Читать книгу The River of Stars - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4
ОглавлениеI. — AMBER
AMBER sat in his cell at Wellboro' gaol, softly whistling a little tune and beating time on the floor with his stockinged feet. He had pushed his stool near to the corrugated wall, and tilted it back so that he was poised on two of its three legs.
His eyes wandered round the little room critically.
Spoon and basin on the shelf; prison regulations varnished a dull yellow, above these; bed neatly folded... he nodded slowly, still whistling.
Above the bed and a little to the left was a small window of toughened glass, admitting daylight but affording, by reason of its irregular texture, no view of the world without. On a shelf over the bed was a Bible, a Prayer Book, and a dingy library book.
He made a grimace at the book; it was a singularly dull account of a singularly dull lady missionary who had spent twenty years in North Borneo without absorbing more of the atmosphere of that place than that it "was very hot" and further that native servants could be on occasion "very trying."
Amber was never fortunate with his library books. Five years ago, when he had first seen the interior of one of His Majesty's gaols, he had planned a course of study embracing Political Economy and the Hellenic Drama, and had applied for the necessary literature for the prosecution of his studies. He had been "served out" with an elementary Greek grammar and Swiss Family Robinson, neither of which was noticeably helpful. Fortunately the term of imprisonment ended before he expected; but he had amused himself by translating the adventures of the virtuous Swiss into Latin verse, though he found little profit in the task, and abandoned it.
During his fourth period of incarceration he made chemistry his long suit; but here again fortune deserted him, and no nearer could he get to his reading of the science than to secure the loan of a Squire and a Materia Medica.
Amber, at the time I describe, was between twenty-eight and thirty years of age, a little above medium height, well built, though he gave you the impression of slightness. His hair was a reddish yellow, his eyes grey, his nose straight, his mouth and chin were firm, and he was ready to show two rows of white teeth in a smile, for he was easily amused. The lower part of his face was now unshaven, which detracted from his appearance, but none the less he was, even in the ugly garb of his bondage, a singularly good-looking young man.
There was the sound of a key at the door, and he rose as the lock snapped twice and the door swung outward.
"75," said an authoritative voice, and he stepped out of the cell into the long corridor, standing to attention.
The warder, swinging his keys at the end of a bright chain, pointed to the prisoner's shoes neatly arranged by the cell door.
"Put 'em on."
Amber obeyed, the warder watching him.
"Why this intrusion upon privacy, my Augustus?" asked the kneeling Amber.
The warder, whose name was not Augustus, made no reply. In earlier times he would have "marked " Amber for insolence, but the eccentricities of this exemplary prisoner were now well-known, besides which he had some claim to consideration, for he it was who rescued Assistant Warder Beit from the fury of the London Gang. This had happened at Devizes County Gaol in 1906, but the prison world is a small one, and the fame of Amber ran from Exeter to Chelmsford, from Lewes to Strangeways.
He marched with his custodian through the corridor, down a polished steel stairway to the floor of the great hall, along a narrow stone passage to the Governor's office. Here he waited for a few minutes, and was then taken to the Governor's sanctum.
Major Bliss was sitting at his desk, a burnt little man with a small black moustache and hair that had gone grey at the temples.
With a nod he dismissed the warder.
"75," he said briefly, "you are going out tomorrow, on a Home Office order."
"Yes, sir," said Amber.
The Governor was thoughtfully silent for a moment, drumming his fingers noiselessly on his blotting-pad.
"What are you going to do?" he demanded suddenly.
Amber smiled.
"I shall pursue my career of crime," he said cheerfully, and the Governor frowned and shook his head.
"I can't understand you—haven't you any friends?"
Again the amused smile.
"No, sir," Amber was even more cheerful than before. "I have nobody to blame for my detection but myself."
The Major turned over some sheets of paper that lay before him, read them, and frowned again.
"Ten convictions!" he said. "A man of your capacity—why, with your ability you might have been—"
"Oh no, I mightn't," interrupted the convict, "that's the gag that judges work, but it's not true. It doesn't follow because a man makes an ingenious criminal that he would be a howling success as an architect, or because he can forge a cheque that he would have made a fortune by company promotion. An ordinary intelligent man can always shine in crime because he is in competition with very dull-witted and ignorant fellow craftsmen."
He took a step forward and leant on the edge of the desk.
"Look here, sir, you remember me at Sandhurst; you were a man of my year. You know that I was dependent on an allowance from an uncle who died before I passed through. What was I fit for when I came down? It seemed jolly easy the first week in London, because I had a tenner to carry on with.
But in a month I was starving. So I worked the Spanish prisoner fraud, played on the cupidity of people who thought they were going to make an immense fortune with a little outlay—it was easy money for me."
The Governor shook his head again.
"I've done all sorts of stunts since then," 75 went on unveraciously. "I've worked every kind of trick," he smiled as at some pleasant recollection. "There isn't a move in the game that I don't know; there isn't a bad man in London I couldn't write the biography of, if I was so inclined. I've no friends, no relations, nobody in the world I care two penn'oth of gin about, and I'm quite happy: and when you say I have been in prison ten times, you should say fourteen."
"You're a fool," said the Governor, and pressed a bell.
"I'm an adventuring philosopher," said 75 complacently, as the warder came in to march him back to his cell....
Just before the prison bell clanged the order for bed, a warder brought him a neat bundle of clothing.
"Look over these, 75, and check them," said the officer pleasantly. He handed a printed list to the prisoner.
"Can't be bothered," said Amber, taking the list. "I'll trust to your honesty."
"Check 'em."
Amber unfastened the bundle, unfolded his clothing, shook them out and laid them over the bed.
"You keep a man's kit better than they do in Walton," he said approvingly, "no creases in the coat, trousers nicely pressed—hullo, where's my eyeglass?"
He found it in the waistcoat pocket, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, and was warm in his praise of the prison authorities.
"I'll send a man in to shave you in the morning," said the warder and lingered at the door.
"75," he said, after a pause, "don't you come back here."
"Why not?"
Amber looked up with his eyebrows raised.
"Because this is a mug's game," said the warder. "A gentleman like you! Surely you can keep away from a place like this!"
Amber regarded the other with the glint of a smile in his eyes.
"You're ungrateful, my warder," he said gently. "Men like myself give this place a tone, besides which, we serve as an example to the more depraved and lawless of the boarders."
(It was an eccentricity of Amber's that he invariably employed the possessive pronoun in his address.)
Still the warder lingered.
"There's lots of jobs a chap like you could take up," he said, almost resentfully," if you only applied your ability in the right direction—"
75 raised his hand in dignified protest.
"My warder," he said gravely, "you are quotin' the Sunday papers, and that I will not tolerate, even from you."
Later, in the Warders' Mess, Mr. Scrutton said that as far as he was concerned he gave 75 up as a bad job."
"As nice a fellow as you could wish to meet," he confessed.
"How did he come down?" asked an assistant warder.
"He was a curate in the West End of London, got into debt and pawned the church plate—he told me so himself!"
There were several officers in the mess-room. One of these, an elderly man, removed his pipe before he spoke.
"I saw him in Lewes two years ago; as far as my recollection serves me, he was thrown out of the Navy for running a destroyer ashore."
Amber was the subject of discussion in the little dining-room of the Governor's quarters, where Major Bliss dined with the deputy governor.
"Try as I can," said the Governor in perplexity, I cannot remember that man Amber at Sandhurst —he says he remembers me, but I really cannot place him...."
Unconscious of the interest he was exciting, Amber slumbered peacefully on his thin mattress, smiling in his sleep.
* * * * *
OUTSIDE the prison gates on the following morning was a small knot of people, mainly composed of shabbily dressed men and women, waiting for the discharge of their relatives.
One by one they came through the little wicket-gate, grinning sheepishly at their friends, submitting with some evidence of discomfort to the embraces of tearful women, receiving with greater aplomb the rude jests of their male admirers.
Amber came forth briskly. With his neat tweed suit, his soft Homburg hat and his eyeglass, those who waited mistook him for an officer of the prison and drew aside respectfully. Even the released prisoners, such as were there, did not recognize him, for he was clean-shaven and spruce; but a black-coated young man, pale and very earnest, had been watching for him, and stepped forward with outstretched hand.
"Amber?" he asked hesitatingly.
"Mr. Amber, "corrected the other, his head perked on one side like a curious hen.
"Mr. Amber." The missioner accepted the correction gravely. "My name is Dowles. I am a helper of the Prisoners' Regeneration League."
"Very interestin'—very interestin' indeed," murmured Amber, and shook the young man's hand vigorously. "Good work, and all that sort of thing, but uphill work, sir, uphill work."
He shook his head despairingly, and with a nod made as if to go.
"One moment, Mr. Amber." The young man's hand was on his arm. "I know about you and your misfortune—won't you let us help you?"
Amber looked down at him kindly, his hand rested on the other's shoulder.
"My chap," he said gently, "I'm the wrong kind of man: can't put me choppin' wood for a living, or find me a position of trust at 18s. a week. Honest toil has only the same attraction for me as the earth has for the moon; I circle round it once in twenty-four hours without getting any nearer to it—here!"
He dived his hand into his trousers pocket and brought out some money. There were a few sovereigns—these had been in his possession when he was arrested—and some loose silver. He selected half a crown.
"For the good cause," he said magnificently, and slipping the coin into the missioner's hand, he strode off.
