appreciated rightly and made a particular part of the education of the race, the term coward would be seldom applied, and then only to the person it fitted.”

The Colonel leant forward suddenly, resting his arms on the table, his glance still searching the thin, inscrutable face that puzzled and yet attracted him.

“It is men like you we want... Why did you leave the Service?” he asked abruptly.

His hearer stiffened visibly.

“Need we go into that?” he said.

“Not if you prefer to keep your own counsel.”

There was a barely perceptible pause. The younger man broke it.

“My objection to speak has probably led you to a fairly correct inference,” he said. “I was cashiered from the Army. But for which stroke of fortune I should not now be offering my services to you.”

He lifted his glass, put it to his lips, and draining the contents, set it down again empty.

The Colonel remained silent, regarding him with freshly awakened distrust. By his own showing the man was an adventurer. Despite his first prejudice in his favour he began to wonder whether after all it were wise to place confidence in him. He knew nothing of him. There was to his credit merely a few garnished tales of daring which, either from modesty or a knowledge of their exaggeration, he had himself practically disclaimed,—and to his discredit the ugly truth he had just heard from his own lips. He sat up suddenly. In the piercing eyes that met his own steadily he perceived the flicker of a smile.

“You haven’t committed yourself, sir. There is time to draw back.”

But at the half-mocking speech, the almost insolent challenge of the tone, the doubt in the Colonel’s mind suddenly vanished. What if the man were an adventurer? Were not his services required for an adventurous undertaking? The balance sheet of his past life was no concern of his. He wanted courage, daring, and intelligence; he was prepared to pay for them; and he believed that the man before him possessed these qualifications.

“You are not the first man who has gone under who in happier circumstances would have been a credit to the Service,” he said gravely, and having said it dismissed the subject almost it seemed with relief. It did not do to be over particular in regard to a man’s past with great odds at stake.

“I have mentioned what the business I wished to see you about demands of the man who undertakes it,” he added, without pausing, “but I have said nothing about the business itself as yet. Briefly, it is the recovery of certain letters and incriminating papers—some of them, I believe, forgeries—that are being now used for the purposes of blackmail.”

“Half a moment, please. Is this a personal matter, or are you merely negotiating for someone else?”

“It is not a personal matter. It affects someone of greater importance. I have been sent out here to get hold of those papers at any cost. We have offered a big sum down for them, but the rogues who hold them won’t part. Their game is to keep on squeezing. They believe they have an inexhaustible mine.”

“From what you tell me I should say their belief was justified. Since they won’t sell, how do you purpose getting hold of the papers?”

“We must take a leaf from their book and steal them back.”

There was a momentary silence during which the grey eyes looked straight into the brown eyes with a hard, unflinching gaze.

“And that’s where I come in,” he said, completing the Colonel’s sentence.

The Colonel nodded.

“That’s where you come in—if you do come in, that is... There is a certain danger attaching to the enterprise, but that I needn’t mention to you. You will have determined men to deal with, and, unfortunately, men who are in a sense prepared. The plan has been attempted already—and bungled.”

“I should like,” Grit interposed, “to hear about that, if you please.”

The Colonel briefly narrated the story of young Hayhurst’s successful tracing of the incriminating papers, of how he managed to get hold of them, and how he lost them again through blabbing of the affair to a woman.

“That woman is in it, take my word for it,” the Colonel said.

“What’s her name?” inquired the man who had listened quietly to the recital without once interrupting or even moving his position. At the abrupt question the Colonel looked across at him sharply. He had purposely omitted the mention of any names; he intended to secure his man before going into particulars; but now that the question was put to him point blank he felt that he had not sufficient reason for withholding the information.

“Her name is Lawless—Mrs Lawless, living at Rondebosch.—You know her?” he asked, seeing the unmistakable start his companion gave on hearing the name.

“Know her!—Yes, I suppose I do.”

The Colonel did not appear greatly surprised.

“It’s likely you would. She is somewhat notorious, I believe.”

“In what way?”

“Oh! nothing actually against her that I know of. A beautiful woman living alone, and much admired. ... Rumour has it that she’s a widow, and again has it that she is not. I’ve got beyond the age when a man troubles to find out.”

“What causes you to imagine she is in with the other side?” inquired his hearer, a shade of impatience in his tone.

“The boy—”

“Hayhurst?”

“Yes. Hayhurst declares that she induced him to go home with her, that she pumped him, and then signalled to a man who must have been hiding on the stoep, and who sprang in through the window behind him and knocked him senseless with a blow over the head. When he came to himself he was lying in the gutter near his lodging and the papers were gone. My God!” wound up the speaker savagely, “to know that that young fool had in his possession what I’ve been months scheming to get hold of, and lets a woman Delilah him out of his prize! I could cheerfully have slain him when he brought the tale of his failure to me.”

“Lucky for him it was not to me he brought it,” the other said grimly; “I should probably have done it. You don’t reckon yourself over credulous, I suppose, in accepting his tale as it stands?”

“No. I might have questioned it; but it seems probable enough in face of the fact that the fellow who holds the papers has been paying marked attention to Mrs Lawless for some time, and she certainly does not discourage him. Cape Town couples their names together, I believe. One can credit anything about a woman who will listen to the suit of a rogue like that,—a damned swindler, with a reputation for being bigamously married already in another country!”

“His name?” the man with the scar asked sharply, leaning half-way across the table.

“Van Bleit.”

Grit sat up.

“God! man, I know him intimately. We were in Rhodesia together.” He laughed harshly. “It is to him I owe the nickname that has stuck closer than my own. The former acquaintance may prove helpful.”

The Colonel peered at him closely.

“You have just reminded me that the nickname is all I know you by,” he said. “Simmonds could not recall your