The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ did; he fumed and fretted, walked up and down the room with his hands in his pockets; he told me what he thought of me and what he thought of you.”

      “What does he think of me?” said Lambaire quickly.

      “I’d rather not say,” said Whitey, “you’d be flattered — I don’t think. He thinks you are a gentleman — no I Don’t mind about a trifle like that. I sat down and argued with him. He said you were evidently the worst kind of waster.”

      “What did you say to that?” demanded Lambaire with a frown.

      “I denied that,” said Whitey virtuously. “‘Not the worst kind,’ I said; anyway, the interview ended by his promising to come up here this afternoon.”

      Lambaire paced the room in thought.

      “What good will that do?” he asked.

      Whitey raised imploring eyes to heaven.

      “Hear me,” he said, addressing an invisible deity. “Hark to him. I spend all the morning working for him, and he wants to know what is the good.” He got up slowly and polished his hat with his sleeve.

      “Here, don’t go,” said Lambaire, “I want to know a lot more. Now what is he prepared to do?”

      “Look here, Lambaire,” Whitey dropped all pretence at deference and geniality, and turned on the other with a snarl. “This kid can get at the chart. This diamond mine of ours has got to be more tangible than it is at present or there is going to be trouble; things are going rotten, and you know it.”

      “And suppose he won’t part with it?”

      “It is not a question of his parting with it,” said Whitey; “he hasn’t got it; it is his sister who has it. He’s his father’s son, you’ve got to remember that. You can bet that somewhere, tucked away out of sight inside him, he’s got the old adventure blood; these sort of things don’t die out. Look at me; my father was a—”

      “Don’t get off the subject,” said Lambaire impatiently. “What are you driving at, Whitey? What does it matter to me whether he’s got adventure blood, or lunatic blood, or any other kind of blood — he’s got the chart that his father made, that was found on him when he died and was sent to the daughter by some fool of a Commissioner — eh? That’s what we want!”

      He rose jerkily, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, and peeked his head forward, a mannerism of his when he was excited.

      Though nominally Whitey was Lambaire’s jackal, runner, general man of affairs and dependant, it was easy to see that the big man stood in some fear of his servant, and that there were moments when Whitey took charge and was not to be lightly ignored. Now it was that he was the bully, and overbearing, masterful director of things. With his high thin voice, his vehemence as he hissed and spluttered, he was a little uncanny, terrifying. He possessed a curious vocabulary, and strangely unfamiliar figures of speech. To illustrate his meaning he brought vivid if incongruous picture words to his aid. Sometimes they were undisguised slang words, culled from other lands — Whitey was something of a traveller and had cosmopolitan tastes.

      “You’re a Shining Red Light, Lambaire,” he went on in furious flow of words. “People are getting out of your road; the Diamond business has got to be settled at once. Let people get busy, and they won’t be content with finding out that the mine is minus; they’ll want to know about the silver business and the printing business, and they’ll put two and two together — d’ye see that? You was a fool ever to tackle the diamond game. It was the only straight deal you was ever in, but you didn’t work it straight. If you had, you’d have got Sutton back alive; but no, you must have a funny compass, so that he could find the mine and make a chart of the road and only you could find it! Oh, you’re a Hog of Cleverness, but you’ve overdone it!”

      He grew a little calmer.

      “Now look here,” he went on, “young Sutton’s coming to-day, and you’ve got to be Amiable; you’ve got to be Honest; you’ve got to be Engaging; you’ve got to Up and say ‘Look here, old man, let’s put all our cards on the table—’”

      “I’ll be cursed if I do,” snapped Lambaire; “you’re mad, Whitey. What do you think I’m—”

      “‘All the cards on the table’,” repeated Whitey slowly, and rapped the desk with his bony knuckles to point each word, “your own pack, Lambaire; you’ve got to say, ‘Look here, old son, let’s understand one another; the fact of the matter is, etc., etc.’”

      What the etc. was Whitey explained in the course of a heated, caustic and noisy five minutes.

      At the end of that time Grene appeared on the scene, and the conversation came to an abrupt finish.

      “Three o’clock,” said Whitey, at the bottom of the stairs, “you play your cards well, and you get yourself out of a nasty mess.”

      Lambaire grunted an ungracious rejoinder and they parted.

      It was a different Whitey who made an appearance at the appointed hour. An urbane, deferential, unruffled man, who piloted a youth to the office of J. Lambaire.

      Francis Sutton was a goodlooking boy, though the scowl that he thought it necessary to wear for the occasion disfigured him.

      Yet he had a grievance, or the shreds of one, for he had the uncomfortable feeling that he had been tricked and made a fool of, and generally ill-treated.

      It had been made clear to him that when that man of the world, Lambaire, had showed a preference for his society, had invited him to dinner, and had introduced him more than once to the Whistlers, it was not because the “ financier” had taken a sudden fancy to him — not even because Lambaire had known his father in some far-off time — but because Lambaire wanted to get something out of him.

      By what means of realization this had come to him it is no province of mine to say. The sweetest, the dearest, the most tender of woman being human, for all her fragrant qualities, may, in some private moment, be sufficiently human to administer a rebuke in language sufficiently convincing to bring a foolish young man to his senses.

      The scowl was on his face when he came into Lambaire’s private office. Lambaire was sitting at his big desk, which was Uttered with the mechanism of commerce to an unusual extent. There was a fat account-book open on the table before him, letters lay stacked in piles on either hand, and his secretary sat, with open notebook, by his side.

      An imposing chequebook was displayed before him, and he was very busy indeed when Whitey ushered his charge into this hive of industry.

      “Ah, Mr. Sutton!” he said, answering with a genial smile the curt nod of the other, “glad to see you. Make Mr. Sutton comfortable, White — I’ve one or two things to finish off.”

      “Perhaps,” said the young man, relaxing a “if I came a little later — ?”

      “Not at all, not at all.”

      Lambaire dismissed the supposition that he was too deeply employed to see him at once with a wave of the hand.

      “Sit down,” he pleaded, “only for one moment. Are you ready, Grene?”

      “Yes, СКАЧАТЬ