Jack O’ Judgment

Colonel Dan Boundary heads a blackmail ring that has driven more than one London victim to a suicide’s grave, and he has made it close to prosecution proof. Rather than demand money, his gang learns a secret and then buys the victim’s property or shares for a fraction of their worth, paying cash so the law has nothing to grip. Two men want him finished. Stafford King, who runs the Criminal Intelligence Department, has given three years to the case and still lacks evidence a court would accept. The other answers to no court. He comes in a black cloak and a white silk mask, laughs out of the dark, and leaves a jack of clubs behind him. Wallace serialised the story in Detective Story Magazine over six weeks in 1920, and Ward Lock published it in May that year.