Jack O' Judgment. Wallace Edgar
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him.
"What do you mean?" asked Crewe with a frown.
White had been a favourite of his.
"How could it be White?"
"Why shouldn't it be White?" said the colonel. "When did Jack o' Judgment make his first appearance? I'll tell you. About the time we started getting busy framing up something against White. Did we ever see him when White was with us—no! Isn't it obviously somebody who has been a business associate and knows our little ways? Why, of course it is. Tell me somebody else?
"You don't suggest it is 'Snow' Gregory, anyway?" he added sarcastically.
Crewe shivered and half-closed his eyes.
"For heaven's sake don't mention 'Snow' Gregory," he said irritably.
"Why shouldn't I?" snarled the colonel. "He's worth money and life and liberty to us, Crewe. He's an awful example that keeps some of our business associates on the straight path. Not," he added with elaborate care, "not that we were in any way responsible for his untimely end. But he died—providentially. A doper's bad enough, but a doper who talks and boasts and tells me, as he told me in this very room, just where he'd put me, is a mighty dangerous man, Crewe."
"Did he do that?" asked Crewe with interest.
The colonel nodded.
"In this very room where you're standing," he said impressively, "at the end of that table he stood, all lit up with 'coco' and he told me things about our organisation that I thought nobody knew but myself. That's the worst of drugs," he said, shaking his head reprovingly; "you never know how clever they'll make a man, and they made 'Snow' a bit too clever. I'm not saying that I regretted his death—far from it. I don't know how he got mixed up in the affair–"
"Oh, shut up!" growled Pinto; "why go on acting before us? We were all in it."
"Hush!" said the colonel with a glance at the door.
There was a silence. All eyes were fixed on the door.
"Did you hear anything?" asked the colonel under his breath.
His face was a shade paler than they had ever remembered seeing it.
"It is nothing," said Pinto; "that fellow's got on your nerves."
The colonel walked to the sideboard and poured out a generous portion of whisky and drank it at a gulp.
"Lots of things are getting on my nerves," he said, "but nothing gets on my nerves so much as losing money. Crewe, we've got to go after that Yorkshireman again—at least somebody has got to go after him."
"And that somebody is not going to be me," said Crewe quietly. "I did my part of the business. Let Pinto have a cut."
Pinto Silva shook his head.
"We'll drop him," he said decisively, and for the first time Crewe realised how dominating a factor Pinto had become in the government of the band.
"We'll drop him–"
Suddenly he stopped and craned his head round.
It was he who had heard something near the door, and now with noiseless steps he tiptoed across the room to the door, and gripping the handle, opened it suddenly. A gun had appeared in his hand, but he did not use it. Instead, he darted through the open doorway and they heard the sound of a struggle. Presently he came back, dragging by the collar a man.
"Got him!" he said triumphantly, and hurled his captive into the nearest chair.
CHAPTER IX
THE COLONEL EMPLOYS A DETECTIVE
Their prisoner was a stranger. He was a lean, furtive-looking man of thirty-five, below middle height, respectably dressed, and at first glance, the colonel, whose hobby was distinguishing at a look the social standing of humanity, was unable to place him.
Crewe locked the door.
"Now then," said the colonel, "what the devil were you doing listening at my door? Was that his game, Mr. Silva?"
"That was his game," said the other, brushing his hands.
"What have you got to say before I send for the police?" asked the colonel virtuously. "What have you got to say for yourself? Sneaking about a gentleman's flat, listening at keyholes!"
The man, who had been roughly handled, had risen and was putting his collar straight. If he had been taken aback by the sudden onslaught, he was completely self-possessed now.
"If you want to send for the police, you'd better start right away," he said; "you've got a telephone, haven't you? Perhaps I'll have a job for the policeman, too. You've no right to assault me, my friend," he said, addressing Pinto resentfully.
"What were you doing?" asked the colonel.
"Find out," said the man sharply.
The colonel stroked his long moustache, and his manner underwent a change.
"Now look here, old man," he said almost jovially; "we're all friends here, and we don't want any trouble. I daresay you've made a mistake, and my friend has made a mistake. Have a whisky and soda?"
The man grinned crooked.
"Not me, thank you," he said emphatically; "if I remember rightly, there was a young gentleman who took a glass of water in North Lambeth Police Court the other day, and–"
The colonel's eyes narrowed.
"Well, sit down and be sociable. If you're suggesting that I'm going to poison you, you're also suggesting that you know something which I don't want you to tell. Or that you have discovered one of those terrible secrets that the newspapers are all writing about. Now be a sensible man; have a drink."
The man hesitated.
"You have a drink of whisky out of the same bottle, and I'll join you."
"Help yourself," said the colonel good-naturedly. "Give me any glass you like."
The man went to the sideboard, poured out two pegs and sent the soda-water sizzling into the long glasses.
"Here's yours and here's mine," he said; "good luck!"
He drank the whisky off, after he had seen the colonel drink his, and wiped his mouth with a gaudy handkerchief.
"I'm taking it for granted," said the colonel, "that we've made no mistake and that you were listening at our door. Now we want no unpleasantness, and we'll talk about this matter as sensible human beings and man to man."
"That's the way to talk," said the other, smacking his lips.
"You've been sent here to watch me."
"I may have and I may not have," said the other.
Pinto shifted impatiently, but the colonel stopped him with a look.
"Now let me see what you are," mused the colonel, still wearing that benevolent smile of his. "You're not an ordinary tradesman. You've got a look of the book canvasser about you. I have it—you're a private detective!"
The man smirked.
"Perhaps I am," said he, "and," he added, "perhaps I'm not."
The colonel slapped him on the shoulder.
"Of course you are," he said confidently; "we don't see shrewd-looking fellows like you every day. You're a split!"
"Not official," said the man quickly.
He had all the English private detective's fear of posing as the genuine article.
"Now look here," said the colonel, "I'm going to be perfectly straight with you, and you've got to be straight with me. That's fair, isn't it?"
"Quite fair," said the man; "if I've been misconducting myself in any manner–"
"Don't mention it," said the colonel politely, "my friend here will apologise for handling you roughly, I'm sure; won't you, Mr. Silva?"
"Sure!" said the other, without any great heartiness.
He was tired of this conversation and was anxious to know where it was leading.
"You're