e, and wearing on
his clean-shaven face a perpetual smile, as though life were an
amusement which never palled.

Stafford King took the extended hand with a little twinkle in his eye.

"I was afraid we shouldn't be able to keep your place for you, Sir
Stanley," he said.

Sir Stanley Belcom, First Commissioner of Criminal Intelligence,
accentuated his smile.

"Well, Stafford," he drawled, "I've come to see the culminating triumph
of your official career."

Stafford King made a little grimace.

"I hope so," he said dryly.

"I hope so, too," said the baronet, "yet--I'll tell you frankly,
Stafford, I have a feeling that the ordinary processes of the law are
inadequate to trap this organisation. The law has too wide a mesh to
deal with the terror which this man exercises. Such men are the only
justification of lynch law, the quick, sharp justice which is
administered without subtlety and without quibble."

Stafford looked at the other and made no attempt to hide his
astonishment.

"You believe in--the Jack o' Judgment?" he asked.

Sir Stanley shot a swift glance at him.

"That is the bugbear of the gang, isn't it?"

"So Hanson says," replied the other. "I verily believe that Hanson is
more afraid of that mysterious person than he is of Boundary himself."

The Attorney-General had begun his opening speech when the two men made
their way into the crowded court and found their seats at the end of
the solicitors table.

In the dock sat Colonel Boundary, the least concerned of all that
assembly. The colonel was leaning forward, his arms resting on the
rails, his chin on the back of his hairy hand, his eyes glued upon the
grey-haired lawyer who was dispassionately opening the case.

"The contention of the Crown," the Attorney-General was saying, "is that
Colonel Boundary is at the head of a huge blackmailing organisation, and
that in the course of the past twenty years, by such means as I shall
suggest and as the principal witness for the Crown will tell you, he has
built up his criminal practice until he now controls the most complex
and the most iniquitous organisation that has been known in the long and
sordid history of crime.

"Your Worship will doubtless hear," he went on, "of a bizarre and
fantastic figure which flits through the pages of this story, a
mysterious somebody who is called the 'Jack.' But I shall ask your
Worship, as I shall ask the jury, when this case reaches, as it must
reach ultimately