The river of stars

“... AND,” said the inspector savagely, “if you’d only known the A B C of your duty, constable, you would have brought the two prosecutors here.”

Amber was warming himself before the great fire that blazed in the charge-room. A red-faced young policeman was warming himself before the inspector’s desk.

“It can’t be helped, Inspector,” said Amber cheerfully, “I don’t know but that if I had been in the constable’s place I should have behaved in any other way. Stocking-footed burglar flyin’ for his life, eh? Respectable gentlemen toiling in the rear; what would you have done?”

The inspector smiled.

“Well, sir,” he admitted, “I think the stockings would have convinced me.”

Amber nodded and met the policeman’s grateful glance with a grin.

“I don’t think there is much use in waiting,” said Amber. “Our friends have given the policemen the slip. There is a back entrance to the hotel which I do not doubt they have utilized. Your men could not have the power to make a summary arrest?”

The inspector shook his head.

“The charges are conspiracy and burglary, aren’t they?” he asked, “that would require a warrant. A constable could take the responsibility for making a summary arrest, but very few would care to take the risk.”

A messenger had brought Amber’s shoes and greatcoat and he was ready to depart.

“I will furnish the Yard with the necessary affidavit,” he said; “the time has come when we should make a clean sweep. I know almost enough to hang them without the bother of referring to their latest escapade—their complicated frauds extending over years are bad enough; they are distributors, if not actual forgers, of spurious paper money—that’s worse from a jury’s point of view. Juries understand distributing.”

He had sent the car back to Maidstone to bring Sutton. He was not surprised when he came down to breakfast at his hotel to find that not only Frank, but his sister had arrived. Very briefly he told the adventures of the night.

“We will finish with them,” he said. “They have ceased to be amusing. A warrant will be issued to-day and with luck we should have them to-night.”

Lambaire and Whitey in the meantime had reached the temporary harbour afforded by the Bloomsbury boarding-house where Lambaire lived. Whitey’s was ever the master mind in moments of crisis, and now he took charge of the arrangements.

He found a shop in the city that opened early and purchased trunks for the coming journey. Another store supplied him with such of his wardrobe as was replaceable at a moment’s notice. He dared not return to his hotel for the baggage he had left.

Lambaire was next to useless. He sat in the sitting-room Whitey had engaged biting his finger-nails and cursing helplessly.

“It’s no good swearing, Lambaire,” said Whitey. “We’re up against it—good. We’re peleli—as the Kaffirs say—finished. Get your cheque-book.”

“Couldn’t we brazen it out?” querulously demanded the big man. “Couldn’t we put up a bluff——?”

“Brazen!” sneered Whitey, “you’re a cursed fine brazener! You try to brazen a jury! Where’s the pass-book?”

Reluctantly Lambaire produced it, and Whitey made a brief examination.

“Six thousand three hundred—that’s the balance,” he said with relish, “and a jolly good balance too. We’ll draw all but a hundred. There will be delay if the account is closed.”

He took the cheque-book and wrote in his angular caligraphy an order to pay bearer six thousand two hundred pounds. Against the word Director he signed his name and pushed the cheque-book to Lambaire. The other hesitated, then signed.

“Wait a bit,” growled Lambaire as his friend reached for the cheque, “who’s going to draw this?”

“I am,” said Whitey.

Lambaire looked at him suspiciously.

“Why not me?” he asked, “the bank knows me.”

“You—you thief!” spluttered Whitey, “you dog! Haven’t I trusted you?”

“This is a big matter,” said Lambaire doggedly.

With an effort Whitey mastered his wrath.

“Go and change it,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you running away—only go quickly—the banks are just opening.”

“I don’t—I haven’t got any suspicion of you, Whitey,” said Lambaire with heavy affability, “but business is business.”

“Don’t jaw—go,” said his companion tersely. If the truth be told, Whitey recognized the danger of visiting the bank. There was a possibility that a warrant had already been issued and that the bank would be watched. There was a chance, however, that some delay might occur, and in his old chivalrous way he had been willing to take the risk.

Lambaire went to his room before he departed, and was gone for half an hour. He found Whitey standing with his back to the fire in a meditative mood.

“Here I am, you see.” Lambaire’s tone was one of gentle raillery. “I haven’t run away.”

“No,” admitted Whitey. “I trust you more than you trust me—though you half made up your mind to bolt with the swag when you came out of the bank.”

Lambaire’s face went red.

“How—how do you know—what d’ye mean?” he demanded noisily.

“I followed you,” said Whitey simply, “in a taxi-cab.”

“Is that what you call trusting me?” demanded Lambaire with some bitterness.

“No,” said Whitey without shame, “that’s what I call takin’ reasonable precautions.”

Lambaire laughed, an unusual thing for him to do.

He pulled from his breast pockets two thick pads of bank-notes.

“There’s your lot, and there’s mine,” he said; “they are in fifties—I’ll count them for you.”

Deftly he fingered the notes, turning them rapidly as an accountant turns the leaves of his ledger. There were sixty-two.

Whitey folded them and put them into his pocket.

“Now what’s your plan?” asked Whitey.

“The Continent,” said Lambaire. “I’ll leave by the Harwich route for Holland—we had better separate.”

Whitey nodded.

“I’ll get out by way of Ireland,” he lied. He looked at his watch. It was nearly ten o’clock.

“I shall see you—sometime,” he said, turning as he left the room, and Lambaire nodded. When he returned the big man had gone.

There is a train which leaves for the Continent at eleven from Victoria—a very dangerous train, as Whitey knew, for it is well watched. There was another which left at the same hour from Holborn—this stops at Herne Hill.

Whitey resolved to take a tourist ticket at an office in Ludgate Hill and a taxi-cab to Herne Hill.

He purchased the ticket and was leaving the office, when a thought struck him.

He crossed to the counter where the money-changers sit. “Let me have a hundred pounds’ worth of French money.”

He took two fifty-pound notes and pushed them through the grill.

The clerk looked at them, fingered them, then looked at Whitey.

“Notice anything curious about these?” he asked dryly.

“No.”

There was a horribly sinking sensation in Whitey’s heart.

“They are both numbered the same,” said the clerk, “and they are forgeries.”

Mechanically Whitey took the bundle of notes from his pocket and examined them. They were all of the same number.

His obvious perturbation saved him from an embarrassing inquiry.

“Have you been sold?”

“I have,” muttered the duped man. He took the notes the man offered him and walked out.

A passing taxi drew to the kerb at his uplifted hand. He gave the address of Lambaire’s lodging.

Lambaire had gone when he arrived: he had probably left before Whitey. Harwich was a blind—Whitey knew that.

He went to Lambaire’s room. In his flight Lambaire had left many things behind. Into one of the trunks so left Whitey stuck the bundle of forgeries. If he was to be captured he would not be found in possession of these damning proofs of villainy. A search of the room at first revealed no clue to Lambaire’s destination, then Whitey happened upon a tourist’s guide. It opened naturally at one page, which meant that one page had been consulted more frequently than any other.

“Winter excursions to the Netherlands, eh?” said Whitey; “that’s not a bad move, Lammie: no splits watch excursion trains.”

The train left Holborn at a quarter to eleven by way of Queensborough-Flushing. He looked at his watch: it wanted five minutes to the quarter, and to catch that train seemed an impossibility. Then an idea came to him. There was a telephone in the hall of the boarding-house usually well patronized. It was his good luck that he reached it before another boarder came. It was greater luck that he got through to the traffic manager’s office at Victoria with little delay.

“I want to know,” he asked rapidly, “if the ten forty-five excursion from Holborn stops at any London stations?”

“Every one of ’em,” was the prompt reply, “as far as Penge: we pick up all through the suburbs.”

“What time is it due away from Penge?”

He waited in a fume of impatience whilst the official consulted a time-table.

“Eleven eighteen,” was the reply.

There was time. Just a little over half an hour. He fled from the house. No taxi was in sight; but there was a rank at no great distance. He had not gone far, however, before an empty cab overtook him.

“Penge Station,” he said. “I’ll give you a sovereign over your fare if you get there within half an hour.”

The chauffeur’s face expressed his doubt.

“I’ll try,” he said.

Through London that day a taxi-cab moved at a rate which was considerably in excess of the speed limit. Clear of the crowded West End, the road was unhampered by traffic to any great extent, but it was seventeen minutes past eleven when the cab pulled up before Penge Station.

The train was already at the platform and Whitey went up the stairs two at a time.

“Ticket,” demanded the collector.

“I’ve no ticket—I’ll pay on the train.”

“You can’t come on without a ticket, sir,” said the man.

The train was within a few feet of him and was slowly moving, and Whitey made a dart, but a strong hand grasped him and pushed him back and the gate clanged in his face.

He stood leaning against the wall, his face white, his fingers working convulsively.

Something in his appearance moved the collector.

“Can’t be helped, sir,” he said. “I had——”

He stopped and looked in the direction of the departing train.

Swiftly he leant down and unlocked the door.

“Here—quick,” he said, “she’s stopped outside the station—there’s a signal against her. You’ll just catch it.”

The rear carriages were not clear of the platform, and Whitey, sprinting along, scrambled into the guard’s van just as the train was moving off again.

He sank down into the guard’s seat. Whitey was a man of considerable vitality. Ordinarily the exertion he had made would not have inconvenienced him, but now he was suffering from something more than physical distress.

“On me!” he muttered again and again, “to put them on me!”

It was not the loss of the money that hurt him, it was not Lambaire’s treachery—he knew Lambaire through and through. It was the substitution of the notes and the terrible risk his estimable friend had inflicted on him.

In his cold way Whitey had decided. He had a code of his own. Against Amber he had no grudge. Such spaces of thought as he allowed him were of a complimentary character. He recognized the master mind, paid tribute to the shrewdness of the man who had beaten him at his own game.

Nor against the law which pursued him—for instinct told him that there would be no mercy from Amber now.

It was against Lambaire that his rage was directed. Lambaire, whose right-hand man he had been in a score of nefarious schemes. They had been together in bogus companies; they had dealt largely in “Spanish silver”; they had been concerned in most generous systems of forgery. The very notes that Lambaire had employed to fool him with were part of an old stock.

The maker had committed the blunder of giving all the notes the same number.

“They weren’t good enough for the public—but good enough for me,” thought Whitey, and set his jaw.

The guard tried to make conversation, but his passenger had nothing to say, save “yes” or “no.”

It was raining heavily when the train drew up at Chatham, and Whitey with his coat collar turned up, his hat pulled over his eyes and a handkerchief to his mouth, left the guard’s van and walked quickly along the train.

The third-class carriages were sparsely filled. It seemed that the “winter excursion” was poorly patronized.

Whitey gave little attention to the thirds—he had an eye for the first-class carriages, which were in the main empty. He found his man in the centre of the train—alone. He took him in with a glance of his eye and walked on. The whistle sounded and as the train began to glide from the platform he turned, opened the door of the carriage and stepped in.

There were other people who knew Lambaire was on the train. Amber came through Kent as fast as a 90-horse-power car could carry him. He might have caught the train at Penge had he but known. It would have been better for two people if he had.

With him was a placid inspector from Scotland Yard—by name Fells.

“We shall just do it, I think,” said Amber, looking at his watch, “and, anyway, you will have people waiting?”

The inspector nodded. Speaking was an effort at the pace the car was travelling.

He roused himself to the extent of expressing his surprise that Amber had troubled to take the journey.

But Amber, who had seen the beginning of the adventure, was no man to hear the end from another. He was out to finish the business, or to see the finish. They reached the quay station as the excursion train came in and hurried along the slippery quay. Already the passengers were beginning their embarkation. By each gangway stood two men watching.

The last passenger was aboard.

“They could not have come,” said Amber disappointedly. “If——”

At that moment a railway official came running toward them.

“You gentlemen connected with the police?” he asked. “There’s something rum in one of these carriages....”—he led the way, giving information incoherently—“... gentleman won’t get out.”

They reached the carriage and Amber it was who opened the door....

“Come along, Whitey,” he said quietly.

But the man who sat in one corner of the carriage slowly counting two thick packages of bank-notes took no notice.

“That’s a good ’un,” he muttered, “an’ that’s a good ’un—eh, Lammie? These are good—but the other lot was bad. What a fool—fool—fool! Oh, my God, what a fool you always was!”

He groaned the words, swaying from side to side as if in pain.

“Come out,” said Amber sharply.

Whitey saw him and rose from his seat.

“Hullo, Amber,” he said and smiled. “I’m coming ... what about our River of Stars, eh? Here’s a pretty business—here’s money—look.”

He thrust out a handful of notes and Amber started back, for they were splotched and blotted with blood.

“These are good ’uns,” said Whitey. His lips were trembling, and in his colourless eyes there was a light which no man had ever seen. “The others were bad ’uns. I had to kill old Lammie—he annoyed me.”

And he laughed horribly.

Under the seat they found Lambaire, shot through the heart.

The End.