Whitey put two long white fingers into his waistcoat pocket and found a golden tooth-pick; he used this absent-mindedly, gazing through the window with a far-away expression. “Lambaire,” he said, as one who speaks to himself, “drop Amber,--cut him out. Concentrate on diamonds.” “That’s what I thought,” said Lambaire eagerly; “perhaps if we went out ourselves and looked round----” “Go out be--blowed,” snapped Whitey. “If you see me going out to Central Africa ... heat ... fever.... Rot! No, we’ll see the young lady, tell her the tale; throw ourselves, in a manner of speaking, on her mercy--I’ve fixed an interview with young Sutton.” “Already?” “Already,” said Whitey. “Got him on the ’phone.” “What about Amber and the plates?” “Blackmail,” said Whitey, and Lambaire chuckled gleefully. “So I thought, of course that is the idea--what about Sutton?” “He’s coming here to breakfast; hurry up with your dressing.” Half an hour later Lambaire joined him in the big lounge of the hotel. A bath and a visit to the hotel barber had smartened him, but the traces of his night with Conscience had not been entirely removed, and the black silk bandage about his head gave him an unusually sinister appearance. On the stroke of nine came Francis Sutton, carrying himself a little importantly, as became an explorer in embryo, and the three adjourned to the dining-room. There is a type of character which resolutely refuses to be drawn, and Francis Sutton’s was such an one. It was a character so elusive, so indefinite, so exasperatingly plastic, that the outline one might draw to-day would be false to-morrow. Much easier would it be to sketch a nebula, or to convey in the medium of black and white the changing shape of smoke, than to give verity to this amorphous soul. The exact division of good and bad in him made him vague enough; for no man is distinguished unless there is an overbalancing of qualities. The scale must go down on the one side or the other, or, if the adjustment of virtue and evil is so nice that the scale’s needle trembles hesitatingly between the two, be sure that the soul in the balance is colourless, formless, vague. Francis Sutton possessed a responsive will, which took inspiration from the colour and temperature of the moment. He might start forth from his home charged with a determination to act in a certain direction, and return to his home in an hour or so, equally determined, but in a diametrically opposite course, and, curiously enough, be unaware of any change in his plans. Once he had come to Lambaire for an interview which was to be final. An interview which should thrust out of his life an unpleasant recollection (he usually found this process an easy one), and should establish an independence of which--so he deluded himself--he was extremely jealous. On this occasion he arrived in another mood; he came as the approved protégé of a generous patron.