"You'd better ask her yourself," said the other with some asperity. "I tell you, colonel, I can't handle that woman." "Nobody ever thought you could," said the colonel. "Did she give you any idea as to what her business was?" Pinto shook his head and the colonel paced the big room thoughtfully, his big hands in his pockets. "Here's a situation," he said. "There's some outsider who's following every movement we make, who knew that boob from Huddersfield was coming, and who knew what our business was. That somebody was this infernal Jack o' Judgment, but who is Jack o' Judgment, hey?" He looked round fiercely. "I'll tell you who he is," he went on, speaking slowly "He's somebody who knows our gang as well as we know it ourselves, somebody who has been on the inside, somebody who has access, or who has had access, to our working methods. In fact," he said using his pet phrase, "a business associate." "Rubbish!" said Pinto. This polished man of Portugal, who had come into the gang very late in the day, was one of the few people who were privileged to offer blunt opposition to the leader of the Boundary Gang. "You might as well say it is I, or that it is Crewe, or Dempsey, or Selby----" "Or White," said the colonel slowly; "don't forget White." They stared at 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----"