Whitey, suddenly observing his difficulty.

“It’s this lock--I’m not used to the outer door--oh, here we are.”

The door-key turned in the lock and the door opened. They closed it behind them, and Lambaire struck a match to light a way up the dark stairs. He lit another at the first landing, and by its light they made their way to the floor above.

Here they stopped.

“Strike a match, Whitey,” said Lambaire, and took a key from his pocket.

For some reason the key would not turn.

“That’s curious,” muttered Lambaire, and brought pressure to bear.

But still the key refused to turn.

Whitey fumbled at the match-box and struck another match.

“Here, let me try,” he said.

He pressed the key over, but without success; then he tried the handle of the door.

“It isn’t locked,” he said, and Lambaire swore.

“It’s that cursed fool Grene,” he said. “I’ve told him a thousand times to make certain that he closed and locked the door when he left at night.”

He went into the outer office. There was no electric light in the room, and he needed more matches as he made his way to his private room. He took another key and snapped open the patent lock.

“Come in, Whitey,” he said, “we’ll take these things out of the safe--who’s there?”

There was somebody in the room. He felt the presence rather than saw it. The place was in pitch darkness; such light as there was came from a lamp in the Court without, but only the faintest of reflected rays pierced the gloom of the office.

“Keep the door, Whitey,” cried Lambaire, and a match spluttered in his hand. For a moment he saw nothing; then, as he peered through the darkness and his eyes became accustomed to the shadows, he uttered an imprecation.

The safe--his private safe, was wide open.

Then he saw the crouching figure of a man by the desk, and leapt at him, dropping the match.

In the expiring flicker of light, he saw the figure straighten, then a fist, as hard as teak, and driven by an arm of steel, caught him full in the face, and he went over with a crash.

Whitey in the doorway sprang forward, but a hand gripped him by the throat, lifted him like a helpless kitten, and sent him with a thud against the wall....

“Strike a match, will you.” It was Lambaire who was the first to recover, and he bellowed like a mad bull--“Light--get a light.”

With an unsteady hand, Whitey found the box.

“There’s a gas bracket over by the window,--curse him!--he’s nearly settled me.”

The glow of an incandescent lamp revealed Lambaire, dishevelled, pale as death, his face streaming with blood, where he had caught his head on the sharp corner of the desk.

He ran to the safe. There was no apparent disorder, there was no sign that it had been forced; but he turned over the papers, throwing them on to the floor with feverish haste, in his anxiety to find something.

“Gone!” he gasped, “the plates--they’ve gone!”

He turned, sick with fear, to Whitey.

Whitey was standing, shaky but calm, by the door.

“They’ve gone, have they?” he said, in little more than a whisper; “then that settles Amber.”

“Amber?”

“Amber,” said Whitey huskily. “I saw him--you know what it means, don’t you?”

“Amber,” repeated the other, dazed.

“Amber--_Amber_!” Whitey almost shouted the name. “Don’t you hear what I say--it’s Amber, the hook.”

“What shall we do?”

The big man was like a child in his pitiable terror.

“Do!” Whitey laughed; it was a curious little laugh, and it spoke the concentrated hatred that lay in his heart. “We’ve got to find Amber, we’ve got to meet Amber, and we’ve got to kill Amber, damn him!”