"Now we'll pool our money," said the colonel, "and split three ways. I'll make a fair proposition. We'll divide it into four and the man who puts in the most shall take two shares. Is it a bet?" "I suppose so," said Pinto reluctantly. "What is the truth about your money? Did Jack o' Judgment get it?" "I hadn't any money," said the colonel blandly. "I've about a thousand pounds hidden away in this room; that is all, if Jack hasn't been in." He unlocked the safe and made an inspection. "Yes, a little over a thousand, if anything. How much have you, Crewe?" "Three thousand," said Crewe. "That makes four thousand. Now what have you got, Pinto?" "I've about five thousand," said Pinto, trying to appear unconcerned. The colonel made a little whistling noise through his teeth. "Bring fifty," he said. "I'm dead serious, Pinto. Bring fifty!" "But how can I get it?" demanded the other frantically. "Get it," said the colonel. "It is highly probable that it will be of no use to any of us. Let us at least have the illusion of being well off." * * * * * In greater leisure than either of her three companions in crime were exhibiting, Lollie Marsh was preparing to take her departure to New York. She was packing at leisure in her cosy flat on Tavistock Avenue, stopping now and again to consider the problem of the superfluous article of clothing--a problem which presents itself to all packers. Between whiles she arrested her labours to think of something else. Kneeling down by the side of her trunk, she would give herself up to long reveries, which ended in a sigh and the resumption of her packing. By the commonly accepted standards of civilisation she was a wicked woman, but there are degrees of wickedness. She had searched her mind to recall all the qualms she had felt in her long association with the Boundary Gang, and took an unusual pleasure in her strange recollection. She remembered when she had refused to be drawn into the Crotin fraud; she recalled her stormy interview with the colonel when she declined to take a part in the ruining of young Debenham. But mostly she was glad that she had never gone any farther to carry out the colonel's instructions in regard to Stafford King. Not that she would have succeeded, she told herself with a little smile, but she was glad she had never seriously tried. Her mind switched to Crewe and switched back again. Crewe's was the one face she did not wish to see, the one member of the gang that she put aside from the others and wilfully veiled. Crewe had always been kind to her, always courteous, her champion in all bad times, and yet had never made love to her. She wondered what had brought him down to his present level, and why a man possessed of education, and who at one time, as she knew, had been an officer in a crack regiment, should have fallen so readily under Boundary's influence.