It was after business hours, and Grene had gone, when Lambaire snapped the lock of his private room behind him, and sank into his padded lounge chair. “Well, what do you think?” Whitey looked down at him keenly as he put the question. “Phew!” Lambaire wiped his forehead. “Well?” demanded Whitey sharply. “Whitey--that fellow’s got us.” Whitey’s thin lips curled in a contemptuous smile. “You’re dead easy to beat, Lambaire,” he said in his shrill way, “you’re Flab! You’re a Jellyfish!” He was lashing himself into one of his furies, and Lambaire feared Whitey in those moods more than he feared anything in the world. “Look here. Whitey, be sensible; we’ve got to face matters; we’ve got to arrange with him, square him!” “Square him!” Whitey’s derision and scorn was in his whistling laugh. “Square Amber--you fool! Don’t you see he’s honest! He’s honest, that fellow, and don’t forget it.” “Honest--why----” “Honest, honest, honest!” Whitey beat the desk with his clenched fist with every word. “Can’t you see, Lambaire, are you blind? Don’t you see that the fellow can be a lag and honest--that he can be a thief and go straight--he’s that kind.” There was a long silence after he had finished. Whitey went over to the window and looked out; Lambaire sat biting his finger-nails. By and by Whitey turned. “What is the position?” he asked. The other shrugged his shoulders. “Things are very bad; we’ve got to go through with this diamond business: you’re a genius, Whitey, to suggest the boy; if we send him to carry out the work, it will save us.” “Nothing can save us,” Whitey snapped. “We’re in a mess, Lambaire; it’s got beyond the question of shareholders talkin’, or an offence under the Companies Act--it’s felony, Lambaire.” He saw the big man shiver, and nodded. “Don’t let us deceive ourselves,” Whitey kept up a nodding of head that was grotesquely reminiscent of a Chinese toy, “it’s twenty years for you, and twenty years for me; the police have been searching the world for the man that can produce those bank-notes--and Amber can put ’em wise.” Again a long silence. A silence that lasted for the greater part of an hour; as the two men sat in the gathering darkness, each engaged with his own thoughts. It was such an half-hour that any two guilty men, each suspicious of the other, might spend. Neither the stirrings of remorse nor the pricking of conscience came into their broodings. Crude schemes of self-preservation at any cost--at whose expense they cared not--came in irregular procession to their minds. Then--“You’ve got nothing here, I suppose?” said Whitey, breaking the long silence. Lambaire did not answer at once, and his companion repeated the question more sharply. “No--yes,” hesitated Lambaire, “I’ve got a couple of plates----” “You fool,” hissed the other, “you hopeless Mug! Here! Here in the first place they’d search----” “In my safe, Whitey,” said the other, almost pleadingly, “my own safe; nobody has a key but me.”