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 own law-giver. You get there down to first principles."

"One can't admit first principles in a civilised society," said Tom.

"Exactly so, my boy."

He looked at me. "You mean they are not civilised there?"

I nodded.

"They have judges and a judicial system. Jack told me so."

He made me smile, and I left him convinced that I had no answer. But what do judges and a judicial system matter when they don't work? Out in the borderlands tame justice walks with so slow a foot that only dead men can't escape. But wild justice grows redly and sometimes rankly. He was to know it. He knew it very soon.

It was six months before I saw him again, and he came across me as I was lunching in a big West End restaurant.

"You're the very man I wanted to see," said Tom.

There was something strange about him, and the strangeness was not the fact that