CHAPTER VIII

FRANCIS SUTTON ASKS A QUESTION

London never sleeps. Of the dead silence that lays over the world, the quiet peaceful hush of all living things, London knows nothing.

Long after the roar of the waking world dies down, there is a fitful rumbling of traffic, a jingling of bells, as belated hansoms come clip-clopping through the deserted streets, the whine of a fast motor-car--then a little silence.

A minute’s rest from world noises, then the distant shriek of a locomotive and the staccato clatter of trucks. Somewhere, in a far-away railway yard, with shunters’ lanterns swinging, the work of a new day has already begun.

A far-off rattle of slow-moving wheels, nearer and nearer--a market cart on its way to Covent Garden; a steady tramp of feet--policemen going to their beats in steady procession. More wheels, more shrieks, a church clock strikes the hour, a hurrying footstep in the street....

All these things Lambaire heard, tossing from side to side in his bed. All these and more, for to his ear there came sounds which had no origin save in his imagination. Feet paused at his door; voices whispered excitedly. He heard the click of steel, the squeak of a key opening a handcuff. He dozed at intervals, only to sit up in bed suddenly, the sweat pouring off him, his ears strained to catch some fancied sound. The little clock over the fireplace ticked mercilessly, “ten years, ten years,” until he got out of bed, and after a futile attempt to stop it, wrapped it in a towel and then in a dressing-gown to still its ominous prophecy.

All night long he lay, turning over in his mind plans, schemes, methods of escape, if escape were necessary. His bandaged head throbbed unpleasantly, but still he thought, and thought, and thought.

If Amber had the plates, what would he do with them? It was hardly likely he would take them to the police. Blackmail, perhaps. That was more in Amber’s line. A weekly income on condition he kept his mouth shut. If that was the course adopted, it was plain sailing. Whitey would do something, Whitey was a desperate, merciless devil.... Lambaire shuddered--there must be no murder though.

He had been reading that very day an article which showed that only four per cent. of murderers in England escape detection ... if by a miracle this blew over, he would try a straighter course. Drop the “silver business” and the “printing business” and concentrate on the River of Stars. That was legitimate. If there was anything shady about the flotation of the Company, that would all be forgotten in the splendid culmination.... De Beers would come along and offer to buy a share; he would be a millionaire ... other men have made millions and have lived down their shady past. There was Isadore Jarach, who had a palatial residence off Park Lane, he was a bad egg in his beginnings. There was another man ... what was his name...?

He fell into a troubled sleep just as the dawn began to show faintly. A knocking at the door aroused him, and he sprang out of bed. He was full of the wildest fears, and his eyes wandered to the desk wherein lay a loaded Derringer.

“Open the door, Lambaire.”

It was Whitey’s voice, impatiently demanding admission, and with a trembling hand Lambaire slipped back the little bolt of the door.

Whitey entered the room grumbling. If he too had spent a sleepless night, there was little in his appearance to indicate the fact.

“It’s a good job you live at an hotel,” he said. “I should have knocked and knocked without getting in. Phew! Wreck! You’re a wreck.”

Whitey shook his head at him disapprovingly.

“Oh, shut up, Whitey!” Lambaire poured out a basin full of water, and plunged his face into it. “I’ve had a bad night.”

“I’ve had no night at all,” said Whitey, “no night at all,” he repeated shrilly. “Do I look like a sea-sick turnip? I hope not. You in your little bed,--me, tramping streets looking for Amber--I found him.”

Lambaire was wiping his face on a towel, and ceased his rubbing to stare at the speaker.

“You didn’t----” he whispered fearfully.

Whitey’s lips curled.

“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean,” he said shortly. “Don’t jump, Lambaire, you’re a great man for jumping--no, I didn’t kill him--he lives in the Borough,” he added inconsequently.

“How did you find out?” asked Lambaire.

“Don’t pad,” begged the other testily. “Don’t Ask Questions for the Sake of Asking Questions,--get dressed,--we’ll leave Amber.”

“Why?”

Whitey put two long white fingers into his waistcoat pocket and found a golden tooth-pick; he used this absent-mindedly, gazing through the window with a far-away expression.

“Lambaire,” he said, as one who speaks to himself, “drop Amber,--cut him out. Concentrate on diamonds.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Lambaire eagerly; “perhaps if we went out ourselves and looked round----”

“Go out be--blowed,” snapped Whitey. “If you see me going out to Central Africa ... heat ... fever.... Rot! No, we’ll see the young lady, tell her the tale; throw ourselves, in a manner of speaking, on her mercy--I’ve fixed an interview with young Sutton.”

“Already?”

“Already,” said Whitey. “Got him on the ’phone.”

“What about Amber and the plates?”

“Blackmail,” said Whitey, and Lambaire chuckled gleefully.

“So I thought, of course that is the idea--what about Sutton?”

“He’s coming here to breakfast; hurry up with your dressing.”

Half an hour later Lambaire joined him in the big lounge of the hotel. A bath and a visit to the hotel barber had smartened him, but the traces of his night with Conscience had not been entirely removed, and the black silk bandage about his head gave him an unusually sinister appearance.

On the stroke of nine came Francis Sutton, carrying himself a little importantly, as became an explorer in embryo, and the three adjourned to the dining-room.

There is a type of character which resolutely refuses to be drawn, and Francis Sutton’s was such an one. It was a character so elusive, so indefinite, so exasperatingly plastic, that the outline one might draw to-day would be false to-morrow. Much easier would it be to sketch a nebula, or to convey in the medium of black and white the changing shape of smoke, than to give verity to this amorphous soul.

The exact division of good and bad in him made him vague enough; for no man is distinguished unless there is an overbalancing of qualities. The scale must go down on the one side or the other, or, if the adjustment of virtue and evil is so nice that the scale’s needle trembles hesitatingly between the two, be sure that the soul in the balance is colourless, formless, vague.

Francis Sutton possessed a responsive will, which took inspiration from the colour and temperature of the moment. He might start forth from his home charged with a determination to act in a certain direction, and return to his home in an hour or so, equally determined, but in a diametrically opposite course, and, curiously enough, be unaware of any change in his plans.

Once he had come to Lambaire for an interview which was to be final. An interview which should thrust out of his life an unpleasant recollection (he usually found this process an easy one), and should establish an independence of which--so he deluded himself--he was extremely jealous. On this occasion he arrived in another mood; he came as the approved protégé of a generous patron.

“Now we’ve got to settle up matters,” said Lambaire as they sat at breakfast. “The impertinence of that rascally friend of yours completely put the matter out of my mind yesterday----”

“I’m awfully sorry about that business,” Sutton hastened to say. “It is just like Cynthia to get mixed up with a scoundrel like Amber. I assure you----”

Lambaire waved away the eager protestations with a large smile.

“My boy,” he said generously, “say no more about it. I exonerate you from all blame--don’t I, Whitey?”

Whitey nodded with vigour.

“I know Amber”--Lambaire tapped his bandaged head--“this is Amber.”

“Good lord!” said the boy with wide-opened eyes, “you don’t mean that?”

“I do,” said the other. “Last night, coming back to the hotel, I was set upon by Amber and half a dozen roughs--wasn’t I, Whitey?”

“You was,” said Whitey, who at times rose superior to grammatical conventions.

“But the police?” protested the young man energetically. “Surely you could lay him by the heels?”

Lambaire shook his head with a pained smile.

“The police are no good,” he said, “they’re all in the swim together--my dear boy, you’ve no idea of the corruption of the police force; I could tell you stories that would raise your hair.”

He discoursed at some length on the iniquities of the constabulary.

“Now let us get to business,” he said, passing back his plate. “Have you thought over my suggestion?”

“I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought,” said Sutton. “I suppose there will be a contract and all that sort of thing?”

“Oh, certainly,--I’m glad you asked. We were talking about that very thing this morning, weren’t we, Whitey?”

Whitey nodded, and yawned furtively.

“I’m afraid your sister is prejudiced against us,” Lambaire went on. “I regret this: it pains me a little. She is under the impression that we want to obtain possession of the plan she has. Nothing of the sort! We do not wish to see the plan. So far as we know, the river lies due north-west through the Alebi country. As a matter of fact,” said Lambaire in confidence, “we don’t expect that plan to be of very much use to you,--do we, Whitey?”

“Yes,” said Whitey absently--“no, I mean.”

“Our scheme is to send you out and give you an opportunity of verifying the route.”

They spoke in this strain for the greater part of an hour, discussing equipment and costs, and the boy, transported on the breath of fancy to another life and another sphere, talked volubly, being almost incoherent in his delight.

But still there were the objections of Cynthia Sutton to overcome.

“A matter of little difficulty,” said the boy airily, and the two men did not urge the point, knowing that, so far from being a pebble on the path, to be lightly brushed aside, this girl, with her clear vision and sane judgment, was a very rock.

Later in the morning, when they approached the house in Warwick Gardens, they did not share the assurance of the chattering young man who led the way.

Francis Sutton had pressed the knob of the electric bell, when he turned suddenly to the two men.

“By the way,” he said, “whose mine was this?--yours or my father’s?”

The naïvetté of the question took Lambaire off his guard.

“Your father discovered it,” he said, unthinkingly, and as he stopped, Whitey came to his rescue.

“But we floated it,” he said, in a tone that suggested that on the score of ownership no more need be said.