THE RIVER OF STARS
POPULAR NOVELS
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
PUBLISHED BY
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
_In various editions_
SANDERS OF THE RIVER
BONES
BOSAMBO OF THE RIVER
BONES IN LONDON
THE KEEPERS OF THE KING’S PEACE
THE COUNCIL OF JUSTICE
THE DUKE IN THE SUBURBS
THE PEOPLE OF THE RIVER
DOWN UNDER DONOVAN
PRIVATE SELBY
THE ADMIRABLE CARFEW
THE MAN WHO BOUGHT LONDON
THE JUST MEN OF CORDOVA
THE SECRET HOUSE
KATE PLUS TEN
LIEUTENANT BONES
THE ADVENTURES OF HEINE
JACK O’ JUDGMENT
THE DAFFODIL MYSTERY
THE NINE BEARS
THE BOOK OF ALL-POWER
MR. JUSTICE MAXELL
THE BOOKS OF BART
THE DARK EYES OF LONDON
CHICK
SANDI THE KING-MAKER
THE THREE OAK MYSTERY
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG
BLUE HAND
GREY TIMOTHY
A DEBT DISCHARGED
THOSE FOLK OF BULBORO
THE MAN WHO WAS NOBODY
THE GREEN RUST
THE FOURTH PLAGUE
THE RIVER OF STARS
THE RIVER OF
STARS
By
EDGAR WALLACE
Author of “Four Just Men,” “Council of Justice,”
“Sanders of the River,” etc.
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON AND MELBOURNE
Dedication
TO
MY SISTER
GLADYS GANE
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
THE PROLOGUE 7
I AMBER 16
II AT THE WHISTLERS 25
III INTRODUCES PETER, THE ROMANCIST 36
IV LAMBAIRE NEEDS A CHART 50
V AMBER ADMITS HIS GUILT 69
VI IN FLAIR COURT 78
VII AMBER GOES TO SCOTLAND YARD 88
VIII FRANCIS SUTTON ASKS A QUESTION 99
IX AMBER SEES THE MAP 108
X THE MAN IN CONVICT’S CLOTHES 120
XI INTRODUCES CAPTAIN AMBROSE GREY 131
XII AMBER SAILS 144
XIII IN THE FOREST 154
XIV A HANDFUL O’ PEBBLE 167
XV IN THE BED OF THE RIVER 178
XVI AMBER ON PROSPECTUSES 188
XVII WHITEY HAS A PLAN 200
XVIII WHITEY’S WAY 212
XIX AMBER RUNS AWAY 230
CHAPTER THE LAST 243
THE PROLOGUE
The road from Alebi is a bush road. It is a track scarcely discernible,
that winds through forest and swamp, across stretches of jungle land,
over thickly vegetated hills.
No tributary of the great river runs to the Alebi country, where, so
people say, wild and unknown tribes dwell; where strange magic is
practised, and curious rites observed.
Here, too, is the River of Stars.
Once there went up into these bad lands an expedition under a white
man. He brought with him carriers, and heavy loads of provisions, and
landed from a coast steamer one morning in October. There were four
white men, one being in supreme authority; a pleasant man of middle
age, tall, broad, and smiling.
There was one who made no secret of the fact that he did not intend
accompanying the expedition. He also was a tall man, heavier of build,
plump of face, and he spent the days of waiting, whilst the caravan was
being got ready, in smoking long cigars and cursing the climate.
A few days before the expedition marched he took the leader aside.
“Now, Sutton,” he said, “this affair has cost me a lot of money,
and I don’t want to lose it through any folly of yours--I am a
straight-speaking man, so don’t lose your temper. If you locate this
mine, you’re to bring back samples, but most of all are you to take the
exact bearings of the place. Exactly where the River is, I don’t know.
You’ve got the pencil plan that the Portuguese gave us----”
The other man interrupted him with a nervous little laugh.
“It is not in Portuguese territory, of course,” he said.
“For Heaven sake, Sutton,” implored the big man in a tone of
exasperation, “get that Portuguese maggot out o’ your brain--I’ve told
you twenty times there is no question of Portuguese territory. The
River runs through British soil----”
“Only, you know, that the Colonial Office----”
“I know all about the Colonial Office,” interrupted the man
roughly; “it’s forbidden, I know, and it’s a bad place to get to,
anyhow--here”--he drew from his pocket a flat round case, and opened
it--“use this compass the moment you strike the first range of
hills--have you got any other compasses?”
“I have got two,” said the other wonderingly.
“Let me have ’em.”
“But----”
“Get ’em, my dear chap,” said the stout man testily; and the leader,
with a good-humoured shrug of his shoulders, left him, to return in a
few minutes with the two instruments. He took in exchange the one the
man held and opened it.
It was a beautiful instrument. There was no needle, the whole dial
revolving as he turned it about.
Something he saw surprised him, for he frowned.
“That’s curious,” he said wonderingly; “are you sure this compass
is true? The north should lie exactly over that flag-staff on the
Commissioner’s house--I tested it yesterday from this very----”
“Stuff!” interrupted the other loudly. “Rubbish; this compass has been
verified; do you think I want to lead you astray--after the money I’ve
sunk----”
On the morning before the expedition left, when the carriers were
shouldering their loads, there came a brown-faced little man with a big
white helmet over the back of his head and a fly-whisk in his hand.
“Sanders, Commissioner,” he introduced himself laconically. “I’ve just
come down from the interior; sorry I did not arrive before: you are
going into the bush?”
“Yes.”
“Diamonds, I understand?”
Sutton nodded.
“You’ll find a devil of a lot of primitive opposition to your march.
The Alebi people will fight you, and the Otaki folk will chop you,
sure.” He stood thinking, and swishing his whisk from side to side.
“Avoid trouble,” he said, “I do not want war in my territories--_and_
keep away from the Portuguese border.”
Sutton smiled.
“We shall give that precious border a wide berth--the Colonial Office
has seen the route, and approves.”
The Commissioner nodded again and eyed Sutton gravely. “Good luck,” he
said.
The next day the expedition marched with the dawn, and disappeared into
the wood beyond the Isisi River.
A week later the stout man sailed for England.
Months passed and none returned, nor did any news come of the
expedition either by messenger or by _Lokali_. A year went by, and
another, and still no sign came.
Beyond the seas, people stirred uneasily; cable-gram and letter and
official dispatch came to the Commissioner, urging him to seek for the
lost expedition of the white men who had gone to find the River of
Stars. Sanders of Bofabi shook his head.
What search could be made? Elsewhere, a swift little steamer, following
the courses of a dozen rivers, might penetrate--the fat water-jacket of
a maxim gun persuasively displayed over the bow--into regions untouched
by European influence, but the Alebi country was bush. Investigation
meant an armed force; an armed force meant money--the Commissioner
shook his head.
Nevertheless he sent two spies secretly into the bush, cunning men,
skilled in woodcraft.
They were absent about three months, and returned one leading the other.
“They caught him, the wild people of the Alebi,” said the leader
without emotion, “and put out his eyes: that night, when they would
have burnt him, I killed his guard and carried him to the bush.”
Sanders stood before his bungalow, in the green moonlight, and looked
from the speaker to the blind man, who stood uncomplainingly, patiently
twiddling his fingers.
“What news of the white men?” he asked at last, and the speaker,
resting on his long spear, turned to the sightless one at his side.
“What saw you, Messambi?” he asked in the vernacular.
“Bones,” croaked the blind man, “bones I saw; bones and nearly bones.
They crucified the white folk in a big square before the chief’s house,
and there is no man left alive, so men say.”
“So I thought,” said Sanders gravely, and made his report to England.
Months passed and the rains came and the green season that follows the
rains, and Sanders was busy, as a West Central African Commissioner can
be busy, in a land where sleeping sickness and tribal feuds contribute
steadily to the death-rate.
He had been called into the bush to settle a witch-doctor palaver. He
travelled sixty miles along the tangled road that leads to the Alebi
country, and established his seat of justice at a small town called
M’Saga. He had twenty Houssas with him, else he might not have gone so
far with impunity. He sat in the thatched palaver house and listened to
incredible stories of witchcraft, of spells cast, of wasting sickness
that fell in consequence, of horrible rites between moonset and
sunrise, and gave judgment.
The witch-doctor was an old man, but Sanders had no respect for grey
hairs.
“It is evident to me that you are an evil man,” he said, “and----”
“Master!”
It was the complainant who interrupted him, a man wasted by disease and
terror, who came into the circle of soldiery and stolid townspeople.
“Master, he is a bad man----”
“Be silent,” commanded Sanders.
“He practises devil spells with white men’s blood,” screamed the man,
as two soldiers seized him at a gesture from the Commissioner. “He
keeps a white man chained in the forest----”
“Eh?”
Sanders was alert and interested. He knew natives better than any other
man; he could detect a lie--more difficult an accomplishment, he could
detect the truth. Now he beckoned the victim of the witch-doctor’s
enmity towards him.
“What is this talk of white men?” he asked.
The old doctor said something in a low tone, fiercely, and the informer
hesitated.
“Go on,” said Sanders.
“He says----”
“Go on!”
The man was shaking from head to foot.
“There is a white man in the forest--he came from the River of
Stars--the Old One found him and put him in a hut, needing his blood
for charms....”
The man led the way along a forest path, behind him came Sanders,
and, surrounded by six soldiers, the old witch-doctor with his hands
strapped together.
Two miles from the village was a hut. The elephant grass grew so high
about it that it was scarcely visible. Its roof was rotten and sagging,
the interior was vile....
Sanders found a man lying on the floor, chained by the leg to a heavy
log; a man who laughed softly to himself, and spoke like a gentleman.
The soldiers carried him into the open, and laid him carefully on the
ground.
His clothes were in tatters, his hair and his beard were long, there
were many little scars on either forearm where the witch-doctor’s knife
had drawn blood.
“M--m,” said Sanders, and shook his head.
“... The River of Stars,” said the wreck, with a chuckle, “pretty
name--what? Kimberley? Why, Kimberley is nothing compared to it.... I
did not believe it until I saw it with my eyes ... the bed of the river
is packed with diamonds, and you’d never find it, Lambaire, even with
the chart, and your infernal compass.... I’ve left a cache of tools,
and food for a couple of years....”
He thrust his hand into his rag of a shirt and brought out a scrap of
paper.
Sanders bent down to take it, but the man pushed him back with his thin
hand.
“No, no, no,” he breathed. “You take the blood, that’s your job--I’m
strong enough to stand it--one day I’ll get away....”
Ten minutes later he fell into a sound sleep.
Sanders found the soiled paper, and put it into his uniform pocket.
He sent back to the boat and his men brought two tents which were
pitched in a clearing near the hut. The man was in such a deplorable
condition that Sanders dared not take the risk of moving him. That
night, when the camp lay wrapped in sleep and the two native women whom
the Commissioner had commanded to watch the sick man were snoring by
their charge, the wreck woke. Stealthily he rose from bed and crept out
into the starry night.
Sanders woke to find an empty hut and a handful of rags that had once
been a white man’s coat on the banks of the tiny forest stream, a
hundred yards from the camp.
* * * * *
The witch-doctor of M’Saga, summoned to an early morning palaver, came
in irons and was in no doubt as to the punishment which awaited him,
for near by in the forest the Houssas had dug up much evidence of
sacrifice.
“Master,” said the man, facing the stare of grey eyes, “I see death in
your face.”
“That is God’s truth,” said Sanders, and hanged him then and there.
CHAPTER I
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 to-morrow, 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. 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 notes--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.