anson."

His tone was mild, and that spelt danger to Hanson, had he known it.
This was the third sign of rebellion which the man had shown in the past
week.

"What's happened to your temper this morning, Hanson?" he asked.

"Everything," exploded the man and in his agitation his foreign origin
was betrayed by his accent. "You tell me I shall haf plenty money,
thousands of pounds! You say I go to my brother in America. Where is dot
money? I go in March, I go in May, I go in July, still I am here!"

"My good friend," said the colonel, "you're too impatient. This is not a
moment I can allow you to go away. You're getting nervous, that's what's
the matter with you. Perhaps I'll let you have a holiday next week."

"Nervous!" roared the man. "Yes, I am. All the time I feel eyes on me!
When I walk in the street, every man I meet is a policeman. When I go to
bed, I hear nothing but footsteps creeping in the passage outside my
room."

"Old Jack, eh?" said the colonel, eyeing him narrowly.

Hanson shivered.

He had seen the Jack o' Judgment once. A figure in gossamer silk who had
stood beside the bed in which the Scandinavian lay and had talked wisdom
whilst Olaf quaked in a muck sweat of fear.

The colonel did not know this. He was under the impression that the
appearance of the previous night had constituted the first of this
mysterious menace.

So he nodded again.

"Send Miss Marsh to me," he said.

Hanson would have got on his nerves if he had nerves. The man, at any
rate, was becoming an intolerable nuisance. The colonel marked him down
as one of the problems calling for early solution.

The secretary had not been gone more than a few seconds before the door
opened again and the girl came in. She was tall, pretty in a doll-like
way, with an aura of golden hair about her small head. She might have
been more than pretty but for her eyes, which were too light a shade of
blue to be beautiful. She was expensively gowned and walked with the
easy swing of one whose position was assured.

"Good morning, Lollie," said the colonel. "Did you see him again?"

She nodded.

"I got a pretty good view of him," she said.

"Did he see you?"

She smiled.

"I don't think so," she said; "besides, what does it matter if he did?"

"Was the girl with him?"

She shook her head.

"Well?" asked the colonel after a pause. "Can you do anything with him?"

She pursed her lips.

If she had expected the colonel to refer to t