"No," said Jack o' Judgment in a low voice. "I cannot bring him back to life, but I can destroy the man who destroyed him, who blighted his young life, who taught him vicious practices, who sapped his vitality with drugs——"
"That's a lie!" said the colonel. "Crewe picked him up at Monte Carlo, when he was on his beam-ends."
"Who sent him to Monte Carlo?" asked the other. "Who was the gambler who brought him down, and received the wreck he had made with the pretence that he had never met him before? It was you, Boundary?"
The colonel nodded.
"I was a fool to deny it. I pretended to Crewe that I hadn't met him before. Yes, it was I, and I glory in it. You think you're going to pinch me, now, and put me where I belong—on the scaffold maybe. But you can never wipe that memory out of your mind, that you had a son who died in the gutter, that you're a childless old man who has no son to follow you!"
"I can't wipe that out!" said Jack o' Judgment. "O, God! I can't wipe that out!"
He raised his hand to his masked face as though to hide the picture which Boundary conjured up.
"But I can wipe you out," he said fiercely, "and I've given my life, my career, my reputation, all that I hold dear to get you! I've smashed your schemes, I've ruined you, even if I've ruined myself. They're waiting for you downstairs, Boundary. I told them to be here at this very minute. Stafford King——"
"You'll never see me taken," said Boundary.