ear of hurting her. Her father was uppermost in
her mind and it was natural that she should think of him.

"Is there any news of my father?" she asked quietly.

"None," he lied.

"You're not speaking the truth, Stafford." She put her hand on his arm.
"Stafford, is there any news of my father?"

He looked at her, and she saw the pain in his face.

"Why don't you wait a little while, and I'll tell you all the news," he
said with an assumption of gaiety. "There have been several fashionable
weddings----"

"Please tell me," she said, "Stafford. I've been for weeks under the
influence of a drug, and somehow it has numbed pain, even mental pain,
and perhaps you will never find me in a better condition to hear--the
worst."

"The worst has happened, Maisie," he said gently.

"He has been arrested?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"No, dear, worse than that."

"Not--not suicide?" she said between her set teeth.

Again he shook his head. "He is dead," he said softly.

"Dead!"

There was a long silence which he did not break.

"Dead!" she said again. "How?"

"He was shot by--we think it was by a member of the Boundary Gang, a man
named Raoul."

She looked up at him.

"I have never heard my father speak of him."

"He was a man imported from France, according to our theory."

"And was he captured?"

"He was killed too," said Stafford; "he was caught in the act and
instantly executed."

"By whom?" she asked.

"By Jack o' Judgment," replied Stafford.

"Jack o' Judgment!" She breathed the words. "And I--I never thanked him!
I never knew!"

He told her the story step by step of the discovery which the police had
made and the theories they had formed.

"He was lured there," said the girl.

She did not cry. She seemed incapable of tears.

"He was lured there and murdered, and Jack o' Judgment slew his
murderer? Poor father! Poor, dear daddy!"

And then the tears came.

Half an hour later he left her in charge of the nurse and went back to
Scotland Yard to report.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE GANG FUND

The news of the girl's escape had been received in another quarter.
Colonel Boundary had sat in his favourite chair and listened without
comment to Pinto's halting explanation.

"Oh, they went out of the window and down a ladder, did they?" said the
colonel sarcastically when the Portuguese had finished, "and you had a
fit on the mat, I suppose? Well, that's a hell of a fine story! And what
di