After a brief waiting
Krool entered the room with irritating deliberation and closed the door
behind him.

He looked at no one, but stood contemplating space with a composure
which made Barry Whalen almost jump from his seat in rage.

"Come a little closer," said Wallstein in a soothing voice, but so
Wallstein would have spoken to a man he was about to disembowel.

Krool came nearer, and now he looked round at them all slowly and
inquiringly. As no one spoke for a moment he shrugged his shoulders.

"If you shrug your shoulders again, damn you, I'll sjambok you here as
Kruger did at Vleifontein," said Barry Whalen in a low, angry voice.
"You've been too long without the sjambok."

"This is not the Vaal, it is Englan'," answered Krool, huskily. "The
Law--here!"

"Zo you stink ze law of England would help you--eh?" asked Sobieski,
with a cruel leer, relapsing into his natural vernacular.

"I mean what I say, Krool," interposed Barry Whalen, fiercely,
motioning Sobieski to silence. "I will sjambok you till you can't move,
here in England, here in this house, if you shrug your shoulders again,
or lift an eyebrow, or do one damned impudent thing."

He got up and rang a bell. A footman appeared. "There is a
rhinoceros-hide whip, on the wall of Mr. Byng's study. Bring it here,"
he said, quietly, but with suppressed passion.

"Don't be crazy, Whalen," said Wallstein, but with no great force, for
he would richly have enjoyed seeing the spy and traitor under the whip.
Stafford regarded the scene with detached, yet deep and melancholy
interest.

While they waited, Krool seemed to shrink a little; but as he watched
like some animal at bay, Stafford noticed that his face became venomous
and paler, and some sinister intention showed in his eyes.

The whip was brought and laid upon the table beside Barry Whalen, and
the footman disappeared, looking curiously at the group and at Krool.

Barry Whalen's fingers closed on the whip, and now a look of fear crept
over Krool's face. If there was one thing calculated to stir with fear
the Hottentot blood in him, it was the sight of the sjambok. He had
native tendencies and predispositions out of proportion to the native
blood in him--maybe because he had ever been treated more like a native
than a white man by his Boer masters in the past.

As Stafford viewed the scene, it suddenly came home to him how strange
was this occurrence in Park Lane. It was medieval, it belonged to some