"Keeping out of your way, damn you!" said White fiercely. "Trying to cure the fear of you which has made a rank coward of me. If you wanted to find a method for curing me, colonel, you've found it. I've come back for my daughter--where is she?" The colonel pushed his chair back from the table and looked up with a quizzical smile. "Now you're not going to take it hard, Solomon," he said. "We had to have you back and that was the only scheme we could think of. You see, there are lots of little bits of business that have to be cleared up, bits of business in which you had a hand the same as my other business associates." "Where is the girl?" asked the man steadily. "Well, I'm going to admit to you," said the colonel, with a fine show of frankness, "that I've put her away--no harm has come to her, you understand. She's at a little place at Putney Heath, a house I took specially for her, surrounded by loving guardians----" "Like Pinto?" asked the man, looking down at the silent Silva. "Like Lollie. Now you can't deny that Lollie's a very nice girl," said the colonel. "Sit down, Solomon, and talk things over." "When I've got my girl I'll talk things over with you. Where is this place?" "It is on Putney Heath," said the colonel. "Now aren't I being straightforward with you? If I had any bad designs against the girl, should I tell you where she is? If you go there, Solomon, take some of your copper friends." "I have no copper friends," said the man angrily. "You know that well enough. What am I that I should go to the police? Can I go to them with clean hands?" "Well, that's a question I've often asked myself," said the colonel. "I've often said----" "What is the name of the house?" interrupted White. "I want to see whether you're playing square with me, Boundary, and if you're not, by----" "Don't threaten me, don't threaten me, Solomon," said the colonel with a good-humoured gesture. "I'm a nervous man and I suffer from heart disease. You ought to know better than that. Bishopsholme is the place. It is the fourth big house after passing Tredennis Road--a fine villa standing in its own grounds. It looks a bit deserted because it was empty until a few days ago, when I put a scrap or two of furniture into it. Why not wait----" "First I'll find out whether you're speaking the truth, and if you're not----" "Gently, gently," growled Crewe. "What's the good of kicking up a row, White? The colonel's dealing straighter with you than you're dealing with us." He was not in the colonel's secrets, and he himself was deceived, thinking that the girl had been removed to the house which he now heard about for the first time, and that the sole object of the abduction was to bring White back. "Stay a while," said Boundary. "It is only just nine----" But White was gone.