sooner or later. I don't know
how he controls it, or who controls it"--he looked suspiciously at
Crewe--"or who controls it," he repeated.

"You said that before," said Crewe coolly.

The colonel had something on his lips to say, but swallowed it.

"We'll meet here to-night at eleven. I told Lollie to come. Now, Crewe,"
he said in a more gentle tone, "you're in this up to the neck, and
you've got to go through with it. After all, your life and liberty are
at stake as much as ours. If Lollie's played us false, we've got to
be----"

"Lollie has not played you false, colonel," said Crewe. His face was
very pale, the colonel noticed. "I like that girl, and----"

"So that's it," said the colonel, "a little love romance introduced into
our sordid commercial lives! Maybe you know what she's been talking to
Stafford King about?"

Crewe did not immediately reply.

"Do you?" asked the colonel.

"I know she has been trying to get out of the country, to break with the
gang, but that she has given you or any of us away is a lie. Lollie's
had a rotten life, and she's just sick of it, that's all. Do you blame
her?"

"There's no question of blaming her or praising her," said the colonel
patiently; "the question is whether we condemn her or whether she still
has our confidence, and that we shall know to-night. You will be
present, Crewe."

"I shall be present, you may be sure," said Crewe, and there was a look
on his face which Pinto, for one, did not like.

CHAPTER XXXII

LOLLIE GOES AWAY

It seemed to "Swell" Crewe that the scene was curiously reminiscent of a
trial in which he had once participated. The colonel, at the end of the
long table, sat aloof and apparently noncommittal, a veritable judge and
a merciless judge at that. Pinto sat at his right, Selby on his left,
and Crewe himself sat half-way between the girl at the farther end of
the table and Pinto.

Lollie Marsh had no doubt as to why she had been summoned. Her pretty
face was drawn, the hands which were clasped on the table before her
were restless, but what Crewe noticed more particularly was a certain
untidiness both in her costume and in her usually well-coiffured hair.
As though wearying of the part she had been playing, she was already
discarding her makeup.

"I hate to bring you here, Lollie, and ask you these questions," the
colonel was saying, "but we are all in some danger and we want to know
just where we stand with you."

She mad