The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ fourpence, in payment of half-yearly dividends. Full stop. We regret that we were not able to allot you any shares in our new issue; the flotation was twenty times over-subscribed. Yours, etc. Got that?”

      “ Yes, sir,” said the unmoved Grene. Could this be the adventurer his sister had pictured? thought the young man. Would a man of this type stoop to lure him to a gaming house for the gain of his few hundreds?

      “Send a cheque to Coutts — how much is it?” said Lambaire.

      “About six thousand,” said Grene at random.

      “And pay that little account of mine at Fells — it’s about four hundred — these wretched little wine bills mount up.”

      The latter portion of the sentence was addressed to Sutton, who found himself smiling sympathetically. As for Whitey, he was one benign grin.

      “Now I think that is all,” and Lambaire fluttered a few papers. “Oh, here is a letter from S—” He handed what was in reality a peremptory demand for the payment of the very wine bill to which he referred to Grene.

      “Tell him I am sorry I cannot go to Cowes with him — I hate strange yachts, and unfortunately,” this to the young man and with a smile of protest, “I cannot afford to keep my yacht as I did a few years ago. Now.” He swung round in his seat as the door closed behind Grene.

      “Now, Mr. Sutton, I want a straight talk with you; you don’t mind White being here, do you? he’s my confidant in most matters.”

      “I don’t mind anybody,” said the youth, though he was obviously ill at ease, not knowing exactly what was the object of the interview.

      Lambaire toyed with a celluloid ruler before he began.

      “Mr. Sutton,” he said slowly, “you were at school, I think, when your father went to West Africa?”

      “I was going up to Oxford,” said the boy quickly.

      Lambaire nodded.

      “You know I equipped the expedition that had such an unfortunate ending?”

      “I understood you had something to do with it.”

      “I had,” said Lambaire, “it cost me — however, that has nothing to do with the matter. Now, Mr. Sutton, I am going to be frank with you. You are under the impression that I sought your acquaintance with some ulterior motive. You need not deny it; I had a — a—”

      “Hunch,” said the silent Whitey suddenly.

      “I had what Mr. White calls a ‘hunch’ that this was so. I know human nature very well, Mr. Sutton; and when a man thinks badly of me, I know the fact instinctively.”

      To be exact, the intuition of Mr. Lambaire had less to do with his prescience than the information Whitey had been able to supply.

      “Mr. Sutton, I’m not going to deny that I did have an ulterior motive in seeking your society.” Lambaire leant forward, his hands on his knees, and was very earnest. “When your father—”

      “Poor father,” murmured Whitey.

      “When your poor father died, a chart of his wanderings, showing the route he took, was sent to you, or rather to your sister, she being the elder. It was only by accident, during the past year, that I heard of the existence of that chart and I wrote to your sister for it.”

      “As I understand it, Mr. Lambaire,” said Sutton, “you made no attempt to seek us out after my father’s death; though you were in no sense responsible for his fate, my sister felt that you might have troubled yourself to discover what was happening to those who were suddenly orphaned through the expedition.”

      This tall youth, with his clear-cut effeminate face, had a mouth that drooped a little weakly. He was speaking now with the assurance of one who had known all the facts on which he spoke for years, yet it was the fact that until that morning, when his sister had given him some insight into the character of the man she distrusted, he had known nothing of the circumstances attending his father’s death.

      All the time he spoke Lambaire was shaking his head slowly, in melancholy protest at the injustice.

      “No, no, no,” he said, when the other had finished, “you’re wrong, Mr. Sutton — I was ill at the time; I knew that you were all well off—”

      “Ahem!” coughed Whitey, and Lambaire realized that he had made a mistake.

      “So far from being well off — however, that is unimportant; it was only last year that, by the death of an uncle, we inherited — but rich or poor, that is beside the question.”

      “It is indeed,” said Lambaire heartily. He was anxious to get away from ground that was palpably dangerous. “I want to finish what I had to say. Your sister refused us the chart; well and good, we do not quarrel with her, we do not wish to take the matter to law; we say ‘very good — we will leave the matter,’ although,” he wagged his finger at the boy solemnly, “although it is a very serious matter for me, having floated—”

      “Owing to your wishing to float,” said Whitey softly.

      “I should say wishing to float a company on the strength of the chart; still, I say, ‘if the young lady feels that way, I’m sorry — I won’t bother her’; then an idea struck me!” He paused dramatically. “An idea struck me — the mine which your father went to seek is still undiscovered; even with your chart, to which, by the way, I do not attach a great deal of importance—”

      “It is practically of no value except to the owner,” interrupted Whitey.

      “No value whatever,” agreed Lambaire; “even with the chart, any man who started out to hunt for my mine would miss it — what is required is — is—”

      “The exploring spirit,” Whitey put in. “The exploring spirit, born and bred in the bones of the man who goes out to find it. Mr. Sutton,” Lambaire rose awkwardly, for he was heavily built, “when I said I sought you from ulterior motives, I spoke the truth. I was trying to discover whether you were the man to carry on your father’s work — Mr. Sutton, you are !”

      He said this impressively, dramatically, and the boy flushed with pleasure.

      He would have been less than human if the prospect of such an expedition as Lambaire’s words suggested did not appeal to him. Physically and mentally he bore no resemblance to Sutton the explorer, the man of many expeditions, but there was something of his father’s intense curiosity in his composition, a curiosity which lies at the root of all enterprise.

      In that moment all the warnings of his sister were unheeded, forgotten. The picture of the man she had drawn faded from his mind, and all he saw in Lambaire was a benefactor, a patron, and a large-minded man of business. He saw things more clearly (so he told himself) without prejudice (so he could tell his sister); these things had to be looked at evenly, calmly. The past, with the privations, which, thanks to his sister’s almost motherly care and self-sacrifice, he had not known or felt, was dead.

      “I — I hardly know what to say,” he stammered; “of course I should like to carry on my father’s work most awfully — I’ve always been very СКАЧАТЬ