he least believable
part of the affair. All the rest of the gang were captured or fugitives.
He wondered whether Lollie Marsh and Crewe had reached Portugal and what
they were doing there and how long their money would last and how they
would earn more. He had his own money well secured. He had managed to
get together quite a respectable sum, for there were other banks than
the Victoria and City--odd accounts in assumed names which he had drawn
upon on the very day of his supposed death.

There was a tap at the door.

"Come in," said Boundary, thinking it was the landlady.

He was in the middle of the room as he spoke, and he went back step by
step as the visitor entered. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth,
his eyes were starting out of his head.

"You! You!" he croaked.

"Little Jack o' Judgment," said the mask mockingly. "Poor old Jack! Come
to take farewell of the colonel before he goes to foreign parts!"

"Stop!" cried Boundary hoarsely. "I know you, damn you! I know you!"

He pulled back the curtains and glared out of the window. There was no
need to ask any further questions. The house was surrounded. He swung
round again at his tormentor and faced the white mask in a blind fury of
rage.

"You're clever, aren't you?" he said. "Cleverer than all the police! But
you weren't clever enough to save your son from death!"

The masked figure reeled back.

"Ah, that's got you! Little Jack o' Judgment!" mocked the colonel.
"That's got you where it hurts you most, hasn't it? Your only son, too!
And he went to the devil all the faster because of me--me--me!" He
struck his breast with his clenched fist. "You can't bring him back to
life, can you? That's one I've got against you."

"No," said Jack o' Judgment in a low voice. "I cannot bring him back to
life, but I can destroy the man who destroyed him, who blighted his
young life, who taught him vicious practices, who sapped his vitality
with drugs----"

"That's a lie!" said the colonel. "Crewe picked him up at Monte Carlo,
when he was on his beam-ends."

"Who sent him to Monte Carlo?" asked the other. "Who was the gambler who
brought him down, and received the wreck he had made with the pretence
that he had never met him before? It was you, Boundary?"

The colonel nodded.

"I was a fool to deny it. I pretended to Crewe that I hadn't met him
before. Yes, it was I, and I glory in it. You think you're going to
pinch me, now, and put me where I belong--on