He had been shot in his tracks on a night of snow and storm. When the police got him to the mortuary and searched his clothes they found a little tin box of white powder which proved to be cocaine, and a playing card -- the Jack of Clubs

The dead man was named "Snow" Gregory, for he was a doper . . . and some said he might have been proving a little awkward to Colonel Dan Boundary, his associate -- who might have felt a bit relieved to hear of Gregory's icy demise . . . except for the arrival of an envelope addressed to the Colonel, containing only a playing card, the Knave of Clubs -- with a handwritten scrawl on one side: "Jack O' Judgment!"

Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was a popular English writer of novels and plays, his bestsellers including Sanders of the River.