ated, and the existence of
which was justified by a small smelting works in the North of England,
and owed its international character to the fact that it had branch
works in Sweden. Its turnover was small, its list of stockholders was
select. A summons to a General Meeting of the North European Smelter
Company meant that the affairs of the gang were critical, and in this
spirit the call was obeyed.

The meeting was held in the banquet hall of a West End restaurant, and
the twenty men who assembled differed very little in appearance from
twenty other provincial business men who might have been gathered to
discuss the affairs of any company.

Their coming excited no comment, and apparently did not even arouse the
attention of vigilant Scotland Yard. Nor, had the colonel's speech been
taken down by a shorthand writer and submitted to the police, could any
suggestion be found of the significance of the meeting. He spoke of the
difficulties of trading, of the "competition" with which the company was
faced, and called upon all the shareholders to assist loyally the
executive in a very critical and trying time. But those who listened
knew very well that the "competition" was the competition of the police,
and they had their own ideas as to what constituted the trying time to
which the colonel made reference.

It was a very commonplace, ordinary company meeting, which ended in a
conventional way by a vote of confidence in the directors. It was when
that had been passed, and the meeting had been broken up, and members
and officials were talking together, that the real business started.

Then it was that Selby, the stout little man whose special job was to
act as intermediary between the company and its more criminal
enterprises, received his instructions to speed up. Selby was the
receiver of letters. A burglar or a pickpocket who acquired in the
course of his activities documents and letters which had hitherto been
worthless found a ready market through Selby. Eighty letters out of
every hundred were absolutely valueless, but occasionally they would
find a rich gem, a love letter discreetly cherished, on which a new
"operation" would be based. Then would begin the torturing of a human
soul, the opening of new vistas of despair, the stage be cleared for a
new tragedy.

The colonel was to find that the chief anxiety of his "shareholders" was
not as to the future of the company or as to the success of its
trading. Again and