The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
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, sir.”
“Dear sir,” dictated Lambaire, leaning back in his padded chair, “we have pleasure in enclosing a cheque for four thousand six hundred and twentyfive pounds seven and 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.
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