"I feel, too, that I am at bay. I am the daughter of Solomon White, and Solomon White is regarded by the colonel as a traitor. Do you think they will leave me alone? Don't you think they are going to watch me day and night and get me in their power just as soon as they can? Think of the lever that would be, the lever to force my father back to them!" "Oh, you'll be watched all right," he said easily, and remembered the commissioner's warning. "In fact, you're being watched now. Do you mind?" "Now?" she asked in surprise. He nodded towards a lady who sat a dozen yards away and whose face was carefully shaded by a parasol. "Who is she?" asked the girl curiously. "A young person called Lollie Marsh," laughed Stafford. "At present she has a mission too, which is to entangle me into a compromising position." The girl looked towards the spy with a new interest and a new resentment. "She has been trailing me for weeks," he went on, "and it would be embarrassing to tell you the number of times we have been literally thrown into one another's arms. Poor girl!" he said, with mock concern, "she must be bored with sitting there so long. Let us take a stroll." If he expected Lollie to follow, he was to be disappointed She stayed on watching the disappearing figures, without attempting to rise, and waiting until they were out of sight, she walked out on to the Embankment and hailed a passing taxi. She seemed quite satisfied in her mind that the plan she had evolved for the trapping of Stafford King could not fail to succeed. CHAPTER VII THE COLONEL CONDUCTS HIS BUSINESS A merry little dinner party was assembled that night in a luxurious flat in Albemarle House. It was a bachelor party, and consisted of three--the colonel, resplendent in evening dress, "Swell" Crewe and a middle-aged man whose antique dress coat and none too spotless linen certainly did not advertise their owner's prosperity. Yet this man with the stubbly moustache and the bald head could write his cheque for seven figures, being Mr. Thomas Crotin, of the firm of Crotin and Principle, whose swollen mills occupy a respectable acreage in Huddersfield and Dewsbury. "You're Colonel Boundary, are you?" he said admiringly, and for about the seventh time since the meal started. The colonel nodded with a good-humoured twinkle in his eye. "Well, fancy that!" said Mr. Crotin. "I'll have something to talk about when I go back to Yorkshire. It is lucky I met your friend, Captain Crewe, at our club in Huddersfield." There was something more than luck in that meeting, as the colonel well knew. "I read about the trial and all," said the Yorkshireman; "I must say it looked very black against you, colonel." The colonel smiled again and lifted a bottle towards the other. "Nay, nay!" said the spinner. "I'll have nowt more. I've got as much as I can carry, and I know when I've had enough." The colonel replaced the bottle by his side. "So you read of the trial, did you?"