again he was asked a question couched in identical
words, and again and again he replied with a shrug of his big shoulders:

"What's the good of worrying about a thing like that? Jack o' Judgment
is a crook! That's all he is, boys, a crook. He's not the sort of man
who'll go to the police and give us away; he wouldn't dare put his nose
inside a police station. You leave him to us, we'll fix him sooner or
later."

"But," somebody asked uneasily, "what about Raoul, that fellow who was
killed at Putney?"

The colonel lifted his eyebrows.

"Raoul," he said; "he was nothing to do with us. I never heard the
fellow's name until I read it in the paper. As to White"--he shrugged
his shoulders again--"we can't prevent people having private quarrels,
and may be this Frenchman and White had one. My theory is," he said,
elaborating an idea which had only at that moment occurred to him, "that
Raoul, White and this Jack o' Judgment were working together. Maybe it
isn't a bad thing that White was killed under the circumstances."

He dropped his hand on the other man's shoulder and oozed geniality.

"Now, back you go, my lads, and don't worry. Leave it to old Dan to fix
Jack o' Judgment, or Bill o' Judgment, or Tom o' Judgment, whoever he
may be, and that we'll fix him you can be certain."

Coming away from the meeting, he expressed himself as being perfectly
satisfied with its results. He brought Pinto and Crewe back with him in
his car, and dropped the latter at Piccadilly Circus. Pinto would have
been glad to have joined the "Swell," but the colonel detained him.

"I want to talk to you, Pinto," he said.

"I've had enough business for to-day," said the Portuguese.

"So have I," said the colonel, "but that doesn't prevent my attending to
pressing affairs. I was talking to you to-day--or was it
yesterday?--about Crotin."

"The Yorkshire woollen merchant?" said Pinto.

"That's the fellow," replied the colonel. "I suggested you should go and
see him."

"And I suggested that I shouldn't," said Pinto; "let him rest. You'll
never get another chance like you had before."

"Rest nothing," said the colonel testily, "you're scared because you
imagine Crotin is warned? What do you think?"

Pinto was silent.

"I suppose you think that, because Jack o' Judgment intervened at the
right moment, he went back to Yorkshire feeling full of himself? Well,
you're wrong. You don't understand one side of the psychology of this
business.