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The White Moll

by Frank L. Packard · English · Gutenberg #1741 · 499,547 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The White Moll

Author: Frank L. Packard


        
Release date: May 1, 1999 [eBook #1741]
                Most recently updated: March 13, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1741

Credits: Produced by Polly Stratton, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE MOLL ***




Produced by Polly Stratton





THE WHITE MOLL

By Frank Packard




CONTENTS

   CHAPTER

     I.       NIGHT IN THE UNDERWORLD

     II.      SEVEN-THREE-NINE

     III.     ALIAS GYPSY NAN

     IV.      THE ADVENTURER

     V.       A SECOND VISITOR

     VI.      THE RENDEZVOUS

     VII.     FELLOW THIEVES

     VIII.    THE CODE MESSAGE

     IX.      ROOM NUMBER ELEVEN

     X.       ON THE BRINK

     XI.      SOME OF THE LESSER BREED

     XII.     CROOKS vs.  CROOKS

     XIII.    THE DOOR ACROSS THE HALL

     XIV.     THE LAME MAN

     XV.      IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER

     XVI.     THE SECRET PANEL

     XVII.    THE SILVER SPHINX

     XVIII.   THE OLD SHED

     XIX.     BREAD UPON THE WATERS

     XX.      A LONE HAND

     XXI.     THE RECKONING




I. NIGHT IN THE UNDERWORLD

It was like some shadowy pantomime: The dark mouth of an alleyway thrown
into murky relief by the rays of a distant street lamp...the swift,
forward leap of a skulking figure...a girl's form swaying and struggling
in the man's embrace. Then, a pantomime no longer, there came a half
threatening, half triumphant oath; and then the girl's voice, quiet,
strangely contained, almost imperious:

“Now, give me back that purse, please. Instantly!” The man, already
retreating into the alleyway, paused to fling back a jeering laugh.

“Say, youse've got yer nerve, ain't youse!”

The girl turned her head so that the rays of the street lamp, faint as
they were, fell full upon her, disclosing a sweet, oval face, out of
which the dark eyes gazed steadily at the man.

And suddenly the man leaned forward, staring for an instant, and then
his hand went awkwardly to touch his cap.

“De White Moll!” he mumbled deferentially. He pulled the peak of his
cap down over his eyes in a sort of shame-faced way, as though to avoid
recognition, and, stepping nearer, returned the purse.

“'Scuse me, miss,” he said uneasily. “I didn't know it was youse--honest
to Gawd, I didn't! 'Scuse me, miss. Good-night!”

For a moment the girl stood there motionless, looking down the alleyway
after the retreating figure. From somewhere in the distance came the
rumble of an elevated train. It drowned out the pound of the man's
speeding footsteps; it died away itself--and now there was no other
sound. A pucker, strangely wistful, curiously perturbed, came and
furrowed her forehead into little wrinkles, and then she turned and
walked slowly on along the deserted street.

The White Moll! She shook her head a little. The attack had not unnerved
her. Why should it? It was simply that the man had not recognized her
at first in the darkness. The White Moll here at night in one of the
loneliest, as well as one of the most vicious and abandoned, quarters
of New York, was as safe and inviolate as--as--She shook her head again.
Her mind did not instantly suggest a comparison that seemed wholly
adequate. The pucker deepened, but the sensitive, delicately chiseled
lips parted now in a smile. Well, she was safer here than anywhere else
in the world, that was all.

It was the first time that anything like this had happened, and, for the
very reason that it was unprecedented, it seemed to stir her memory now,
and awaken a dormant train of thought. The White Moll! She remembered
the first time she had ever been called by that name. It took her back
almost three years, and since that time, here in this sordid realm
of crime and misery, the name of Rhoda Gray, her own name, her actual
identity, seemed to have become lost, obliterated in that of the
White Moll. A “dip” had given it to her, and the underworld, quick and
trenchant in its “monikers,” had instantly ratified it. There was not
a crook or denizen of crimeland, probably, who did not know the White
Moll; there was, probably, not one to-day who knew, or cared, that she
was Rhoda Gray!

She went on, traversing block after block, entering a less deserted,
though no less unsavory, neighborhood. Here, a saloon flung a sudden
glow of yellow light athwart the sidewalk as its swinging doors jerked
apart; and a form lurched out into the night; there, from a dance-hall
came the rattle of a tinny piano, the squeak of a raspy violin, a
high-pitched, hectic burst of laughter; while, flanking the street
on each side, like interjected inanimate blotches, rows of squalid
tenements and cheap, tumble-down frame houses silhouetted themselves in
broken, jagged points against the sky-line. And now and then a man spoke
to her--his untrained fingers fumbling in clumsy homage at the brim of
his hat.

How strange a thing memory was! How strange, too, the coincidences that
sometimes roused it into activity! It was a man, a thief, just like the
man to-night, who had first brought her here into this shadowland of
crime. That was just before her father had died. Her father had been
a mining engineer, and, though an American, had been for many years
resident in South America as the representative of a large English
concern. He had been in ill health for a year down there, when, acting
on his physician's advice, he had come to New York for consultation, and
she had accompanied him. They had taken a little flat, the engineer had
placed himself in the hands of a famous specialist, and an operation had
been decided upon. And then, a few days prior to the date set for the
operation and before her father, who was still able to be about, had
entered the hospital, the flat had been broken into during the early
morning hours. The thief, obviously not counting on the engineer's
wakefulness, had been caught red-handed. At first defiant, the man had
finally broken down, and had told a miserable story. It was hackneyed
possibly, the same story told by a thousand others as a last defense in
the hope of inducing leniency through an appeal to pity, but somehow to
her that night the story had rung true. Pete McGee, alias the Bussard,
the man had said his name was. He couldn't get any work; there was the
shadow of a long abode in Sing Sing that lay upon him as a curse--a job
here to-day, his record discovered to-morrow, and the next day out on
the street again. It was very old, very threadbare, that story; there
were even the sick wife, the hungry, unclothed children; but to her it
had rung true. Her father had not placed the slightest faith in it,
and but for her intervention the Bussard would have been incontinently
consigned to the mercies of the police.

Her face softened suddenly now as she walked along. She remembered well
that scene, when, at the end, she had written down the address the man
had given her.

“Father is going to let you go, McGee, because I ask him to,” she had
said. “And to-morrow morning I will go to this address, and if I find
your story is true, as I believe it is, I will see what I can do for
you.”

“It's true, miss, so help me God!” the man had answered brokenly. “Youse
come an' see. I'll be dere-an'-an'-God bless youse, miss!”

And so they had let the man go free, and her father, with a whimsical,
tolerant smile, had shaken his head at her. “You'll never find that
address, Rhoda-or our friend the Bussard, either!”

But she had found both the Bussard and the address, and destitution
and a squalor unspeakable. Pathetic still, but the vernacular of the
underworld where men called their women by no more gracious names than
“molls” and “skirts” no longer strange to her ears, there came to her
again now the Bussard's words in which he had paid her tribute on that
morning long ago, and with which he had introduced her to a shrunken
form that lay upon a dirty cot in the barefloored room:

“Meet de moll I was tellin' youse about, Mag. She's white--all de way
up. She's white, Mag; she's a white moll--take it from me.”

The White Moll!

The firm little chin came suddenly upward; but into the dark eyes
unbidden came a sudden film and mist. Her father's health had been too
far undermined, and he had been unable to withstand the shock of the
operation, and he had died in the hospital. There weren't any relatives,
except distant ones on her mother's side, somewhere out in California,
whom she had never seen. She and her father had been all in all to each
other, chums, pals, comrades, since her mother's death many years ago.
She had gone everywhere with him save when the demands of her education
had necessarily kept them apart; she had hunted with him in South
America, ridden with him in sections where civilization was still in the
making, shared the crude, rough life of mining camps with him--and it
had seemed as though her life, too, had gone out with his.

She brushed her hand hastily across her eyes. There hadn't been any
friends either, apart from a few of her father's casual business
acquaintances; no one else--except the Bussard. It was very strange! Her
reward for that one friendly act had come in a manner little expected,
and it had come very quickly. She had sought and found a genuine relief
from her own sorrow in doing what she could to alleviate the misery in
that squalid, one-room home. And then the sphere of her activities had
broadened, slowly at first, not through any preconceived intention
on her part, but naturally, and as almost an inevitable corollary
consequent upon her relations with the Bussard and his ill-fortuned
family.

The Bussard's circle of intimates was amongst those who lay outside the
law, those who gambled for their livelihood by staking their wits, to
win against the toils of the police; and so, more and more, she had come
into close and intimate contact with the criminal element of New York,
until to-day, throughout its length and breadth, she was known, and,
she had reason to believe, was loved and trusted by every crook in the
underworld. It was a strange eulogy, self-pronounced! But it was none
the less true. Then, she had been Rhoda Gray; now, even the Bussard,
doubtless, had forgotten her name in the one with which he himself, at
that queer baptismal font of crimeland, had christened her--the White
Moll. It even went further than that. It embraced what might be called
the entourage of the underworld, the police and the social workers with
whom she inevitably came in contact. These, too, had long known her
as the White Moll, and had come, since she had volunteered no further
information, tacitly to accept her as such, and nothing more.

Again she shook her head. It wasn't altogether a normal life. She was
only a woman, with all the aspirations of a woman, with all the yearning
of youth for its measure of gayety and pleasure. True, she had not made
a recluse of herself outside her work; but, equally, on the other hand,
she had not made any intimate friends in her own station in life. She
had never purposed continuing indefinitely the work she was doing, nor
did she now; but, little by little, it had forced its claims upon
her until those claims were not easy to ignore. Even though the
circumstances in which her father had left her were barely more than
sufficient for a modest little flat uptown, there was still always a
little surplus, and that surplus counted in certain quarters for very
much indeed. But it wasn't only that. The small amount of money that she
was able to spend in that way had little to do with it. The bonds which
linked her to the sordid surroundings that she had come to know so well
were stronger far than that. There wasn't any money involved in this
visit, for instance, that she was going now to make to Gypsy Nan. Gypsy
Nan was...

Rhoda Gray had halted before the doorway of a small, hovel-like,
two-story building that was jammed in between two tenements, which,
relatively, in their own class, were even more disreputable than was the
little frame house itself. A secondhand-clothes store occupied a portion
of the ground floor, and housed the proprietor and his family as well,
permitting the rooms on the second floor to be “rented out”; the garret
above was the abode of Gypsy Nan.

There was a separate entrance, apart from that into the
secondhand-clothes store, and she pushed this door open and stepped
forward into an absolutely black and musty-smelling hallway. By feeling
with her hands along the wall she reached the stairs and began to make
her way upward. She had found Gypsy Nan last night huddled in the lower
doorway, and apparently in a condition that was very much the worse
for wear. She had stopped and helped the woman upstairs to her garret,
whereupon Gypsy Nan, in language far more fervent than elegant, had
ordered her to begone, and had slammed the door in her face.

Rhoda Gray smiled a little wearily, as, on the second floor now, she
groped her way to the rear, and began to mount a short, ladder-like
flight of steps to the attic. Gypsy Nan's lack of cordiality did not
absolve her, Rhoda Gray, from coming back to-night to see how the woman
was--to crowd one more visit on her already over-expanded list. She had
never had any personal knowledge of Gypsy Nan before, but, in a sense,
the woman was no stranger to her. Gypsy Nan was a character known
far and wide in the under-world as one possessing an insatiable and
unquenchable thirst. As to who she was, or what she was, or where she
got her money for the gin she bought, it was not in the ethics of
the Bad Lands to inquire. She was just Gypsy Nan. So that she did not
obtrude herself too obviously upon their notice, the police suffered
her; so that she gave the underworld no reason for complaint, the
underworld accepted her at face value as one of its own!

There was no hallway here at the head of the ladder-like stairs, just a
sort of narrow platform in front of the attic door. Rhoda Gray, groping
out with her hands again, felt for the door, and knocked softly upon it.
There was no answer. She knocked again. Still receiving no reply, she
tried the door, found it unlocked, and, opening it, stood for an instant
on the threshold. A lamp, almost empty, ill-trimmed and smoking badly,
stood on a chair beside a cheap iron bed; it threw a dull, yellow glow
about its immediate vicinity, and threw the remainder of the garret into
deep, impenetrable shadows; but also it disclosed the motionless form of
a woman on the bed.

Rhoda Gray's eyes darkened, as she closed the door behind her, and
stepped quickly forward to the bedside. For a moment she stood looking
down at the recumbent figure; at the matted tangle of gray-streaked
brown hair that straggled across a pillow which was none too clean; at
the heavy-lensed, old-fashioned, steel-bowed spectacles, awry now, that
were still grotesquely perched on the woman's nose; at the sallow face,
streaked with grime and dirt, as though it had not been washed for
months; at a hand, as ill-cared for, which lay exposed on the torn
blanket that did duty for a counterpane; at the dirty shawl that
enveloped the woman's shoulders, and which was tightly fastened around
Gypsy Nan's neck-and from the woman her eyes shifted to an empty bottle
on the floor that protruded from under the bed.

“Nan!” she called sharply; and, stooping over, shook the woman's
shoulder. “Nan!” she repeated. There was something about the woman's
breathing that she did not like, something in the queer, pinched
condition of the other's face that suddenly frightened her. “Nan!” she
called again.

Gypsy Nan opened her eyes, stared for a moment dully, then, in a
curiously quick, desperate way, jerked herself up on her elbow.

“Youse get t'hell outer here!” she croaked. “Get out!”

“I am going to,” said Rhoda Gray evenly. “And I'm going at once.” She
turned abruptly and walked toward the door. “I'm going to get a doctor.
You've gone too far this time, Nan, and--”

“No, youse don't!” Gypsy Nan's voice rose in a sudden scream. She sat
bolt upright in bed, and pulled a revolver out from under the coverings.
“Youse don't bring no doctor here! See! Youse put a finger on dat door,
an' it won't be de door yousel'l go out by!”

Rhoda Gray did not move.

“Nan, put that revolver down!” she ordered quietly. “You don't know what
you are doing.”

“Don't!” leered Gypsy Nan. The revolver held, swaying a little
unsteadily, on Rhoda Gray. There was silence for a moment; then Gypsy
Nan spoke again, evidently through dry lips, for she wet them again and
again with her tongue: “Say, youse are de White Moll, ain't youse?”

“Yes,” said Rhoda Gray.

Gypsy Nan appeared to ponder this for an instant.

“Well den, come back here an' sit down on de foot of de bed,” she
commanded finally.

Rhoda Gray obeyed without hesitation. There was nothing to do but humor
the woman in her present state, a state that seemed one bordering on
delirium and complete collapse.

“Nan,” she said, “you--”

“De White Moll!” mumbled Gypsy Nan. “I wonder if de dope dey hands out
about youse is all on de level? My Gawd, I wonder if wot dey says is
true?”

“What do they say?” asked Rhoda Gray gently.

Gypsy Nan lay back on her pillow as though her strength, over-taxed, had
failed her; her hand, though it still clutched the revolver, seemed to
have been dragged down by the weapon's weight, and now rested upon the
blanket.

“Dey say,” said Gypsy Nan slowly, “dat youse knows more on de inside
here dan anybody else--t'ings youse got from de spacers' molls, an' from
de dips demselves when youse was lendin' dem a hand; dey say dere ain't
many youse couldn't send up de river just by liftin' yer finger, but dat
youse're straight, an' dat youse've kept yer map closed, an' dat youse'
re safe.”

Rhoda Gray's dark eyes softened, as she leaned forward and laid a hand
gently over the one of Gypsy Nan that held the revolver.

“It couldn't be any other way, could it, Nan?” she said simply.

“Wot yer after?” demanded Gypsy Nan, with sudden mockery. “De gun? Well,
take it!” She let go her hold of the weapon. “But don't kid yerself dat
youse're kiddin' me into givin' it to youse because youse have got a
pretty smile an' a sweet voice! Savvy? I”--she choked suddenly, and
caught at her throat--“I guess youse're de only chance I got-dat's all.”

“That's better,” said Rhoda Gray encouragingly. “And now you'll let me
go and get a doctor, won't you, Nan?”

“Wait!” said Gypsy Nan hoarsely. “Youse're de only chance I got. Will
youse swear youse won't t'row me down if I tells youse somet'ing? I
ain't got no other way. Will youse swear youse'll see me through?”

“Of course, Nan,” said Rhoda Gray soothingly. “Of course, I will, Nan. I
promise.”

Gypsy Nan came up on her elbow.

“Dat ain't good enough!” she cried out. “A promise ain't good enough!
For Gawd's sake, come across all de way! Swear youse'll keep mum an' see
me through!”

“Yes, Nan”--Rhoda Gray's eyes smiled reassurance--“I swear it. But you
will be all right again in the morning.”

“Will I? You think so, do you? Well, I can only say that I wish I did!”

Rhoda Gray leaned sharply forward, staring in amazement at the figure
on the bed. The woman's voice was the same, it was still hoarse, still
heavy, and the words came with painful effort; but the English was
suddenly perfect now.

“Nan, what is it? I don't understand!” she said tensely. “What do you
mean?”

“You think you know what's the matter with me.” There was a curious
mockery in the weak voice. “You think I've drunk myself into this state.
You think I'm on the verge of the D.T.'s now. That empty bottle under
the bed proves it, doesn't it? And anybody around here will tell you
that Gypsy Nan has thrown enough empties out of the window there to
stock a bottle factory for years, some of them on the flat roof just
outside the window, some of them on the roof of the shed below, and some
of them down into the yard, just depending on how drunk she was and how
far she could throw. And that proves it, too, doesn't it? Well, maybe
it does, that's what I did it for; but I never touched the stuff, not a
drop of it, from the day I came here. I didn't dare touch it. I had to
keep my wits. Last night you thought I was drunk when you found me in
the doorway downstairs. I wasn't. I was too sick and weak to get up
here. I almost told you then, only I was afraid, and--and I thought that
perhaps I'd be all right to-day.”

“Oh, I didn't know!” Rhoda Gray was on her knees beside the bed. There
was no room to question the truth of the woman's words, it was in Gypsy
Nan's eyes, in the struggling, labored voice.

“Yes.” Gypsy Nan clutched at the shawl around her neck, and shivered.
“I thought I might be all right to-day, and that I'd get better. But I
didn't. And now I've got about a chance in a hundred. I know. It's my
heart.”

“You mean you've been alone here, sick, since last night?” There was
anxiety, perplexity, in Rhoda Gray's face. “Why didn't you call some
one? Why did you even hold me back a few minutes ago, when you admit
yourself that you need immediate medical assistance so badly?”

“Because,” said Gypsy Nan, “if I've got a chance at all, I'd finish it
for keeps if a doctor came here. I--I'd rather go out this way than
in that horrible thing they call the 'chair.' Oh, my God, don't you
understand that! I've seen pictures of it! It's a horrible thing--a
horrible thing--horrible!”

“Nan”--Rhoda Gray steadied her voice--“you re delirious. You do not know
what you are saying. There isn't any horrible thing to frighten you.
Now you just lie quietly here. I'll only be a few minutes, and--” She
stopped abruptly as her wrists were suddenly imprisoned in a frantic
grip.

“You swore it!” Gypsy Nan was whispering feverishly. “You swore it! They
say the White Moll never snitched. That's the one chance I've got, and
I'm going to take it. I'm not delirious--not yet. I wish to God it was
nothing more than that! Look!”

With a low, startled cry, Rhoda Gray was on her feet. Gypsy Nan was
gone. A sweep of the woman's hand, and the spectacles were off, the
gray-streaked hair a tangled wig upon the pillow--and Rhoda Gray found
herself staring in a numbed sort of way at a dark-haired woman who could
not have been more than thirty, but whose face, with its streaks of
grime and dirt, looked grotesquely and incongruously old.




II. SEVEN--THREE--NINE

For a moment neither spoke, then Gypsy Nan broke the silence with a
bitter laugh. She threw back the bedclothes, and, gripping at the edge
of the bed, sat up.

“The White Moll!” The words rattled in her throat. A fleck of blood
showed on her lips. “Well, you know now! You're going to help me, aren't
you? I--I've got to get out of here--get to a hospital.”

Rhoda Gray laid her hands firmly on the other's shoulders.

“Get back into bed,” she said steadily. “Do you want to make yourself
worse? You'll kill yourself!”

Gypsy Nan pushed her away.

“Don't make me use up what little strength I've got left in talking,”
 she cried out piteously, and suddenly wrung her hands together. “I'm
wanted by the police. If I'm caught, it's--it's that 'chair.' I couldn't
have a doctor brought here, could I? How long would it be before he saw
that Gypsy Nan was a fake? I can't let you go and have an ambulance,
say, come and get me, can I, even with the disguise hidden away? They'd
say this is where Gypsy Nan lives. There's something queer here. Where
is Gypsy Nan? I've got to get away from here--away from Gypsy Nan--don't
you understand? It's death one way; maybe it is the other, maybe it'll
finish me to get out of here, but it's the only thing left to do. I
thought some one, some one that I could trust, never mind who, would
have come to-day, but-but no one came, and--and maybe now it s too late,
but there's just the one chance, and I've got to take it.” Gypsy Nan
tore at the shawl around her throat as though it choked her, and
flung it from her shoulders. Her eyes were gleaming with an unhealthy,
feverish light. “Don't you see? We get out on the street. I collapse
there. You find me. I tell you my name is Charlotte Green. That's all
you know. There isn't much chance that anybody at the hospital
would recognize me. I've got money. I take a private room. Don't you
understand?”

Rhoda Gray's face had gone a little white. There was no doubt about the
woman's serious condition, and yet--and yet--She stood there hesitant.
There must be some other way! It was not likely even that the woman had
strength enough to walk down the stairs to begin with. Strange things
had come to her in this world of shadow, but none before like this. If
the law got the woman it would cost the woman her life; if the woman did
not receive immediate and adequate medical assistance it would cost the
woman her life. Over and over in her brain, like a jangling refrain,
that thought repeated itself. It was not like her to stand hesitant
before any emergency, no matter what that emergency might be. She had
never done it before, but now...

“For God's sake,” Gypsy Nan implored, “don't stand there looking at me!
Can't you understand? If I'm caught, I go out. Do you think I'd have
lived in this filthy hole if there had been any other way to save my
life? Are you going to let me die here like a dog? Get me my clothes;
oh, for God's sake, get them, and give me the one chance that's left!”

A queer little smile came to Rhoda Gray's lips, and her shoulders
straightened back.

“Where are your clothes?” she asked.

“God bless you!” The tears were suddenly streaming down the grimy face.
“God bless the White Moll! It's true! It's true--all they said about
her!” The woman had lost control of herself.

“Nan, keep your nerve!” ordered Rhoda Gray almost brutally. It was the
White Moll in another light now, cool, calm, collected, efficient. Her
eyes swept Gypsy Nan. The woman, who had obviously flung herself down
on the bed fully dressed the night before, was garbed in coarse, heavy
boots, the cheapest of stockings which were also sadly in need of
repair, a tattered and crumpled skirt of some rough material, and,
previously hidden by the shawl, a soiled, greasy and spotted black
blouse. Rhoda Gray's forehead puckered into a frown. “What about your
hands and face-they go with the clothes, don't they?”

“It'll wash off,” whispered Gypsy Nan. “It's just some stuff I keep in a
box-over there--the ceiling-” Her voice trailed off weakly, then with
a desperate effort strengthened again. “The door! I forgot the door!
It isn't locked! Lock the door first! Lock the door! Then you take the
candle over there on the washstand, and--and I'll show you. You--you get
the things while I'm undressing. I--I can help myself that much.”

Rhoda Gray crossed quickly to the door, turned the key in the lock, and
retraced her steps to the washstand that stood in the shadows against
the wall on the opposite side from the bed, and near the far end of the
garret. Here she found the short stub of a candle that was stuck in
the mouth of a gin bottle, and matches lying beside it. She lighted the
candle, and turned inquiringly to Gypsy Nan.

The woman pointed to the end of the garret where the roof sloped sharply
down until, at the wall itself, it was scarcely four feet above the
floor.

“Go down there. Right to the wall--in the center,” instructed Gypsy Nan
weakly. And then, as Rhoda Gray obeyed: “Now push up on that wide board
in the ceiling.”

Rhoda Gray, already in a stooped position, reached up, and pushed at
a rough, unplaned board. It swung back without a sound, like a narrow
trap-door, until it rested in an upright position against the outer
frame of the house, disclosing an aperture through which, by standing
erect, Rhoda Gray easily thrust her head and shoulders.

She raised the candle then through the opening--and suddenly her dark
eyes widened in amazement. It was a hiding place, not only ingenious,
but exceedingly generous in expanse. As far as one could reach the
ceiling metamorphosed itself into a most convenient shelf. And it had
been well utilized! It held a most astounding collection of
things. There was a cashbox, but the cashbox was apparently wholly
inadequate--there must have been thousands of dollars in those piles of
banknotes that were stacked beside it! There was a large tin box, the
cover off, containing some black, pastelike substance--the “stuff,”
 presumably, that Gypsy Nan used on her face and hands. There was a
bunch of curiously formed keys, several boxes of revolver cartridges,
an electric flashlight, and a great quantity of the choicest brands
of tinned and bottled fruits and provisions--and a little to one side,
evidently kept ready for instant use, a suit of excellent material,
underclothing, silk stockings shoes and hat were neatly piled together.

Rhoda Gray took the clothing, and went back to the bedside. Gypsy Nan
had made little progress in disrobing. It seemed about all the woman
could do to cling to the edge of the cot and sit upright.

“What does all this mean, Nan,” she asked tensely; “all those things up
there--that money?”

Gypsy Nan forced a twisted smile.

“It means I know how bad I am, or I wouldn't have let you see what you
have,” she answered heavily. “It means that there isn't any other way.
Hurry! Get these things off! Get me dressed!”

But it took a long time. Gypsy Nan seemed with every moment to grow
weaker. The lamp on the chair went out for want of oil. There was only
the guttering candle in the gin bottle to give light. It threw weird,
flickering shadows around the garret; it seemed to enhance the already
deathlike pallor of the woman, as, using the pitcher of water and the
basin from the washstand now, Rhoda Gray removed the grime from Gypsy
Nan's face and hands.

It was done at last--and where there had once been Gypsy Nan, haglike
and repulsive, there was now a stylishly, even elegantly, dressed woman
of well under middle age. The transformation seemed to have acted as
a stimulant upon Gypsy Nan. She laughed with nervous hilarity she even
tried valiantly to put on a pair of new black kid gloves, but, failing
in this, pushed them unsteadily into the pocket of her coat.

“I'm--I'm all right,” she asserted fiercely, as Rhoda Gray, pausing in
the act of gathering up the discarded garments, regarded her anxiously.
“Bring me a package of that money after you've put those things
away--yes, and you'll find a flashlight there. We'll need it going down
the stairs.”

Rhoda Gray made no answer. There was no hesitation now in her actions,
as, to the pile of clothing in her arms, she added the revolver that lay
on the blanket, and, returning to the little trap-door in the ceiling,
hid them away; but her brain was whirling again in a turmoil of doubt.
This was madness, utter, stark, blind madness, this thing that she was
doing! It was suicide, literally that, nothing less than suicide for
one in Gypsy Nan's condition to attempt this thing. But the woman would
certainly die here, too, with out medical assistance--only there was the
police! Rhoda Gray's face, as she stood upright in the little aperture
again, throwing the wavering candle-rays around her, seemed suddenly
to have grown pinched and wan. The police! The police! It was her
conscience, then, that was gnawing at her--because of the police!
Was that it? Well, there was also, then, another side. Could she turn
informer, traitor, become a female Judas to a dying woman, who had
sobbed and thanked her Maker because she had found some one whom she
believed she could trust? That was a hideous and an abominable thing to
do! “You swore it! You swore you'd see me through!”--the words came
and rang insistently in her ears. The sweet, piquant little face set in
hard, determined lines. Mechanically she picked up the flashlight and a
package of the banknotes, lowered the board in the ceiling into place,
and returned to Gypsy Nan.

“I'm ready, if there is no other way,” she said soberly, as she watched
the other tuck the money away inside her waist. “I said I would see you
through, and I will. But I doubt if you are strong enough, even with
what help I can give you, to get down the stairs, and even if you can, I
am afraid with all my soul of the consequences to you, and--”

Gypsy Nan blew out the candle, and staggered to her feet.

“There isn't any other way.” She leaned heavily on Rhoda Gray's arm.
“Can't you see that? Don't you think I know? Haven't you seen enough
here to convince you of that? I--I'm just spilling the dice for--for
perhaps the last time--but it's the only chance--the only chance. Go
on!” she urged tremulously. “Shoot the glim, and get me to the door.
And--and for the love of God, don't make a sound! It's all up if we're
seen going out!”

The flashlight's ray danced in crazy gyrations as the two figures swayed
and crept across the garret. Rhoda Gray unlocked the door, and, as they
passed out, locked it again on the outside.

“Hide the key!” whispered Gypsy Nan. “See--that crack in the floor under
the partition! Slip it in there!”

The flashlight guiding her, Rhoda Gray stooped down to where, between
the rough attic flooring and the equally rough boarding of the garret
partition, there was a narrow space. She pushed the key in out of sight;
and then, with her arm around Gypsy Nan's waist, and with the flashlight
at cautious intervals winking ahead of her through the darkness, she
began to descend the stairs.

It was slow work, desperately slow, both because they dared not make
the slightest noise, and because, too, as far as strength was concerned,
Gypsy Nan was close to the end of her endurance. Down one flight, and
then the other, they went, resting at every few steps, leaning back
against the wall, black shadows that merged with the blackness around
them, the flashlight used only when necessity compelled it, lest its
gleam might attract the attention of some other occupant of the house.
And at times Gypsy Nan's head lay cheek to Rhoda Gray's, and the other's
body grew limp and became a great weight, so heavy that it seemed she
could no longer support it.

They gained the street door, hung there tensely for a moment to make
sure they were not observed by any chance passer-by, then stepped out on
the sidewalk. Gypsy Nan spoke then:

“I--I can't go much farther,” she faltered. “But--but it doesn't matter
now we're out of the house--it doesn't matter where you find me--only
let's try a few steps more.”

Rhoda Gray had slipped the flashlight inside her blouse.

“Yes,” she said. Her breath was coming heavily. “It's all right, Nan. I
understand.”

They walked on a little way up the block, and then Gypsy Nan's grasp
suddenly tightened on Rhoda Gray's arm.

“Play the game!” Gypsy Nan's voice was scarcely audible. “You'll play
the game, won't you? You'll--you'll see me through. That's a good
name--as good as any--Charlotte Green--that's all you know--but--but
don't leave me alone with them--you--you'll come to the hospital with
me, won't you--I--”

Gypsy Nan had collapsed in a heap on the sidewalk.

Rhoda Gray glanced swiftly around her. In the squalid tenement before
which she stood there would be no help of the kind that was needed.
There would be no telephone in there by means of which she could summon
an ambulance. And then her glance rested on a figure far up the block
under a street lamp--a policeman. She bent hurriedly over the prostrate
woman, whispered a word of encouragement, and ran in the officer's
direction.

As she drew closer to the policeman, she called out to him. He turned
and came running toward, and, as he reached her, after a sharp glance
into her face, touched his helmet respectfully.

“What's wrong with the White Moll to-night?” he asked pleasantly.

“There's--there's a woman down there”--Rhoda Gray was breathless from
her run--“on the sidewalk. She needs help at once.”

“Drunk?” inquired the officer laconically.

“No, I'm sure it's anything but that,” Rhoda Gray answered quickly.
“She appears to be very sick. I think you had better summon an ambulance
without delay.”

“All right!” agreed the officer. “There's a patrol box down there in
the direction you came from. We'll have a look at her on the way.” He
started briskly forward with Rhoda Gray beside him. “Who is she d'ye
know?” he asked.

“She said her name was Charlotte Green,” Rhoda Gray replied. “That's all
she could, or would, say about herself.”

“Then she ain't a regular around here, or I guess you'd know her!”
 grunted the policeman.

Rhoda Gray made no answer.

They reached Gypsy Nan. The officer bent over her, then picked her up
and carried her to the tenement doorway.

“I guess you're right, all right! She's bad! I'll send in a call,” he
said, and started on the run down the street.

Gypsy Nan had lost consciousness. Rhoda Gray settled herself on the
doorstep, supporting the woman's head in her lap. Her face had set
again in grim, hard, perplexed lines. There seemed something unnatural,
something menacingly weird, something even uncanny about it all. Perhaps
it was because it seemed as though she could so surely foresee the end.
Gypsy Nan would not live through the night. Something told her that. The
woman's masquerade, for whatever purpose it had been assumed, was over.
“You'll play the game, won't you? You'll see me through?” There seemed
something pitifully futile in those words now!

The officer returned.

“It's all right,” he said. “How's she seem?”

Rhoda Gray shook her head.

A passer-by stopped, asked what was the matter--and lingered curiously.
Another, and another, did the same. A little crowd collected. The
officer kept them back. Came then the strident clang of a gong and
the rapid beat of horses' hoofs. A white-coated figure jumped from
the ambulance, pushed his way forward, and bent over the form in Rhoda
Gray's lap. A moment more, and they were carrying Gypsy Nan to the
ambulance.

Rhoda Gray spoke to the officer:

“I think perhaps I had better go with her.”

“Sure!” said the officer.

She caught snatches of the officer's words, as he made a report to the
doctor:

“Found her here in the street...Charlotte Green...nothing else...the
White Moll, straight as God makes 'em...she'll see the woman through.”
 He turned to Rhoda Gray. “You can get in there with them, miss.”

It took possibly ten minutes to reach the hospital, but, before that
time, Gypsy Nan, responding in a measure to stimulants, had regained
consciousness. She insisted on clinging to Rhoda Gray's hand as they
carried in the stretcher.

“Don't leave me!” she pleaded. And then, for the first time, Gypsy Nan's
nerve seemed to fail her. “I--oh, my God--I--I don't want to die!” she
cried out.

But a moment later, inside the hospital, as the admitting officer began
to ask questions of Rhoda Gray, Gypsy Nan had apparently recovered her
grip upon herself.

“Ah, let her alone!” she broke in. “She doesn't know me any more than
you do. She found me on the street. But she was good to me, God bless
her!”

“Your name's Charlotte Green? Yes?” The man nodded. “Where do you live?”

“Wherever I like!” Gypsy Nan was snarling truculently now. “What's it
matter where I live? Don't you ever have any one come here without a
letter from the pastor of her church!” She pulled out the package of
banknotes. “You aren't going to get stuck. This'll see you through
whatever happens. Give me a--a private room, and”--her voice was
weakening rapidly--“and”--there came a bitter, facetious laugh--“the
best you've got.” Her voice was weakening rapidly.

They carried her upstairs. She still insisted on clinging to Rhoda
Gray's hand.

“Don't leave me!” she pleaded again, as they reached the door of a
private room, and Rhoda Gray disengaged her hand gently.

“I'll stay outside here,” Rhoda Gray promised. “I won't go away without
seeing you again.”

Rhoda Gray sat down on a settee in the hall. She glanced at her wrist
watch. It was five minutes of eleven. Doctors and nurses came and went
from the room. Then a great quiet seemed to settle down around her. A
half hour passed. A doctor went into the room, and presently came out
again. She intercepted him as he came along the corridor.

He shook his head.

She did not understand his technical explanation. There was something
about a clot and blood stoppage. But as she resumed her seat, she
understood very fully that the end was near. The woman was resting
quietly now, the doctor had said, but if she, Rhoda Gray, cared to wait,
she could see the other before leaving the hospital.

And so she waited. She had promised Gypsy Nan she would.

The minutes dragged along. A quarter of an hour passed. Still another.
Midnight came. Fifteen minutes more went by, and then a nurse came out
of the room, and, standing by the door, beckoned to Rhoda Gray.

“She is asking for you,” the nurse said. “Please do not stay more than
a few minutes. I shall be outside here, and if you notice the slightest
change, call me instantly.”

Rhoda Gray nodded.

“I understand,” she said.

The door closed softly behind her. She was smiling cheerily as she
crossed the room and bent over Gypsy Nan.

The woman stretched out her hand.

“The White Moll!” she whispered. “He told the truth, that bull
did--straight as they make 'em, and--”

“Don't try to talk,” Rhoda Gray interrupted gently. “Wait until you are
a little stronger.”

“Stronger!” Gypsy Nan shook her head. “Don't try to kid me! I know. They
told me. I'd have known it anyway. I'm going out.”

Rhoda Gray found no answer for a moment. A great lump had risen in her
throat. Neither would she have needed to be told; she, too, would have
known it anyway--it was stamped in the gray pallor of the woman's face.
She pressed Gypsy Nan's hand.

And then Gypsy Nan spoke again, a queer, yearning hesitancy in her
voice:

“Do--do you believe in God?”

“Yes,” said Rhoda Gray simply.

Gypsy Nan closed her eyes.

“Do--do you think there is a chance--even at the last--if--if, without
throwing down one's pals, one tries to make good?”

“Yes,” said Rhoda Gray again.

“Is the door closed?” Gypsy Nan attempted to raise herself on her elbow,
as though to see for herself.

Rhoda Gray forced the other gently back upon the pillows.

“It is closed,” she said. “You need not be afraid.”

“What time is it?” demanded Gypsy Nan.

Rhoda Gray looked at her watch.

“Twenty-five minutes after twelve,” she answered.

“There's time yet, then,” whispered Gypsy Nan. “There's time yet.”
 She lay silent for a moment, then her hand closed tightly around Rhoda
Gray's. “Listen!” she said. “There's more about--about why I lived like
that than I told you. And--and I can't tell you now--I can't go out like
a yellow cur--I'm not going to snitch on anybody else just because I'm
through myself. But--but there's something on to-night that I'd--I'd
like to stop. Only the police, or anybody else, aren't to know anything
about it, because then they'd nip my friends. See? But you can do
it--easy. You can do it alone without anybody knowing. There's time yet.
They weren't going to pull it until halfpast one--and there won't be any
danger for you. All you've got to do is get the money before they do,
and then see that it goes back where it belongs to-morrow. Will you? You
don't want to see a crime committed to-night if--if you can stop it, do
you?”

Rhoda Gray's face was grave. She hesitated for a moment.

“I'll have to know more than that before I can answer you, Nan,” she
said.

“It's the only way to stop it!” Gypsy Nan whispered feverishly. “I won't
split on my pals--I won't--I won't! But I trust you. Will you promise
not to snitch if I tell you how to stop it, even if you don't go there
yourself? I'm offering you a chance to stop a twenty-thousand-dollar
haul. If you don't promise it's got to go through, because I've got
to stand by the ones that were in it with me. I--I'd like to make
good--just--once. But I can't do it any other way. For God's sake, you
see that, don't you?”

“Yes,” said Rhoda Gray in a low voice; “but the promise you ask for is
the same as though I promised to try to get the money you speak of. If I
knew what was going on, and did nothing, I would be an accomplice to the
crime, and guilty myself.”

“But I can't do anything else!” Gypsy Nan was speaking with great
difficulty. “I won't get those that were with me in wrong--I won't! You
can prevent a crime to-night, if you will--you--you can help me to--to
make good.”

Rhoda Gray's lips tightened, “Will you give me your word that I can do
what you suggest--that it is feasible, possible?”

“Yes,” said Gypsy Nan. “You can do it easily, and--and it's safe. It--it
only wants a little nerve, and--and you've got that.”

“I promise, then,” said Rhoda Gray.

“Thank God!” Gypsy Nan pulled fiercely at Rhoda Gray's wrist. “Come
nearer-nearer! You know Skarbolov, old Skarbolov, who keeps the antique
store--on the street--around the corner from my place?” Rhoda Gray
nodded.

“He's rich!” whispered Gypsy Nan. “Think of it! Him--rich! But he gets
the best of the Fifth Avenue crowd just because he keeps his joint in
that rotten hole. They think they're getting the real thing in antiques!
He's a queer old fool. Afraid people would know he had money if he kept
it in the bank--afraid of a bank, too. Understand? We found out that
every once in a while he'd change a lot of small bills for a big
one--five-hundred-dollar bills--thousand-dollar bills. That put us
wise. We began to watch him. It took months to find where he hid it.
We've spent night after night searching through his shop. You can get in
easily. There's no one there--upstairs is just a storage place for his
extra stock. There's a big padlock on the back door, but there's a false
link in the chain--count three links to the right from the padlock--we
put it there, and--”

Gypsy Nan's voice had become almost inaudible. She pulled at Rhoda
Gray's wrist again, urging her closer.

“Listen--quick! I--my strength!” she panted. “An antique he never
sells--old escritoire against rear wall--secret drawer--take out wide
middle drawer--reach in and rub your hand along the top--you'll feel
the spring. We waited to--to get--get counterfeits--put counterfeits
there--understand? Then he'd never know he'd been robbed--not for a
long time anyway--discovered perhaps when he was dead--old wife--suffer
then--I--got to make good--make good--I--” She came up suddenly on both
her elbows, the dark eyes staring wildly. “Yes, yes!” she whispered.
“Seven-three-nine! Look out!” Her voice rang with sudden terror, rising
almost to a scream. “Look out! Can't you understand, you fool! I've told
you! Seven-three-nine! Seven-three...”

Rhoda Gray's arms had gone around the other's shoulders. She heard the
door open-and then a quick, light step. There wasn't any other sound
now. She made way mechanically for the nurse. And then, after a moment,
she rose from her knees. The nurse answered her unspoken question.

“Yes; it's over.”




III. ALIAS GYPSY NAN

Rhoda Gray went slowly from the room. In a curiously stunned sort of
way she reached the street, and for a few blocks walked along scarcely
conscious of the direction she was taking. Her mind was in turmoil. The
night seemed to have been one of harrowing hallucination; it seemed as
though it were utterly unreal, like one dreaming that one is dreaming.
And then, suddenly, she looked at her watch, and the straight little
shoulders squared resolutely back. The hallucination, if she chose to
call it that, was not yet over! It was twenty minutes of one, and there
was still Skarbolov's--and her promise.

She quickened her pace. She did not like this promise that she had
made; but, on the other hand, she had not made it either lightly or
impulsively. She had no regrets on that score. She would make it again
under the same conditions. How could she have done otherwise? It would
have been to stand aside and permit a crime to be committed which she
was assured was easily within her power to prevent. What excuse could
she have had for that? Fear wasn't an excuse. She did not like the
thought of entering the back door of a store in the middle of the night
like a thief, and, like a thief, taking away that hidden money. She knew
she was going to be afraid, horribly afraid--it frightened her now--but
she could not let that fear make a moral coward of her.

Her hands clenched at her sides. She would not allow herself to dwell
upon that phase of it! She was going to Skarbolov's, and that was all
there was to it. The only thing she really had to fear was that she
should lose even a single unnecessary moment in getting there. Halfpast
one, Gypsy Nan had said. That should give her ample time; but the
quicker she went, the wider the margin of safety.

Her thoughts reverted to Gypsy Nan. What had the woman meant by her last
few wandering words? They had nothing to do with Skarbolov's, that was
certain; but the words came back now insistently. “Seven-three-nine.”
 What did “seven-three-nine” mean? She shook her head helplessly. Well,
what did it matter? She dismissed further consideration of it. She
repeated to herself Gypsy Nan's directions for finding the spring of the
secret drawer. She forced herself to think of anything that would bar
the entry of that fear which stood lurking at the threshold of her mind.

From time to time she consulted her watch--and each time hurried the
faster.

It was five minutes past one when, stealing silently along a black lane,
and counting against the skyline the same number of buildings she had
previously counted on the street from the corner, she entered an equally
black yard, and reached the back door of Skarbolov's little store. She
felt out with her hands and found the padlock, and her fingers pressed
on the link in the chain that Gypsy Nan had described. It gave readily.
She slipped it free, and opened the door. There was faint, almost
inaudible, protesting creak from the hinges. She caught her breath
quickly. Had anybody heard it? It--it had seemed like a cannon shot. And
then her lips curled in sudden self-contempt. Who was there to hear it?

She stepped forward, closed the door silently behind her, and drew
out her flashlight. The ray cut through the blackness. She was in what
seemed like a small, outer storeroom, that was littered with an untidy
collection of boxes, broken furniture, and odds and ends of all sorts.
Ahead of her was an open door, and, through this, the flashlight
disclosed the shop itself. She switched off the light now as she moved
forward-there were the front windows, and, used too freely, the light
might by some unlucky chance be noticed from the street.

And now, in the darkness again, she reached the doorway of the shop. She
had not made any noise. She assured herself of that. She had never known
that she could move so silently before--and--and--Yes, she would fight
down this panic that was seizing her! She would! It would only take a
minute now--just another minute--if--if she would only keep her head and
her nerve. That was what Gypsy Nan had said. She only needed to keep her
nerve. She had never lost it in the face of many a really serious danger
when with her father--why should she now, when there was nothing but the
silence and the darkness to be afraid of!

The flashlight went on again, its ray creeping inquisitively now along
the rear wall of the shop. It held finally on an escritoire over in the
far corner at her right.

Once more the light went out. She moved swiftly across the floor, and
in a moment more was bending over the escritoire. And now, with her body
hiding the flashlight's rays from the front windows, she examined the
desk. It was an old-fashioned, spindle-legged affair, with a nest of
pigeonholes and multifarious little drawers. One of the drawers, wider
than any of the others, and in the center, was obviously the one to
which Gypsy Nan referred. She pulled out the drawer, and in the act
of reaching inside, suddenly drew back her hand. What was that?
Instinctively she switched off the flashlight, and stood tense and rigid
in the darkness.

A minute passed-another. Still she listened. There was no
sound--unless--unless she could actually hear the beating of her heart.
Fancy! Imagination! The darkness played strange tricks! It--it wasn't so
easy to keep one' s nerve. She could have sworn that she had heard some
sort of movement back there down the shop.

Angry with herself, she thrust her hand into the opening now and felt
hurriedly around. Yes, there it was! Her fingers touched what was
evidently a little knob or button. She pressed upon it. There was a
faint, answering click. She turned on the flashlight again. What
had before appeared to be nothing but one of the wide, pearl inlaid
partitions between two of the smaller drawers, was protruding invitingly
outward now by the matter of an inch or so. Rhoda Gray pulled it open.
It was very shallow, scarcely three-quarters of an inch in depth, but
it was quite long enough, and quite wide enough for its purpose!
Inside, there lay a little pile of banknotes, banknotes of very large
denomination--the one on top was a thousand-dollar bill.

She reached in and took out the money-and then from Rhoda Gray's lips
there came a little cry, the flashlight dropped from her hand and
smashed to the floor, and she was clinging desperately to the edge of
the escritoire for support. The shop was flooded with light. Over by
the side wall, one hand still on the electric-light switch, the other
holding a leveled revolver, stood a man.

And then the man spoke--with an oath--with curious amazement:

“My God--a woman!”

She did not speak, or stir. It seemed as though not fear, but horror
now, held her powerless to move her limbs. Her first swift brain-flash
had been that it was one of Gypsy Nan's accomplices here ahead of the
appointed time. That would have given her cause, all too much of cause,
for fear; but it was not one of Gypsy Nan's accomplices, and, far worse
than the fear of any physical attack upon her, was the sense of ruin and
disaster that the realization of a quite different and more desperate
situation brought her now. She knew the man. She had seen those square,
heavy, clamped jaws scores of times. Those sharp, restless black eyes
under over-hanging, shaggy eyebrows were familiar to the whole East
Side. It was Rorke--“Rough” Rorke, of headquarters.

He came toward her, and halfway across the room another exclamation
burst from his lips; but this time it held a jeer, and in the jeer a
sort of cynical and savage triumph.

“The White Moll!”

He was close beside her now, and now he snatched from her hand the
banknotes that, all unconsciously, she had still been clutching tightly.

“So this is what all the sweet charity's been about, eh?” he snapped.
“The White Moll, the Little Saint of the East Side, that lends a helping
hand to the crooks to get 'em back on the straight and narrow again! The
White Moll-hell! You crooked little devil!”

Again she did not answer. Her mind was clear now, brutally clear,
brutally keen, brutally virile. What was there for her to say? She was
caught here at one o'clock in the morning after breaking into the place,
caught red-handed in the very act of taking the money. What story could
she tell that would clear her of that! That she had taken it so that
it wouldn't be stolen, and that she was going to give it back in the
morning? Was there anybody in the world credulous enough to believe
anything like that! Tell Gypsy Nan's story, all that had happened
to-night? Yes, she might have told that to-morrow, after she had
returned the money, and been believed. But now-no! It would even make
her appear in a still worse light. They would credit her with being a
member of this very gang to which Gypsy Nan belonged, one in the secrets
of an organized band of criminals, who was trying to clear her own
skirts at the expense of her confederates. Everything, every act of
hers to-night, pointed to that construction being placed upon her story,
pointed to duplicity. Why had she hidden the identity of Gypsy Nan? Why
had she not told the police that a crime was to be committed, and left
it to the police to frustrate it? It would fit in with the story, of
course--but the story was the result of having been caught in the act
of stealing twenty thousand dollars in cash! What was there to say--and,
above all, to this man, whose reputation for callous brutality in the
handling of those who fell into his hands had earned him the sobriquet
of “Rough” Rorke? Sick at heart, desperate, but with her hands clenched
now, she stood there, while the man felt unceremoniously over her
clothing for a concealed weapon.

Finding none, he stooped, picked up the flashlight, tested it, and found
it broken from its fall.

“Too bad you bust this, we'll have to go out in the dark after I switch
off the light,” he said with unpleasant facetiousness. “I didn't
have one with me, or time to get one, when I got tipped off there was
something doing here to-night.” He caught her ungently by the arm.
“Well, come along, my pretty lady! This'll make a stir, this will! The
White Moll!” He led her to the electric-light switch, turned off the
light, and, with his grasp tight upon her, made for the front door. He
chuckled in a sinister manner. “Say, you're a prize, you are! And pretty
clever, too, aren't you? I wasn't looking for a woman to pull this. The
White Moll! Some saint!”

Rhoda Gray shivered. Disgrace, ruin, stared her in the face. A sea of
faces in a courtroom, morbid faces, hideous faces, leered at her. Gray
walls rose before her, walls that shut out sunshine and hope, pitiless,
cold things that seemed to freeze the blood in her veins. And to-night,
in just a few minutes more--a cell!

From the street outside came the sound of some one making a cheery, but
evidently a somewhat inebriated, attempt to whistle some ragtime air.
It seemed to enhance her misery, to enhance by contrast in its care-free
cheeriness the despair and misery that were eating into her soul.
Her hands clenched and unclenched. If there were only a
chance--somewhere--somehow! If only she were not a woman! If she could
only fight this hulking form that gripped so brutally at her arm!

Rough Rorke opened the door, and pulled her out to the street. She
shrank back instinctively. It was quite light here from a nearby street
lamp, and the owner of the whistle, a young man, fashionably dressed,
decidedly unsteady on his legs, and just opposite the door as they came
out, had stopped both his whistle and his progress along the street to
stare at them owlishly.

“'Ullo!” said the young man thickly. “What'sh all this about--eh?
What'sh you two doing in that place this time of night--eh?”

“Beat it!” ordered Rough Rorke curtly.

“That'sh all right.” The young man came nearer. He balanced himself with
difficulty, but upon him there appeared to have descended suddenly a
vast dignity. “I'm--hic--law--'biding citizen. Gotta know. Gotta show
me. Damn funny--coming out of there this time of night! Eh--what'sh the
idea?”

Rough Rorke, with his free hand, grabbed the young man by the shoulder
angrily.

“Mind your own business, or you'll get into trouble!” he rasped out.
“I'm an officer, and this woman is under arrest. Beat it! D'ye hear?
Beat it--or I'll run you in, too!”

“Is that'sh so!” The young man's tones expressed a fuddled defiance. He
rocked on his feet and stared from one to the other. “Shay, is that'sh
so! You will--eh? Gotta show me. How do I know you're--hic--officer? Eh?
More likely damned thief yourself! I--”

The young man lurched suddenly and violently forward, breaking Rough
Rorke's grip on Rhoda Gray--and, as his arms swept out to grasp at the
detective in an apparently wild effort to preserve his balance, Rhoda
Gray felt a quick, significant push upon her shoulder.

For the space of time it takes a watch to tick she stood startled and
amazed, and then, like a flash, she was speeding down the street. A roar
of rage, a burst of unbridled profanity went up from Rough Rorke behind
her; it was mingled with equally angry vituperation in the young man's
voice. She looked behind her. The two men were swaying around crazily in
each other's arms. She ran on--faster than she had ever run in her
life. The corner was not far ahead. Her brain was working with lightning
speed. Gypsy Nan's house was just around the corner. If she could get
out of sight--hide--it would...

She glanced behind her again, as her ears caught the pound of racing
feet. The young man was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, shaking
his fist; Rough Rorke, perhaps a bare fifty yards away, was chasing her
at top speed.

Her face set hard. She could not out-run a man! There was only one hope
for her--just one--to gain Gypsy Nan's doorway before Rorke got around
the corner.

A yard--another--still another! She swerved around the corner. And,
as she turned, she caught a glimpse of the detective. The man was
nearer--much nearer. But it was only a little way, just a little way, to
Gypsy Nan's--not so far as the distance between her and Rorke--and--and
if the man didn't gain too fast, then--then--A little cry of dismay came
with a new and terrifying thought. Quite apart from Rorke, some one else
might see her enter Gypsy Nan's! She strained her eyes in all directions
as she ran. There wasn't any one--she didn't see any one--only Rorke,
around the corner there, was bawling out at the top of his voice,
and--and...

She flung herself against Gypsy Nan's door, stumbled in, and, closing
it, heard Rorke just swinging around the corner. Had he seen her? She
didn't know. She was panting, gasping for her breath. It seemed as
though her lungs would burst. She held her hand tightly to her bosom as
she made for the stairs--she mustn't make any noise--they mustn't
hear her breathing like that--they--they mustn't hear her going up the
stairs.

How dark it was! If she could only see--so that she would be sure not
to stumble! She couldn't go fast now--she would make a noise if she did.
Stair after stair she climbed stealthily. Perhaps she was safe now--it
had taken her a long time to get up here to the second floor, and there
wasn't any sound yet from the street below.

And now she mounted the short, ladder-like steps to the attic, and,
feeling with her hand for the crack in the flooring under the partition,
reached in for the key. As her fingers closed upon it, she choked back
a cry. Some one had been here! A piece of paper was wrapped around the
key. What did it mean? What did all these strange, yes, sinister, things
that had happened to-night mean? How had Rorke known that a robbery was
to be committed at Skarbolov's? Who was that man who had effected her
escape, and who, she knew now, was no more drunk than she was? Fast,
quick, piling one upon the other, the questions raced through her mind.

She fought them back. There was no time for speculation now! There was
only one question that mattered: Was she safe?

She stood up, thrust the paper for safe-keeping into her bosom, and
unlocked the door. If--if Rorke did not know that she had entered this
house here, she could remain hidden for a few hours; it would give her
time to think, and...

It came this time, no strength of will would hold it back, a little
moan. The front door below had opened, a heavy footstep sounded in the
lower hall. She couldn't see, of course. But she knew. It was Rorke! She
heard him coming up the stairs.

And then, in a flash, it seemed, her brain responded to her despairing
cry. There was still a way--a desperate one--but still a way--if there
was time! She darted inside the garret, locked the door, found the
matches and candle, and, running silently to the rear wall, pushed
up the board in the ceiling. In frantic haste she tore off her outer
garments, her stockings and shoes, pulled on the rough stockings and
coarse boots that Gypsy Nan had worn, slipped the other's greasy,
threadbare skirt over her head, and pinned the shawl tight about her
shoulders. There was a big, voluminous pocket in the skirt, and into
this she dropped Gypsy Nan's revolver, and the paper she had found
wrapped around the key.

She could hear a commotion from below now. It was the one thing she had
counted upon. Rough Rorke might know she had entered the house, but he
could not know whereabouts in the house she was, and he would naturally
search each room as he came to it on the way up. She fitted the
gray-streaked wig of tangled, matted hair upon her head, plunged her
hand into the box that Gypsy Nan used for her make-up and daubed some
of the grime upon both hands and face, adjusted the spectacles upon her
nose, hid her own clothing, closed the narrow trap-door in the ceiling,
and ran back, carrying the candle, to the washstand.

Here, there was a small and battered mirror, and more coolly, more
leisurely now, for the commotion still continued from the floor below,
she spread and rubbed in, as craftily as she could, the grime streaks
on her face and hands. It was neither artistic nor perfect, but in
the meager, flickering light now the face of Gypsy Nan seemed to stare
reassuringly back at her. It might not deceive any one in daylight--she
did not know, and it did not matter now--but with only this candle to
light the garret, since the lamp was empty, she could fairly count on
her identity not being questioned.

She blew out the candle, left it on the washstand, because, if she could
help it, she did not want to risk having it lighted near the bed or
door, and, tiptoeing now, went to the door, unlocked it, then threw
herself down upon the bed.

Possibly a minute went by, possibly two, and then there was a quick step
on the ladder-like stairs, the door handle was rattled violently, and
the door was flung open and slammed shut again.

Rhoda Gray sat upright on the bed. It was her wits now, her wits against
Rough Rorke's; nothing else could save her. She could not even make out
the man's form, it was so dark; but, as he had not moved, she was quite
well aware that he was standing with his back to the door, evidently
trying to place his surroundings.

It was Gypsy Nan, not Rhoda Gray, who spoke.

“Who's dere?” she screeched. “D'ye hear, blast youse, who's dere?”

Rough Rorke laughed gratingly.

“That you, Nan, my dear?”

“Who d'youse t'ink it is-me gran'mother?” demanded Rhoda Gray
caustically. “Who are youse?”

“Rorke,” said Rorke shortly. “I guess you know, don't you?”

“Is dat so?” snorted Rhoda Gray. “Well den, youse can beat it--hop
it--on de jump! Wot t'hell right have youse got bustin' into me room at
dis time of night--eh? I ain't done nothin'!”

Rough Rorke, his feet scuffling to feel the way, came forward.

“Cut it out!” he snarled. “I ain't the only visitor you've got! It's not
you I want; it's the White Moll.”

“Wot's dat got to do wid me?” Rhoda Gray flung back hotly. “She ain't
here, is she?”

“Yes, she's here!” Rough Rorke's voice held an ugly menace. “I lost
her around the corner, but a woman from a window across the street, who
heard the row, saw her run into this house. She ain't downstairs--so you
can figure the rest out the same way I do.”

“De woman was kiddin' youse!” Rhoda Gray, alias Gypsy Nan, cackled
derisively. “Dere ain't nobody here but me.”

“We'll see about that!” said Rough Rorke shortly. “Strike a light!”

“Aw, strike it yerself!” retorted Rhoda Gray. “I ain't yer servant!
Dere's a candle over dere on de washstand against de wall, if youse
wants it.”

A match crackled and spurted into flame; its light fell upon the lamp
standing on the chair beside the bed. Rough Rorke stepped toward it.

“Dere ain't any oil in dat,” croaked Rhoda Gray. “Didn't I tell youse de
candle was over dere on de washstand, an'--”

The words seemed to freeze in her throat, the chair, the lamp, the
shadowy figure of the man in the match flame to swirl before her eyes,
and a sick nausea to come upon her soul itself. With a short, triumphant
oath, Rough Rorke had stopped suddenly and reached in under the chair.
And now he was dangling a new, black kid glove in front of her. Caught!
Yes, she was caught! She remembered Gypsy Nan's attempt to put on her
gloves--one must have fallen to the floor unnoticed by either of them
when Gypsy Nan had thought to put them in her pocket! The man's voice
came to her as from some great distance:

“So, she ain't here--ain't she! I'll teach you to lie to me! I'll--” The
match was dying out. Rorke raised it higher, and with the last flicker
located the washstand, and made toward it, obviously for the candle.

Her wits against Rough Rorke's! Nothing else could save her! Failing to
find any one here but herself, certain now that the White Moll was here,
only a fool could have failed in his deduction--and Rough Rorke was
not a fool. Her wits against Rough Rorke's! There was the time left her
while the garret was still in darkness, just that, no more!

With a quick spring she leaped from the bed, seized the chair, sending
the lamp to the floor, and, dragging the chair after her to make as much
noise and confusion as she could, she rushed for the door, screeching at
the top of her voice:

“Run, dearie, run! Run!” She was scuffling with her feet, clattering the
chair, as she wrenched the door open. And then, in her own voice: “Nan,
I won't! I won't let you stand for this, I--”

Then as Gypsy Nan again: “Run, dearie! Don't youse mind old Nan!” She
banged the door shut, locked it, and whipped out the key. It had taken
scarcely a second. She was still screeching at the top of her voice to
cover the absence of flying footers on the stairs. “Run, dearie, run!
Run!”

And then, in the darkness, the candle still unlighted, Rough Rorke was
on her like a madman. With a sweep of his arm he sent her crashing to
the floor, and wrenched at the door. The next instant he was on her
again.

“The key! Give me that key!” he roared.

For answer she flung it from her. It fell with a tinkle on the floor at
the far end of the garret. The man was beside himself with rage.

“Damn you, if I had time, I'd wring your neck for this, you she-devil!”
 he bawled-and raced back, evidently for the candle on the washstand.

Rhoda Gray, sprawled on the floor where he had thrown her, did not
move-except to take the revolver from the pocket of her dress. She was
crooning queerly to herself, as she watched Rough Rorke light the candle
and grope around on the floor:

“She was good to me, de White Moll was. Jellies an' t'ings she brought
me, she did. An' Gypsy Nan don't ferret. Gypsy Nan don't--”

She sat up suddenly, snarling. Rorke had found the key, left the bottle
with the short stub of guttering candle standing on the floor, and was
back again.

“By God!” he gritted through his teeth, as he jabbed the key with
frantic haste into the lock. “I'll fix you for this!” He made a clutch
at her throat, as he swung the door open.

She jerked herself backward, eluding him, her revolver leveled.

“Youse keep yer dirty paws off me!” she screamed. “Yah, wot can youse
do! Wot do I care! She was good to me, she was, an--”

Rough Rorke was gone-taking the stairs three and four at a time. Then
she heard the street door slam.

She rose slowly to her feet--and suddenly reached out, grasping at the
door to steady herself. It seemed as though every muscle had gone limp,
as though her limbs had not strength to support her. And for a moment
she hung there, then she locked the door, staggered back, sank down
on the edge of the bed, and, with her chin in her hands, stared at
the guttering stub of candle. And presently, in an almost aimless,
mechanical way, she felt in her pocket for the piece of paper that she
had found wrapped around the key, and drew it out. There were three
figures scrawled upon it--nothing else.

                        7     3     9

She dropped her chin in her hands again, and stared again at the candle.
And after a while the candle went out.




IV. THE ADVENTURER

Twenty-Four hours had passed. Twenty four hours! Was it no more than
that since--Rhoda Gray, in the guise of Gypsy Nan, as she sat on the
edge of the disreputable, poverty-stricken cot, grew suddenly tense,
holding her breath as she listened. The sound reached the attic so
faintly that it might be but the product solely of the imagination.
No--it came again! And it even defined itself now--a stealthy footstep
on the lower stairs.

A small, leather-bound notebook, in which she had been engrossed, was
tucked instantly away under the soiled blanket, and she glanced sharply
around the garret. A new candle, which she had bought in the single
excursion she had ventured to make from the house during the day, was
stuck in the neck of the gin bottle, and burned now on the chair beside
her. She had not bought a new lamp--it gave too much light! The old one,
the pieces of it, lay over there, brushed into a heap in the corner on
the floor.

The footstep became more audible. Her lips tightened a little. The
hour was late. It must be already after eleven o'clock. Her eyes grew
perturbed. Perhaps it was only one of the unknown tenants of the floor
below going to his or her room; but, on the other hand, no one had come
near the garret since last night, when that strange and, yes, sinister
trick of fate had thrust upon her the personality of Gypsy Nan, and it
was hoping for too much to expect such seclusion to obtain much longer.
There were too many who must be interested, vitally interested, in Gypsy
Nan! There was Rough Rorke, of headquarters; he had given no sign, but
that did not mean he had lost interest in Gypsy Nan. There was the death
of the real Gypsy Nan, which was pregnant with possibilities; and though
the newspapers, that she, Rhoda Gray, had bought and scanned with such
tragic eagerness, had said nothing about the death of one Charlotte
Green in the hospital, much less had given any hint that the identity
Gypsy Nan had risked so much to hide had been discovered, it did not
mean that the police, with their own ends in view, might not be fully
informed, and were but keeping their own counsel while they baited a
trap.

Also, and even more to be feared, there were those of this criminal
organization to which Gypsy Nan had belonged, and to which she, Rhoda
Gray, through a sort of hideous proxy, now belonged herself! Sooner or
later, they must show their hands, and the test of her identity would
come. And here her danger was the greater because she did not know who
any of them were, unless the man who had stepped in between Rough Rorke
and herself last night was one of them--which was a question that had
harassed her all day. The man had been no more drunk than she had been,
and he had obviously only played the part to get her out of the clutches
of Rough Rorke; but, against this, he had seen her simply as herself
then, the White Moll, and what could the criminal associates of Gypsy
Nan have cared as to what became of the White Moll?

A newspaper, to procure which had been the prime motive that had lured
her out of her retreat that afternoon, caught her eye now, and she
shivered a little as, from where it lay on the floor, the headlines
seemed to leer up at her, and mock, and menace her. “The White
Moll....The Saint of the East Side Exposed....Vicious Hypocrisy....Lowly
Charity for Years Cloaks a Consummate Thief...” They had not spared her!

Her lips firmed suddenly, as she listened. The stealthy footfall had not
paused in the hall below. It was on the short, ladder-like steps now,
leading up here to the garret--and now it had halted outside her door,
and there came a low, insistent knocking on the panels.

“Who's dere?” demanded Rhoda Gray, alias Gypsy Nan, in a grumbling tone,
as, getting up from the bed, she moved the chair noiselessly a few feet
farther away, so that the bed would be beyond the immediate radius of
the candle light. Then she shuffled across the floor to the door. “Who's
dere?” she demanded again, and her hand, deep in the voluminous pocket
of Gypsy Nan's greasy skirt, closed tightly around the stock of Gypsy
Nan's revolver.

The voice that answered her expostulated in a plaintive whisper:

“My dear lady! And after all the trouble I have taken to reach here
without being either seen or heard!”

For an instant Rhoda Gray hesitated--there seemed something familiar
about the voice--then she unlocked the door, and retreated toward the
bed.

The door opened and closed softly. Rhoda Gray, reaching the edge of the
bed, sat down. It was the fashionably-attired, immaculate young man,
who had saved her from Rough Rorke last night. She stared at him in
the faint light without a word. Her mind was racing in a mad turmoil of
doubt, uncertainty, fear. Was he one of the gang, or not? Was she, in
the role of Gypsy Nan, supposed to know him, or not? Did he know that
the real Gypsy Nan, too, had but played a part, and, therefore, when she
spoke must it be in the vernacular of the East Side--or not? And then
sudden enlightenment, with its incident relief, came to her.

“My dear lady”--the young man's soft felt hat was under his arm, and he
was plucking daintily at the fingers of his yellow gloves as he removed
them--“I beg you to pardon the intrusion of a perfect stranger. I offer
you my very genuine apologies. My excuse is that I come from a--I hope I
am not overstepping the bounds in using the term--mutual friend.” Rhoda
Gray snorted disdainfully.

“Aw, cut out de boudoir talk, an' get down to cases!” she croaked. “Who
are youse, anyway?”

The young man had gray eyes--and they lighted up now humorously.

“Boudoir? Ah--yes! Of course! Awfully neat!” His eyes, from the chair
that held the candle, strayed around the scantily furnished, murky
garret as though in search of a seat, and finally rested inquiringly on
Rhoda Gray.

“Youse can put de candle on de floor, if youse like,” she said
grudgingly. “Dat's de only chair dere is.”

“Thank you!” he said.

Rhoda Gray watched him with puckered brow, as he placed the gin bottle
with its candle on the floor, and appropriated the chair. He might,
from his tone, have been thanking her for some priceless boon. He wore
a boutonniere. His clothes fitted him like gloves. He exuded a certain
studied, almost languid fastidiousness--that was wholly out of keeping
with the quick, daring, agile wit that he had exhibited the night
before. She found her hand toying unconsciously with the weapon in her
pocket. She was aware that she was fencing with unbuttoned foils. How
much did he know--about last night?

“Well, why don't youse spill it?” she invited curtly. “Who are youse?”

“Who am I?” He lifted the lapel of his coat, carrying the boutonniere to
his nose. “My dear lady, I am an adventurer.”

“Youse don't say!” observed Rhoda Gray, alias Gypsy Nan. “An' wot's dat
w' en it's at home?”

“In my case, first of all a gentleman, I trust,” he said pleasantly;
“after that, I do not quarrel with the accepted definition of the
term--though it is not altogether complimentary.”

Rhoda Gray scowled. As Rhoda Gray, she might have answered him; as Gypsy
Nan, it was too subtle, and she was beyond her depth.

“Youse look to me like a slick crook!” she said bluntly.

“I will admit,” he said, “that I have at times, perhaps, taken liberties
with the law.”

“Well, den,” she snapped, “cut out de high-brow stuff, an' come across
wid wot brought youse here. I ain't holdin' no reception. Who's de
friend youse was talkin' about?”

The Adventurer looked around him, and lowered his voice.

“The White Moll,” he said.

Rhoda Gray eyed the man for a long minute; then she shook her head.

“I take back wot I said about youse bein' a slick crook,” she announced
coolly. “I guess youse're a dick from headquarters. Well, youse have got
de wrong number--see? Me fingers are crossed. Try next door!”

The Adventurer's eyes were fixed on the newspaper headlines on the
floor. He raised them now significantly to hers.

“You helped her to get away from Rough Rorke last night,” he said
gently. “Well, so did I. I am very anxious to find the White Moll, and,
as I know of no other way except through you, I have got to make you
believe in me, if I can. Listen, my dear lady--and don't look at me so
suspiciously. I have already admitted that I have taken liberties with
the law. Let me add now that last night there was a little fortune of
quite a few thousand dollars that I had already made up my mind was
as good as in my pocket. I was on my way to get it--the newspaper
will already have given you the details--when I found that I had been
forestalled by the young lady, who, the papers say, is known as the
White Moll.” He smiled whimsically. “Even though one might be a slick
crook as you suggest, it is no reason why he should fail in his duty to
himself--as a gentleman. What other course was open to me? I discovered
a very charming young lady in the grip of a hulking police brute. She
also, apparently, took liberties with the law. There was a bond between
us. I--er--took it upon myself to do what I could. And, besides, I was
not insensible to the fact that I was under a certain obligation to her,
quixotic as it may sound, in view of the fact that we were evidently
competitors after the same game. You see, if she had not forestalled me
and been caught herself, I should most certainly have walked into the
trap that our friend of headquarters had prepared. I--er--as I say, did
what I could. She got away; but somehow Rough Rorke later discovered her
here in this room, I understand that he was not happy over the result;
that, thanks to you, she escaped again, and has not been heard of since.”

Rhoda Gray dropped her chin in her grime-smeared hand, staring
speculatively at the other. The man sat there, apparently a
self-confessed crook and criminal, but, also, he sat there as the man
to whom she owed the fact that at the present moment she was not behind
prison bars. He proclaimed himself in the same breath both a thief and
a gentleman, as far as she could make out. They were characteristics
which, until now, she had never associated together; but now, curiously
enough, they did not seem so utterly at variance. Of course they were
at variance, must of necessity be so; but in the personality of this man
the incongruity seemed somehow lost. Perhaps it was a sense of gratitude
toward him that modified her views. He looked a gentleman. There was
something about him that appealed. The gray eyes seemed full of cool,
confident, self-possession; and, quiet as his manner was, she sensed a
latent dynamic something lurking near the surface all the time--that she
was conscious she would much prefer to have enlisted on her behalf than
against her. The strong, firm chin bore this out. He was not handsome,
but--with a sort of mental jerk, she forced her mind back to the stark
realities of her surroundings. She could not thank him for what he had
done last night. She could not tell him that she was the White Moll.
She could only play out the role of Gypsy Nan until--until--Her hand
tightened with a fierce, involuntary pressure upon her chin until it
brought a physical hurt. Until what? God alone knew what the end of this
miserable, impossible horror, in which she found herself engulfed, would
be!

Her eyes sought his face again. The Adventurer was tactfully engaged
in carefully smoothing out the fingers of his yellow gloves. Thief
and gentleman, whatever he might be, whatever he might choose to call
himself, what, exactly, was it that had brought him here to-night? The
White Moll, he had said; but what did he want with the White Moll?

He answered her unspoken question now, almost as though he had read her
thoughts.

“She is very clever,” he said quietly. “She must be exceedingly clever
to have beaten the police the way she has for the last few years;
and--er--I worship at the shrine of cleverness--especially if it be
a woman's. The idea struck me last night that if she and I
should--er--pool our resources, we should not have to complain of the
reward.”

“Oh, so youse wants to work wid her, eh?” sniffed Rhoda Gray. “So dat's
it, is it?”

“Partially,” he said. “But, quite apart from that, the reason I want to
find her is because she is in very great danger. Clever as she is, it is
a very different matter to-day now that the police have found her out.
She has been forced into hiding, and, if alone and without any friend
to help her, her situation, to put it mildly, must be desperate in
the extreme. You befriended her last night, and I honor you for the
unselfishness with which you laid yourself open to the future attentions
of that animal Rorke, but that very fact has deprived her of what might
otherwise have been a refuge and a quite secure retreat here with you. I
do not wish to intrude, or force myself upon her, but I believe I could
be of very material help, and so I have come to you, as I have said,
because you are the only source through which I can hope to find
her, and because, through your act of last night, I know you to be a
trustworthy, and, perhaps, even an intimate, friend of hers.”

“Aw, go on!” said Rhoda Gray, alias Gypsy Nan, deprecatingly. “Dat don't
prove nothin'! I'd have done as much for a stray cat if de bulls was
chasm' her. See? I told youse once youse had de wrong number. She didn't
leave no address. Dat's flat, an' dat's de end of it.”

“I'm sorry,” said the Adventurer gravely. “Perhaps I haven't made out a
good enough case. Or perhaps, even believing me, you consider that
the White Moll, and not yourself, should be the judge as to whether my
services are acceptable or not?”

“Youse can dope it out any way youse likes,” said Rhoda Gray
indifferently. “Me t'roat's gettin' hoarse tellin' youse dere's nothin'
doin'!”

“I'm sorry,” said the Adventurer again. He smiled suddenly, and tucking
his gloves into his pocket, leaned forward and tore off a small piece
from the margin of the newspaper on the floor--but his head the while
was now cocked in a curious listening attitude in the direction of the
door. “You will pardon me, my dear lady, if I confess that, in spite of
what you say, I still harbor the belief that you know where to reach
the White Moll; and so--” He stopped abruptly, and she found his glance,
sharp and critical, upon her. “You are expecting a visitor, perhaps?” he
inquired softly.

Rhoda Gray stared in genuine perplexity.

“Wot's de answer?” she demanded.

“There is some one on the stairs,” replied the Adventurer.

Rhoda Gray listened--and her perplexity deepened. She could hear
nothing.

“Youse must have good ears!” she scoffed.

“I have,” returned the Adventurer coolly. “My hearing is one of the
resources that I wanted to pool with the White Moll.”

“Well, den, mabbe it's Rough Rorke.” Her tone still held its scoffing
note; but her words voiced the genuine enough, that had come flashing
upon her. “An' if it is, after last night, an' he finds youse an' me
together, dere'll be--”

“My dear lady,” interposed the Adventurer calmly, “if there were the
remotest possibility that it could be Rough Rorke, I would not be here.”

“Wot do youse mean?” She had unconsciously towered her voice.

The Adventurer shrugged his shoulders whimsically. He had laid the piece
of paper on his knee, and, with a small gold pencil which he had taken
from his pocket, was writing something upon it.

“The fact that I can assure you that, whoever else it may be, the person
outside there cannot be Rough Rorke, is simply a proof that, if I had
the opportunity, I could be of real assistance to the White Moll,”
 he said imperturbably. “Well”--a grim little smile flickered suddenly
across his lips--“do you hear any one now?”

Quite low, but quite unmistakably, the short, ladder-like steps just
outside the door were voicing a creaky protest now as some one mounted
them. Rhoda Gray did not move. It seemed as though she could hear the
sudden thumping of her own heart. Who was it this time? How was she to
act? What was she to say? It was so easy to make the single little slip
of word or manner that would spell ruin and disaster.

“Rubber heels and rubber soles,” murmured the Adventurer. “But, at that,
it is extremely well done.” He held out the torn piece of paper to Rhoda
Gray.

“If”--he smiled significantly--“if, by any good fortune, you see the
White Moll again, please give her this and let her decide for herself.
It is a telephone number. She can always reach me there by asking
for--the Adventurer.” He was still extending the piece of paper.
“Quick!” he whispered, as the door knob rattled.




V. A SECOND VISITOR

Mechanically Rhoda Gray thrust the paper into the pocket of her skirt.
The door swung open. A tall man, well dressed, as far as could be seen
in the uncertain light, a slouch hat pulled far down over his eyes,
stood on the threshold, surveying the interior of the garret.

The Adventurer rose composedly to his feet--and moved slightly back out
of the direct radius of the candlelight.

There was silence for a moment, and then the man in the doorway laughed
unpleasantly.

“Hello!” he flung out harshly. “Who's the dude, Nan?”

Rhoda Gray, on the edge of the bed, shrugged her shoulders. The
Adventurer was standing quite at his ease, his soft hat tucked under his
right arm, his hand thrust into the side pocket of his coat. She could
no longer see his face distinctly.

“Well?” There was a snarl in the man's voice as he advanced from the
doorway. “You heard me, didn't you? Who is he?”

“Why don't youse ask him yerself?” inquired Rhoda Gray truculently. “I
dunno.”

“You don't, eh?” The man had halted close to where the candle stood on
the floor between himself and the Adventurer. “Well, then, I guess we'll
find out!” He was peering in the Adventurer's direction, and now there
came a sudden savage scowl to his face. “It seems to me I've seen those
clothes somewhere before, and I guess now we'll take a look at your face
so that there won't be any question about recognition the next time we
meet.”

The Adventurer laughed softly.

“There will be none on my part,” he said calmly. “It's Danglar, isn't
it? I am surely not mistaken. Parson Danglar, alias--ah! Please don't do
that!”

It seemed to Rhoda Gray that it happened in the space of time it might
take a watch to tick: The newcomer stooping to the floor, and lifting
the candle with the obvious intention of thrusting it into the
Adventurer's face--a glint of metal, as the Adventurer whipped a
revolver from the side pocket of his coat--and then, how they got there
she could not tell, it was done so adroitly and swiftly, the thumb and
forefinger of the Adventurer's left hand had closed on the candle wick
and snuffed it out, and the garret was in darkness.

There was a savage oath, a snarl of rage from the man whom the
Adventurer had addressed as Danglar; then an instant s silence; and then
the Adventurer's voice--from the doorway:

“I beg of you not to vent your disappointment on the lady--Danglar. I
assure you that she is in no way responsible for my visit here, and, as
far as that goes, never saw me before in her life. Also, it is only fair
to tell you, in case you should consider leaving here too hurriedly,
that I am really not at all a bad shot--even in the dark. I bid you
good-night, Danglar--and you my dear lady!”

Danglar's voice rose again in a flood of profane rage. He stumbled and
moved around in the dark.

“Damn it!” he shouted. “Where are the matches? Where's the lamp? This
cursed candle's put enough to the bad already! Do you hear? Where's the
lamp?”

“It's over dere on de floor, bust to pieces,” mumbled Rhoda Gray.
“Youse'll find the matches on de washstand, an--”

“What's the idea?” There was a sudden, steel-like note dominating the
angry tones. “What are you handing me that hog-wash language for? Eh?
It's damned queer! There's been damned queer doings around here ever
since last night! See? What's the idea?”

Rhoda Gray felt her face whiten in the darkness. It was the slip she
had feared; the slip that she had had to take the chance of making, and
which, if it were not retrieved, and instantly retrieved, now that it
was made, meant discovery, and after that--She shivered a little.

“You needn't lose your head, just because you've lost your temper!” she
said tartly, in a guarded whisper. “The door into the hall is still wide
open, isn't it?”

“Oh, all right!” he said, his tones a sort of sullen admission that her
retort was justified. “But even now your voice sounds off color.”

Rhoda Gray bridled.

“Does it?” she snapped at him. “I've got a cold. Maybe you'd get one
too, and maybe your voice would be off color, if you had to live in a
dump like this, and--”

“Oh, all right, all right!” he broke in hurriedly. “For Heaven's sake
don't start a row! Forget it! See? Forget it!” He walked over to the
door, peered out, swore savagely to himself, shut the door, held the
candle up to circle the garret, and scowled as its rays fell upon the
shattered pieces of the lamp in the corner then, returning, he set the
candle down upon the chair and began to pace restlessly, three or four
steps each way, up and down in front of the bed.

Rhoda Gray, from the edge of the bed, shifted back until her shoulders
rested against the wall. Danglar, too, was dressed like a gentleman--but
Danglar's face was not appealing. The little round black eyes were
shifty, they seemed to possess no pupils whatever, and they roved
constantly; there was a hard, unyielding thinness about the lips, and
the face itself was thin, almost gaunt, as though the skin had had to
accommodate itself to more than was expected of it, and was elastically
stretched over the cheek-bones.

“Well, I'm listening!” jerked out the man abruptly. “You knew our game
at Skarbolov's was queered. You got the 'seven-three-nine,' didn't you?”

“Yes, of course, I got it,” answered Rhoda Gray. “What about it?”

“For two weeks now, yes, more than two weeks”--the man's voice rasped
angrily--“things have been going wrong, and some one has been butting in
and getting away with the goods under our noses. We know now, from last
night, that it must have been the White Moll, for one, though it's not
likely she worked all alone. Skeeny dropped to the fact that the police
were wise about Skarbolov's, and that's why we called it off, and the
'seven-three-nine' went out. They must have got wise through shadowing
the White Moll. See? Then they pinch her, but she makes her get-away,
and comes here, and, if the dope I've got is right, you hand Rough
Rorke one, and help her to beat it again. It looks blamed funny--doesn't
it?--when you come to consider that there's a leak somewhere!”

“Is that so!” Rhoda Gray flashed back. “And did you know before last
night that it was the White Moll who was queering our game?”

“If I had,” the man gritted between his teeth, “I'd--”

“Well, then, how did you expect me to know it?” demanded Rhoda Gray
heatedly. “And if the White Moll happens to know Gypsy Nan, as she knows
everybody else through her jellies and custards and fake charity, and
happens to be near here when she gets into trouble, and beats it for
here with the police on her heels, and asks for help, what do you expect
Gypsy Nan's going to do if she wants to stand any chance of sticking
around these parts--as Gypsy Nan?”

The man paused in his walk, and, jerking back his hat, drew his hand
nervously across his forehead.

“You make me tired!” said Rhoda Gray wearily. “Do you think you could
find the door without too much trouble?”

Danglar resumed his pacing back and forth, but more slowly now.

“Oh, I know! I know, Bertha!” he burst out heavily. “I'm talking through
my hat. You've got the roughest job of any of us, old girl. Don't mind
what I'm saying. Something's badly wrong, and I'm half crazy. It's
certain now that the White Moll's the one that's been doing us, and what
I really came down here for to-night was to tell you that your job from
now on was to get the White Moll. You helped her last night. She doesn't
know you are anybody but Gypsy Nan, and so you're the one person in New
York she'll dare try to communicate with sooner or later. Understand?
That's what I came for, not to talk like a fool--but that fellow I found
here started me off. Who is he? What did he want?”

“He wanted the White Moll, too,” said Rhoda Gray, with a short laugh.

“Oh, he did, eh!” Danglar's lips twisted into a sudden, merciless smile.
“Well, go on! Who is he?”

“I don't know who he is,” Rhoda Gray answered a little impatiently. “He
said he was an adventurer--if you can make anything out of that. He said
he got the White Moll away from Rough Rorke last night, after Rorke had
arrested her; and then he doped the rest out the same as you have--that
he could find the White Moll again through Gypsy Nan. I don't know what
he wanted her for.”

“That's better!” snarled Danglar, the merciless smile still on his lips.
“I thought she must have had a pal, and we know now who her pal is. It's
open and shut that she's sitting so tight she hasn't been able to get
into touch with him, and that's what's worrying Mr. Adventurer.”

Rhoda Gray, save for a nod of her head, made no answer.

Danglar laughed suddenly, as though in relief; then, coming closer to
the bed, plunged his hand into his coat pocket, and tossed handful of
jewelry carelessly into Rhoda Gray's lap.

“I feel better than I did!” he said, and laughed again. “It's a cinch
now that we'll get them both through you, and it s a cinch that the
White Moll won't cut in to-night. Put those sparklers away with the rest
until we get ready to 'fence' them.”

Rhoda Gray did not speak. Mechanically, as though she were living
through some hideous nightmare, she began to scoop up the gems from her
lap and allow them to trickle back through her fingers. They flashed and
scintillated brilliantly, even in the meager light. They seemed alive
with some premonitory, baleful fire.

“Yes, there's some pretty slick stuff there,” said Danglar, with an
appraising chuckle; “but there'll be something to-night that'll make all
that bunch look like chicken-feed. The boys are at work now, and we'll
have old Hayden-Bond's necklace in another hour. Skeeny's got the
Sparrow tied up in the old room behind Shluker's place, and once we're
sure there's no back-fire anywhere, the Sparrow will chirp his last
chirp.” He laughed out suddenly, and, leaning forward, clapped Rhoda
Gray exultantly on the shoulder. “It was like taking candy from
a kid! The Sparrow and the old man fell for the sick-mother,
needing-her-son-all-night stuff without batting a lid; but the Sparrow
hasn't been holding the old lady's hand at the bedside yet. We took care
of that.”

Again Rhoda Gray made no comment. She wondered, as she gripped at the
rings and brooches in hand, so fiercely that the settings pricked into
the flesh, if her face mirrored in any way the cold, sick misery that
had suddenly taken possession of her soul. The Sparrow! She knew the
Sparrow; she knew the Sparrow's sick mother. That part of it was true.
The Sparrow did have an old mother who was sick. A fine old lady--finer
than the son--Finch, her name was. Indirectly, she knew old Hayden-Bond,
the millionaire, and--Almost subconsciously she was aware that Danglar
was speaking again.

“I guess luck's breaking our way again,” he grinned. “The old boy paid
a hundred thousand cold for that necklace. You know how long we've been
waiting to get our hooks on it, and we've never had our eyes off his
house for two months. Well, it pays to wait, and it pays to do things
right. It broke our way at last to-night, all right, all right! To-day's
Saturday--and the safety deposit vaults aren't open on Sunday. Mrs.
Hayden-Bond's been away all week visiting, but she comes back to-morrow,
and there's some swell society fuss fixed for to-morrow night, and she
wants her necklace to make a splurge, so she writes Mr. H-hyphen-B, and
out it comes from the safety deposit vault, and into the library safe.
The old man isn't long on social stunts, and he's got pretty well set
in his habits; one of those must-have-nine-hours'-sleep bugs, and he's
always in bed by ten--when his wife'll let him. She being away to-night,
the boys were able to get to work early. They ought to be able to crack
that box without making any noise about it in an hour and a half at the
outside.” He pulled out his watch-and whistled low under his breath.
“It's a quarter after eleven now,” he said hurriedly, and moved abruptly
toward the door. “I can't stick around here any longer. I've got to be
on deck where they can slip me the 'white ones,' and then there's
Skeeny waiting for the word to bump off the Sparrow.” He jerked his hand
suddenly toward the jewels in her lap. “Salt those away before any more
adventurers blow in!” he said, half sharply, half jocularly. “And don't
let the White Moll slip you--at any cost. Remember! She's bound to come
to you again. Play her--and send out the call. You understand, don't
you? There's never been a yip out of the police. Our methods are too
good for that. Look at the Sparrow to-night. Where there's no chance
taken of suspicion going anywhere except where we lead it, there's
no chance of any trouble--for us! But this cursed she-fiend's another
story. We're not planting plum trees for her to pick any more of the
fruit. Understand?”

She answered him mechanically.

“Yes,” she said.

“All right, then; that end of it is up to you,” he said significantly.
“You're clever, clever as the devil, Bertha. Use your brains now--we
need 'em. Good-night, old girl. See you later.”

“Good-night,” said Rhoda Gray dully.

The door closed. The short, ladder-like steps to the hallway below
creaked once, and then all was still. Danglar did have on rubber-soled
shoes. She sat upright, her hands, clenched now, pressed hard against
her throbbing temples. It wasn't true! None of this was true--this
hovel of a place, those jewels glinting like evil eyes in her lap; her
existence itself wasn't true; it was only her brain now, sick like her
soul, that conjured up these ugly phantoms with horrible, plausible
ingenuity. And then an inner voice seemed to answer her with a calmness
that was hideous in its finality. It was true. All of it was true.
Those words of Danglar, and their bald meaning, were true. Men did such
things; men made in the image of their Maker did such things. They were
going to kill a man to-night--an innocent man whom they had made their
pawn.

She swept the jewels from her lap to the blanket, and rising, seized the
candle, went to the door, looked out, and, holding the candle high above
her head, peered down the stairs. Yes, he was gone. There was no one
there.

She locked the door again, returned to the bed, set the candle down upon
the chair, and stood there, her face white and drawn, staring with wide,
tormented eyes about her. Murder. Danglar had spoken of it with inhuman
callousness--and had laughed at it. They were going to take a man's
life. And there was only herself, already driven to extremity, already
with her own back against the wall in an effort to save herself, only
herself to carry the burden of the responsibility of doing something-to
save a man's life.

It seemed to plumb the depths of irony and mockery. She could not make
a move as Gypsy Nan. It would only result in their turning upon her, of
the discovery that she was not Gypsy Nan at all, of the almost certainty
that it would cost her her own life without saving the Sparrow's. That
way was closed to her from the start. As the White Moll, then? Outside
there in the great city, every plain-clothes man, every policeman on
every beat, was staring into every woman's face he met--searching for
the White Moll.

She wrung her hands in cruel desperation. Even to her own problem she
had found no solution, though she had wrestled with it all last night,
and all through the day; no solution save the negative one of clinging
to this one refuge that remained to her, such as it was, temporarily.
She had found no solution to that; what solution was there to this! She
had thought of leaving the city as Gypsy Nan, and then somewhere far
away, of sloughing off the character of Gypsy Nan, and of resuming her
own personality again under an assumed name. But that would have meant
the loss of everything she had in life, her little patrimony, the
irredeemable stamp of shame upon the name she once had owned; and also
the constant fear and dread that at any moment the police net, wide as
the continent was wide, would close around her, as, sooner or later, it
was almost inevitable that it would close around her. It had seemed that
her only chance was to keep on striving to play the role of Gypsy Nan,
because it was these associates of Gypsy Nan who were at the bottom of
the crime of which she, Rhoda Gray, was held guilty, and because there
was always the hope that in this way, through confidences to a supposed
confederate, she could find the evidence that would convict those
actually guilty, and so prove her own innocence. But in holding to
the role of Gypsy Nan for the purpose of receiving those criminal
confidences, she had not thought of this--that upon her would rest the
moral responsibility of other crimes of which she would have knowledge,
and, least of all, that she should be faced with what lay before her
now, to-night, at the first contact with those who had been Gypsy Nan's
confederates.

What was she to do? Upon her, and upon her alone, depended a man's life,
and, adding to her distraction, she knew the man--the Sparrow, who had
already done time; that was the vile ingenuity of it all. And there
would le corroborative evidence, of course; they would have seen to
that. If the Sparrow disappeared and was never heard of again, even a
child would deduce the assumption that the proceeds of the robbery had
disappeared with him.

Her brain seemed to grow panicky. She was standing here helplessly. And
time, the one precious ally that she possessed, was slipping away from
her. She could not go to the police as Gypsy Nan--and, much less, as
the White Moll! She could not go to the police in any case, for the
“corroborative” evidence, that obviously must exist, unless Danglar and
those with him were fools, would indubitably damn the Sparrow to another
prison term, even supposing that through the intervention of the police
his life were saved. What was she to do?

And then, for a moment, her eyes lighted in relief. The Adventurer!
She thrust her hand into the pocket of her skirt, and drew out the torn
piece of paper, and studied the telephone number upon it--and slowly the
hurt and misery came back into her eyes again. Who was he? He had told
her. An adventurer. He had given her to understand that he, if she had
not been just a few minutes ahead of him, would have taken that money
from Skarbolov's escritoire last night. Therefore he was a crook.
Danglar had said that some one had been getting in ahead of them lately
and snatching the plunder from under their noses; and Danglar now
believed that it had been the White Moll. A wan smile came to her lips.
Instead of the White Moll, it appeared to be quite obvious that it was
the Adventurer. It therefore appeared to be quite as obvious that the
man was a professional thief, and an extremely clever one, at that. She
dared not trust him. To enlist his aid she would have to explain
the gang's plot; and while the Adventurer might go to the Sparrow's
assistance, he might also be very much more interested in the diamond
necklace that was involved, and not be entirely averse to Danglar's plan
of using the Sparrow as a pawn, who, in that case, would make a very
convenient scapegoat for the Adventurer--instead of Danglar! She dared
not trust the man. She could not absolve her conscience by staking
another's life on a hazard, on the supposition that the Adventurer might
do this or that. It was not good enough.

She was quick in her movements now. Subconsciously her decision had been
made. There was only one way--only one. She gathered up the jewels from
the bed and thrust them, with the Adventurer's torn piece of paper, into
her pocket. And now she reached for the little notebook that she had
hidden under the blanket. It contained the gang's secret code, and she
had found it in the cash box in Gypsy Nan's strange hiding place that
evening. Half running now, carrying the candle, she started toward the
lower end of the attic, where the roof sloped down to little more
than shoulder high. “Seven-Three-Nine!” Danglar had almost decoded the
message word for word in the course of his conversation. In the little
notebook, set against the figures, were the words: “Danger. The game
is off. Make no further move.” It was only one of many, that arbitrary
arrangement of figures, each combination having its own special
significance; but, besides these, there was the key to a complete
cipher into which any message might be coded, and--But why was her brain
swerving off at inconsequential tangents? What did a coder or code book,
matter at the present moment?

She was standing under the narrow trap-door in the low ceiling now, and
now she pushed it up, and lifting the candle through the opening, set it
down on the inner surface of the ceiling, which, like some vast shelf,
Gypsy Nan had metamorphosed into that exhaustive storehouse of edibles,
of plunder--a curious and sinister collection that was eloquent of a
gauntlet long flung down against the law. She emptied the pocket of her
skirt, retaining only the revolver, and substituted the articles she had
removed with the tin box that contained the dark compound Gypsy Nan, and
she herself, as Gypsy Nan, had used to rob her face of youthfulness, and
give it the grimy, dissolute and haggard aspect which was so simple and
yet so efficient a disguise.

She worked rapidly now, changing her clothes. She could not go, or act,
as Gypsy Nan; and so she must go in her own character, go as the White
Moll--because that was the lesser danger, the one that held the only
promise of success. There wasn't any other way. She could not very well
refuse to risk her capture by the police, could she, when by so doing
she might save another's life? She could not balance in cowardly
selfishness the possibility of a prison term for herself, hideous as
that might be, against the penalty of death that the Sparrow would pay
if she remained inactive. But she could not leave here as the White
Moll. Somewhere, somewhere out in the night, somewhere away from this
garret where all connection with it was severed, she must complete the
transformation from Gypsy Nan to the White Moll. She could only prepare
for that now as best she could.

And there was not a moment to lose. The thought made her frantic. Over
her own clothes she put on again Gypsy Nan's greasy skirt, and drew on
again, over her own silk ones, Gypsy Nan's coarse stockings. She put on
Gypsy Nan's heavy and disreputable boots, and threw the old shawl again
over her head and shoulders. And then, with her hat--for the small shape
of which she breathed a prayer of thankfulness!--and her own shoes under
her arm and covered by the shawl, she took the candle again, closed the
trap-door, and stepped over to the washstand. Here, she dampened a
rag, that did duty as a facecloth, and thrust it into her pocket; then,
blowing out the candle, she groped her way to the door, locked it behind
her, and without any attempt at secrecy made her way downstairs.




VI. THE RENDEZVOUS

Rhoda Gray's movements were a little unsteady as she stepped out on
the sidewalk. Gypsy Nan's accepted inebriety was not without its
compensation. It enabled her, as she swayed for a moment, to scrutinize
the street in all directions. Were any of Rough Rorke's men watching the
house? She did not know; she only knew that as far as she had been
able to discover, she had not been followed when she had gone out that
afternoon. Up the street, to her right, there were a few pedestrians; to
her left, as far as the corner, the block was clear. She turned in the
latter direction. She had noticed that afternoon that there was a lane
between Gypsy Nan's house and the corner; she gained this and slipped
into it unobserved.

And now, in the comparative darkness, she hurried her steps. Somewhere
here in the lane she would make the transformation from Gypsy Nan to the
White Moll complete; it required only some place in which she could with
safety leave the garments that she discarded, and--Yes, this would do! A
tumble-down old shed, its battered door half open, ample proof that the
place was in disuse, intersected the line of high board fence on her
right.

She stole inside. It was utterly dark, but she had no need for light.
It was a matter of perhaps three minutes; and then, the revolver
transferred to the pocket of her jacket, the stains removed from her
face by the aid of the damp cloth, her hands neatly gloved in black
kid, the skirt, boots, stockings, shawl, spectacles and wig of Gypsy Nan
carefully piled together and hidden in a hole under the rotting boards
of the floor, behind the door, she emerged as the White Moll, and went
on again.

But at the end of the lane, where it met a cross street, and the street
lamp flung out an ominous challenge, and, dim though it was, seemed to
glare with the brightness of daylight, she faltered for a moment and
drew back. She knew where Shluker's place was, because she knew, as few
knew it, every nook and cranny in the East Side, and it was a long way
to that old junk shop, almost over to the East River, and--and there
would be lights like this one here that barred her exit from the lane,
thousands of them, lights all the way, and--and out there they were
searching everywhere, pitilessly, for the White Moll.

And then, with her lips tightened, the straight little shoulders thrown
resolutely back, she slipped from the lane to the sidewalk, and, hugging
the shadows of the buildings, started forward.

She was alert now in mind and body, every faculty strained and in
tension. It was a long way, and it would take a great while--by wide
detours, by lanes and alleyways, for only on those streets that were
relatively deserted and poorly lighted would she dare trust herself to
the open. And as she went along, now skirting the side of a street, now
through some black courtyard, now forced to take a fence, and taking it
with the agility born of the open, athletic life she had led with her
father in the mining camps of South America, now hiding at the mouth
of a lane waiting her chance to cross an intersecting street when
some receding footstep should have died away, the terror of delay
came gripping at her heart with an icy clutch, submerging the fear of
personal peril in the agony of dread that, with her progress so slow,
she would, after all, be too late. And at times she almost cried out in
her vexation and despair, as once, when crouched behind a door-stoop,
a policeman, not two yards from her, stood and twirled his night stick
under the street lamp while the minutes sped and raced themselves away.

When she could run, she ran until it seemed her lungs must burst, but
it was slow progress at best, and always the terror grew upon her. Had
Danglar met the men yet who had looted the millionaire's safe? Had he
already joined Skeeny in that old room behind Shluker's place? Had the
Sparrow--She would not let her mind frame that question in concrete
words. The Sparrow! His real name was Martin, Martin Finch--Marty,
for short. Times without number she had visited the sick and widowed
mother--while the Sparrow had served a two-years' sentence for his first
conviction in safe-breaking. The Sparrow, from a first-class chauffeur
mechanic, had showed signs of becoming a first-class cracksman, it was
true; but the Sparrow was young, and she had never believed that he was
inherently bad. Her opinion had been confirmed when, some six months
ago, on his release, listening both to her own pleadings and to those of
his mother, the Sparrow had sworn that he would stick to the “straight
and narrow.” And Hayden-Bond, the millionaire, referred to by a good
many people as eccentric, had further proved his claims to eccentricity
in the eyes of a good many people by giving a prison bird a chance to
make an honest living, and had engaged the Sparrow as his chauffeur. It
was a vile and an abominable thing that they were doing, even if they
had not planned to culminate it with murder. What chance would the
Sparrow have had!

It had taken a long time. She did not know how long, as, at last, she
stole unnoticed into a black and narrow driveway that led in, between
two blocks of down-at-the-heels tenements, to a courtyard in the rear.
Shluker had his junk shop here. Her lips pursed up as though defiant of
a tinge of perplexity that had suddenly taken possession of her. She did
not know Shluker, or anything about Shluker's place except its locality;
but surely “the old room behind Shluker's” was direction enough,
and--She had just emerged from the end of the driveway now, and now,
startled, she turned her head quickly, as she heard a brisk step turning
in from the street behind her. But in the darkness she could see no one,
and satisfied, therefore, that she in turn had not been seen, she moved
swiftly to one side, and crouched down against the rear wall of one of
the tenements. A long moment, that seemed an eternity, passed, and
then a man's form came out from the driveway, and started across the
courtyard.

She drew in her breath sharply, a curious mingling of relief and a
sudden panic fear upon her. It was not so dark in the courtyard as it
had been in the driveway, and, unless she were strangely mistaken that
form out there was Danglar's. She watched him as he headed toward a
small building that loomed up like a black, irregular shadow across
the courtyard, and which was Shluker's shop--watched him in a tense,
fascinated way. She was in time, then--only--only somehow now her limbs
seemed to have become weak and powerless. It seemed suddenly as though
she craved with all her soul the protecting shadows of the tenement,
and that every impulse bade her cling there, flattened against the wall,
until she could make her escape. She was afraid now; she shrank from the
next step. It wasn't illogical. She had set out with a purpose in
view, and she had not been blind to the danger that she ran, but the
prospective and mental encounter with danger did not hold the terror
that the tangible, concrete and actual presence of that peril did--and
that was Danglar there.

She felt her face whiten, and she felt the tremor of her lips, tightly
as they were drawn together. Yes, she was afraid, afraid in every fiber
of her being, but there was a difference, wasn't there, between being
afraid and being a coward? Her small, gloved hands clenched, her lips
parted slightly. She laughed a little now, low, without mirth. Upon what
she did or did not do, upon the margin between fear and cowardice as
applied to herself, there hung a man's life. Danglar was disappearing
around the side of Shluker's shop. She moved out from the wall, and
swiftly, silently, crossed the courtyard, gained the side of the junk
shop in turn, skirted it, and halted, listening, peering around her,
as she reached the rear corner of the building. A door closed somewhere
ahead of her; from above, upstairs, faint streaks of light showed
through the interstices of a shuttered window.

She crept forward now, hugging the rear wall, reached a door-the one,
obviously, through which Danglar had disappeared, and which she
had heard as it was closed--tried the door, found it unlocked, and,
noiselessly, inch by inch, pushed it open; and a moment later, stepping
over the threshold, she closed it softly behind her. A dull glow of
light, emanating evidently from an open door above, disclosed the upper
portion of a stairway over on her left, but apart from that the place
was in blackness, and save that she knew, of course, she was in the rear
of Shluker's junk shop, she could form no idea of her surroundings.
But she could, at last, hear. Voices, one of which she recognized as
Danglar's, though she could not distinguish the words, reached her from
upstairs.

Slowly, with infinite care, she crossed to the stairs, and on hands and
knees now, lest she should make a sound, began to crawl upward. And a
little way up, panic fear seized upon her again, and her heart stood
still, and she turned a miserable face in the darkness back toward the
door below, and fought against the impulse to retreat again.

And then she heard Danglar speak, and from her new vantage point his
words came to her distinctly this time:

“Good work, Skeeny! You've got the Sparrow nicely trussed up, I see.
Well, he'll do as he is for a while there. I told the boys to hold off a
bit. It's safer to wait an hour or two yet, before moving him away from
here and bumping him off.”

“Two jobs instead of one!” a surly voice answered. “We might just as
well have finished him and slipped him away for keeps when we first got
our hooks on him.”

“Got a little sick of your wood-carving, while you stuck around by your
lonesome and watched him--eh?” Danglar's tones were jocularly facetious.
“Don't grouch, Skeeny! We're not killing for fun--it doesn't pay.
Supposing anything had broken wrong up the Avenue--eh? We wouldn't have
had our friend the Sparrow there for the next time we tried it!”

There was something abhorrently callous in the laugh that followed. It
seemed to fan into flame a smoldering fire of passionate anger in Rhoda
Gray's soul. And before it panic fled. Her hand felt upward for the next
stair-tread, and she crept on again, as a face seemed to rise before
her--not the Sparrow's face--a woman's face. It was a face that was
crowned with very thin white hair, and its eyes were the saddest she had
ever seen, and yet they were brave, steady old eyes that had not lost
their faith; nor had the old, care-lined face itself, in spite of
suffering, lost its gentleness and sweetness. And then suddenly it
seemed to change, that face, and become wreathed in smiles, and happy
tears to run coursing down the wrinkled cheeks. Yes, she remembered! It
had brought the tears to her own eyes. It was the night that the wayward
Sparrow, home from the penitentiary, on his knees, his head buried in
his mother's lap, had sworn that he would go straight.

Fear! It seemed as though she never had known, never could know
fear--that only a merciless, tigerish, unbridled fury had her in its
thrall. And she went on up, step after step, as Danglar spoke again:

“There's nothing to it! The Sparrow there fell for the telephone when
Stevie played the doctor. And old Hayden-Bond of course grants his
prison-bird chauffeur's request to spend the night with his mother, who
the doctor says is taken worse, because the old guy knows there is a
mother who really is sick. Only Mr. Hayden-Bond, and the police with
him, will maybe figure it a little differently in the morning when they
find the safe looted, and that the Sparrow, instead of ever going near
the poor old dame, has flown the coop and can't be found. And in case
there's any lingering doubt in their minds, that piece of paper with the
grease-smudges and the Sparrow's greasy finger-prints on it, that you
remember we copped a few days ago in the garage, will set them straight.
The Cricket slipped it in among the papers he pulled out of the safe
and tossed around on the floor. It looks as though a tool had been wiped
with it while the safe was being cracked, and that it got covered over
by the stuff that was emptied out, and had been forgotten. I guess they
won't be long in comparing the finger-prints with the ones the Sparrow
kindly left with them when they measured him for his striped suit the
time they sent him up the river--eh?”

Rhoda Gray could see now. Her eyes were on a level with the landing, and
diagonally across from the head of the stairs was the open doorway of a
lighted room. She could not see all of the interior, but she could see
quite enough. Two men sat, side face to her, one at each end of a rough,
deal table--Danglar, and an ugly, pock-marked, unshaven man, in a peaked
cap that was drawn down over his eyes, who whittled at a stick with a
huge jack-knife. The latter was Skeeny, obviously; and the jack-knife
and the stick, quite as obviously, explained Danglar's facetious
reference to wood-carving. And then her eyes shifted, and widened as
they rested on a huddled form that she could see by looking under and
beyond the table, and that lay sprawled out against the far wall of the
room.

Skeeny pushed the peak of his cap back with the point of his
knife-blade.

“What's the haul size up at?” he demanded. “Anything in the safe besides
the shiners?”

“A few hundred dollars,” Danglar replied. “I don't know exactly how
much. I told the Cricket to divide it up among the boys who did the
rough work. That's good enough, isn't it, Skeeny? It gives you a little
extra. You'll get yours.”

Skeeny grunted compliance.

“Well, let's have a look at the white ones, then,” he said.

Rhoda Gray was standing upright in the little hallway now, and now,
pressed close against the wall, she edged toward the door-jamb. And a
queer, grim little smile came and twisted the sensitive lips, as she
drew her revolver from her pocket. The merciless, pitiless way in which
the newspapers had flayed the White Moll was not, after all, to be
wholly regretted! The cool, clever resourcefulness, the years of
reckless daring attributed to the White Moll, would stand her in good
stead now. Everybody on the East Side knew her by sight. These men knew
her. It was not merely a woman ambitiously attempting to beard two men
who, perhaps, holding her sex in contempt in an adventure of this
kind, might throw discretion to the winds and give scant respect to her
revolver, for behind the muzzle of that revolver was the reputation of
the White Moll. They would take her at face value--as one who not only
knew how to use that revolver, but as one who would not hesitate an
instant to do so.

From the room she heard Skeeny whistle low under his breath, as though
in sudden and amazed delight--and then she was standing full in the open
doorway, and her revolver in her outflung, gloved hand covered the two
men at the table.

There was a startled cry from Skeeny, a scintillating flash of light as
a magnificent string of diamonds fell from his hand to the table. But
Danglar did not move or speak; only his lips twitched, and a queer
whiteness came and spread itself over his face.

“Put up your hands-both of you!” she ordered, in a low, tense voice.

It was Skeeny who spoke, as both men obeyed her. “The White Moll, so
help me!” he mumbled, and swallowed hard.

Danglar's eyes never seemed to leave her face, and they narrowed now,
full of hatred and a fury that lie made no attempt to conceal. She
smiled at him coldly. She quite understood! He had already complained
that evening that the White Moll for the last few weeks had been robbing
them of the fruits of their laboriously planned schemes. And now-again!
Well, she would not dispel his illusion! He had given the White Moll
that role--and it was the safest role to play.

She stepped forward now, and with her free hand suddenly pulled the
table toward her out of their reach; and then, as she picked up the
necklace, she appeared for the first time to become aware of the
presence of the huddled form on the floor near the wall. She could see
that the Sparrow was bound and gagged, and as he squirmed now he turned
his face toward her.

“Why, it's the Sparrow, isn't it?” she exclaimed sharply; then, evenly,
to the two men: “I had no idea you were so hospitable! Push your chairs
closer together--with your feet, not your hands! You are easier to watch
if you are not too far apart.”

Dangler complied sullenly. Skeeny, over the scraping of his chair legs,
cursed in a sort of unnerved abandon, as he obeyed her.

“Thank you!” said Rhoda Gray pleasantly--and calmly tucked the necklace
into her bodice.

The act seemed to rouse Danglar to the last pitch of fury. The blood
rushed in an angry tide to his face, and, suffusing, purpled his cheeks.

“This isn't the first crack you've made!” he flung out hoarsely. “You've
been getting wise to a whole lot lately somehow, you and that dude pal
of yours, but you'll pay for it, you female devil! Understand? By God,
you'll pay for it! I promise you that you'll pray yet on your bended
knees for the chance to take your own life! Do you hear?”

“I hear,” said Rhoda Gray coldly.

She picked up the jack-knife from the table, and keeping both men
covered, stepped backward to the wall. Here, kneeling, she reached
behind her with her left hand, and felt for, and cut the heavy cord that
bound the Sparrow's arms; then, pushing the knife into the Sparrow's
hands that he might free himself from the rest of his bonds, she stood
up again.

A moment more, and the Sparrow, rubbing the circulation back into his
wrists, stood beside her. There was a look on the young, white face that
was not good to see. He circled dry lips with the tip of his tongue and
then his thumb began to feel over the blade of the big jack-knife in a
sort of horribly supercritical appraisal of its edge. He spoke thickly
for the gag that had been in his mouth.

“You dirty skates!” he whispered. “You were going to bump me off, were
you? You planted me cold, did you? Oh, hell!” His laugh, like the laugh
of one insane, jangling, discordant, rang through the room. “Well,
it's my turn now, and”--his body was coiling itself in a slow, curious,
almost snake-like fashion--“and you'll--”

Rhoda Gray laid her hand on the Sparrow's arm.

“Not that way, Marty,” she said quietly. She smiled thinly at Danglar,
who, with genuinely frightened eyes now, seemed fascinated by the
Sparrow's movements. “I wouldn't care to have anything happen to Mr.
Danglar--yet. He has been invaluable to me, and I am sure he will be
again.”

The Sparrow brushed his hands across his eyes, and stared at her. He
licked his lips again. He appeared to be obsessed with the knife-blade
in his hand--dazed in a strange way to all else.

“There's enough cord there for both of them,” said Rhoda Gray crisply.
“Tie them in their chairs, Marty.”

For a moment the Sparrow hesitated; and then, with a sort of queer
reluctancy, he dropped the knife on the table, and went and picked up
the strands of cord from the floor.

No one spoke. The Sparrow, with twitching lips as he worked, and worked
not gently, bound first Danglar and then Skeeny to their respective
chairs. Skeeny for the most part kept his eyes on the floor, casting
only furtive glances at Rhoda Gray's revolver muzzle. But Danglar was
smiling now. He had very white teeth. There was something of primal,
insensate fury in the hard-drawn, parted lips. Somehow he seemed to
remind Rhoda Gray of a beast, stung to madness, but impotent behind the
bars of its cage, as it showed its fangs.

“We'll go now, Marty,” she said softly, as the Sparrow finished.

She motioned the Sparrow with an imperious little nod of her head to the
door. And then, following the other, she backed to the door herself, and
halted an instant on the threshold.

“It has been a very profitable evening, Mr. Danglar,” she said coolly.
“I have you to thank for it. When your friends come, which I think I
heard you say would be in another hour or so, I hope you will not fail
to convey to them my--”

“You she-fiend!” Danglar had found his voice again. “You'll crawl for
this! Do you understand? and I'll show you inside of twenty-four hours
what you're up against, you--you--” His voice broke in its fury. The
veins were standing out on the side of his neck like whipcords. He could
just move his forearms a little, and his hands reached out toward her,
curved like claws. “I'll--”

But Rhoda Gray had closed the door behind her, and, with the Sparrow,
was retreating down the stairs.




VII. FELLOW THIEVES

Reaching the courtyard, Rhoda Gray led the way without a word through
the driveway, and finding the street clear, hurried on rapidly. Her
mind, strangely stimulated, was working in quick, incisive flashes.
Her work was not yet done. The Sparrow was safe, as far as his life was
concerned; but her possession of even the necklace would not save the
Sparrow from the law. There was the money that was gone from the safe.
She could not recover that, but--yes, dimly, she began to see a way. She
swerved suddenly from the sidewalk as she came to an alleyway--which had
been her objective--and drew the Sparrow in with her out of sight of the
street.

The Sparrow gripped at her hand.

“The White Moll!” he whispered brokenly. “God bless the White Moll! I
ain't had a chance to say it before. You saved my life, and I--I--”

In the semi-darkness she leaned forward and laid her fingers gently over
the Sparrow's lips.

“And there's no time to say it now, Marty,” she said quickly. “You are
not out of this yet.”

He swept his hand across his eyes.

“I know it,” he said. “I got to get those shiners back up there somehow,
and I got to get that paper they planted on me.”

She shook her head.

“Even that wouldn't clear you,” she said. “The safe has been looted of
money, as well; and you can't replace that. Even with only the money
gone, who would they first naturally suspect? You are known as a
safe-breaker; you have served a term for it. You asked for a night off
to stay with your mother who is sick. You left Mr. Hayden-Bond's, we'll
say, at seven or eight o'clock. It's after midnight now. How long would
it take them to find out that between eight and midnight you had not
only never been near your mother, but could not prove an alibi of any
sort? If you told the truth it would sound absurd. No one in their sober
senses would believe you.”

The Sparrow looked at her miserably.

“My God!” he faltered. He wet his lips. “That's true.”

“Marty,” she said quietly, “did you read in the papers that I had been
arrested last night for theft, caught with the goods on me, but had
escaped?”

The Sparrow hesitated.

“Yes, I did,” he said. And then, earnestly: “But I don't believe it!”

“It was true, though, Marty--all except that I wasn't a thief,” she said
as quietly as before. “What I want to know is, in spite of that, would
you trust me with what is left to be done to-night, if I tell you that I
believe I can get you out of this?”

“Sure, I would!” he said simply. “I don't know how you got wise about
all this, or how you got to know about that necklace, but any of our
crowd would trust you to the limit. Sure, I'd trust you! You bet your
life!”

“Thank you, Marty,” she said. “Well, then, how do you get into Mr.
Hayden-Bond's house when, for instance, you are out late at night?”

“I've got a key to the garage,” he answered. “The garage is attached to
the house, though it opens on the side street.”

She held Out her hand.

The Sparrow fished in his pocket, and extended the key without
hesitation.

“It's for the small door, of course,” he explained.

“You haven't got a flashlight, I suppose?” she smiled.

“Sure! There's plenty of 'em! Each car's got one with its tools under
the back seat.”

She nodded.

“And now, the library,” she said. “What part of the house is it in? How
is it situated?”

“It's on the ground floor at the back,” he told her. “The little short
passage from the garage opens on the kitchen, then the pantry, and then
there's a little cross hallway, and the dining-room is on the left, and
the library on the right. But ain't I going with you?”

She shook her head again.

“You're going home, Marty--after you've sent me a taxicab. If you were
seen in that neighborhood now, let alone by any chance seen in the
house, nothing could save you. You understand that, don't you? Now,
listen! Find a taxi, and send it here. Tell the chauffeur to pick me up,
and drive me to the corner of the cross street, one block in the rear of
Mr. Hayden-Bond's residence. Don't mention Hayden-Bond's name. Give the
chauffeur simply street directions. Be careful that he is some one who
doesn't know you. Tell him he will be well paid--and give him this to
begin with.” She thrust a banknote into the Sparrow's hand. “You're sure
to find one at some all-night cabaret around here. And remember,
when you go home afterward, not a word to your mother! And not a word
to-morrow, or ever-to any one! You've simply done as you told your
employer you were going to do--spent the night at home.”

“But you,” he burst out, and his words choked a little. “I--I can't let
you go, and--”

“You said you would trust me, Marty,” she said. “And if you want to help
me, as well, don't waste another moment. I shall need every second I
have got. Quick! Hurry!”

“But--”

She pushed him toward the street.

“Run!” she said tensely. “Hurry, Marty, hurry!”

She drew back into the shadows. She was alone now. The Sparrow's racing
footsteps died away on the pavement. Her mind reverted to the plan
that she had dimly conceived. It became detailed, concrete now, as the
minutes passed. And then she heard a car coming along the previously
deserted street, and she stepped out on the sidewalk. It was the taxi.

“You know where to go, don't you?” she said to the chauffeur, as the cab
drew up at the curb, and the man leaned out and opened the door.

“Yes'm,” he said.

“Please drive fast, then,” she said, as she stepped in.

The taxi shot out from the curb, and rattled forward at a rapid pace.
Rhoda Gray settled back on the cushions. A half whimsical, half weary
little smile touched her lips. It was much easier, and infinitely safer,
this mode of travel, than that of her earlier experience that evening;
but, earlier that evening, she had had no one to go to a cab rank
for her, and she had not dared to appear in the open and hail one for
herself. The smile vanished, and the lips became, pursed and grim. Her
mind was back on that daring, and perhaps a little dangerous, plan, that
she meant to put into execution. Block after block was traversed. It
was a long way uptown, but the chauffeur's initial and generous tip was
bearing fruit. The man was losing no time.

Rhoda Gray calculated that they had been a little under half an hour in
making the trip, when the taxi finally drew up and stopped at a corner,
and the chauffeur, again leaning out, opened the door.

“Wait for me,” she instructed, and handed the man another tip--and, with
a glance about her to get her location, she hurried around the corner,
and headed up the cross street.

She had only a block now to go to reach the Hayden-Bond mansion on the
corner of Fifth Avenue ahead--less than that to reach the garage,
which opened on the cross street here. She had little fear of personal
identification now. Here in this residential section and at this hour of
night, it was like a silent and deserted city; even Fifth Avenue, just
ahead, for all its lights, was one of the loneliest places at this hour
in all New York. True, now and then, a car might race up or down the
great thoroughfare, or a belated pedestrian's footsteps ring and echo
hollow on the pavement, where but a few hours before the traffic-squad
struggled valiantly, and sometimes vainly, with the congestion--but that
was all.

She could make out the Hayden-Bond mansion on the corner ahead of her
now, and now she was abreast of the rather ornate and attached little
building, that was obviously the garage. She drew the key from her
pocket, and glanced around her. There was no one in sight. She stepped
swiftly to the small door that flanked the big double ones where the
cars went in and out, opened it, closed it behind her, and locked it.

For a moment, her eyes unaccustomed to the darkness, she could see
nothing; and then a car, taking the form of a grotesque, looming shadow,
showed in front of her. She moved toward it, felt her way into
the tonneau, lifted up the back seat, and, groping around, found a
flashlight. She meant to hurry now. She did not mean to let that nervous
dread, that fear, that was quickening her pulse now, have time to get
the better of her. She located the door that led to the house, and in
another moment, the short passage behind her, she was in the kitchen,
the flashlight winking cautiously around her. She paused to listen here.
There was not a sound.

She went on again--through a swinging pantry door with extreme care, and
into a small hall. “On the right,” the Sparrow had said. Yes, here
it was; a door that opened on the rear of the library, evidently. She
listened again. There was no sound--save the silence, that seemed to
grow loud now, and palpitate, and make great noises. And now, in spite
of herself, her breath was coming in quick, hard little catches, and the
flashlight's ray, that she sent around her, wavered and was not steady.
She bit her lips, as she switched off the light. Why should she be
afraid of this, when in another five minutes she meant to invite
attention!

She pushed the door in front of her open, found it hung with a heavy
portiere inside, brushed the portiere aside, stepped through into the
room, stood still and motionless to listen once more, and then the
flashlight circled inquisitively about her.

It was the library. Her eyes widened a little. At her left, over against
the wall, the mangled door of a safe stood wide open, and the floor for
a radius of yards around was littered with papers and documents. The
flashlight's ray lifted, and she followed it with her eyes as it made
the circuit of the walls. Opposite the safe, and quite near the doorway
in which she stood, was a window recess, portiered; diagonally across
from her was another door that led, presumably, into the main hall
of the house; the walls were tapestried, and hung here and there with
clusters of ancient trophies, great metal shields, and swords, and
curious arms, that gave a sort of barbaric splendor to the luxurious
furnishings of the apartment.

She worked quickly now. In a moment she was at the window portieres,
and, drawing these aside, she quietly raised the window, and looked out.
The window was on the side of the house away from the cross street, and
she nodded her head reassuringly to herself as she noted that it gave on
a narrow strip of grass, it could not be called lawn, that separated the
Hayden-Bond mansion from the house next door; that the window was little
more than shoulder-high from the ground; and that the Avenue was within
easy and inviting reach along that little strip of grass between the two
houses.

She left the window open, and retraced her steps across the room, going
now to the littered mass of papers on the floor near the safe. She began
to search carefully amongst them. She smiled a little curiously as
she came across the plush-lined jeweler's case that had contained the
necklace, and which had evidently been contemptuously discarded by the
Cricket and his confederates; but it took her longer to find the paper
for which she was searching. And then she came upon it--a grease-smeared
advertisement for some automobile appliances, a well-defined greasy
finger-print at one edge--and thrust the paper into her pocket.

And now suddenly her heartbeat began to quicken again until its thumping
became tumultuous. She was ready now. She looked around her, using
the flashlight, and her eyes rested appraisingly on one of the great
clusters of shields and arms that hung low down on the wall between the
window and the door by which she had entered. Yes, that would do. Her
lips tightened. It would have been so easy if there had not been that
cash to account for! She could replace the necklace, but she could not
replace the cash--and one, as far as the Sparrow was concerned, was as
bad as the other. But there was a way, and it was simple enough. She
whispered to herself that it was not, after all, very dangerous, that
the cards were all in her own hands. She had only to pull down those
shields with a clatter to the floor, which would arouse some one of the
household, and as that some one reached the library door and opened
it, she would be disappearing through the window, and the necklace, as
though it had slipped from her pocket or grasp in her wild effort to
escape, would be lying behind her on the floor. They would see that
it was not the Sparrow; and there would be no question as to where the
money was gone, since the money had not been dropped. There was the
interval, of course, that must elapse between the accident that knocked
the shields from the wall and the time it would take any of the inmates
to reach the library, an interval in which a thief might reasonably be
expected to have had time enough to get away without being seen; but
the possibility that she had not fully accomplished her ends when the
accident occurred, and that she had stayed to make frantic and desperate
efforts to do so right up to the last moment, would account for that.

She moved now to an electric-light switch, and turned on the light.
They must be able to see beyond any question of doubt that the person
escaping through the window was not the Sparrow. What was she afraid of
now, just at the last! There was an actual physical discomfort in the
furious thumping of that cowardly little heart of hers. It was the only
way. And it was worth it. And it was not so very dangerous. People,
aroused out of bed, could not follow her in their night clothes; and in
a matter of but a few minutes, before the police notified by telephone
could become a factor in the affair, she would have run the block down
the Avenue, and then the other block down the cross street, then back to
the taxi, and be whirling safely downtown.

Yes, she was ready! She nodded her head sharply, as though in imperative
self-command, and running back, her footfalls soundless on the rich,
heavy rug, she picked up the plush-lined necklace case. She dropped this
again, open, on the floor, halfway between the safe and the window. With
the case apparently burst open as it fell, and the necklace also on the
floor, the stage would be set! She felt inside her bodice, drew out the
necklace--and as she stood there holding it, and as it caught the light
and flashed back its fire and life from a thousand facets, a numbness
seemed to come stealing over her, and a horror, and a great fear, and a
dismay that robbed her of power of movement until it seemed that she was
rooted to the spot, and a low, gasping cry came from her lips. Her eyes,
wide with their alarm, were fixed on the window. There was a man's
face there, just above the sill--and now a man's form swung through the
window, and dropped lightly to the floor inside the room. And she stared
in horrified fascination, and could not move. It was the Adventurer.

“It's Miss Gray, isn't it? The White Moll?” he murmured amiably. “I've
been trying to find you all night. What corking luck! You remember me,
don't you? Last night, you know.”

She did not answer. His eyes had shifted from her face to the glittering
river of gems in her hand.

“I see,” he smiled, “that you are ahead of me again. Well, it is the
fortune of war, Miss Gray. I do not complain.”

She found her voice at last; and, quick as a flash, as he advanced a
step, she dropped the necklace into her pocket, and her revolver was in
her hand.

“W--what are you doing here?” she whispered.

He shrugged his shoulders expressively.

“I take it that we are both in the same boat,” he said pleasantly.

“In the same boat?” she echoed dully. She remembered his conversation
with her a few hours ago, when he had believed he was talking to Gypsy
Nan. And now he stood before her for the second time a self-confessed
thief. In the same boat-fellow-thieves! A certain cold composure came to
her. “You mean you came to steal this necklace? Well, you shall not have
it! And, furthermore, you have no right to class me with yourself as a
thief.”

He had a whimsical and very engaging smile. His eyebrows lifted.

“Miss Gray perhaps forgets last night,” he suggested.

“No, I do not forget last night,” she said slowly, “And I do not forget
that I owe you very much for what you did. And that is one reason why I
warn you at once that, as far as the necklace is concerned, it will
do you no good to build any hopes on the supposition that we are
fellow-thieves, and that I am likely either to part with it, or, through
gratitude, share it. In spite of appearances last night, I was not a
thief.”

“And to-night, Miss Gray--in spite of appearances?” he challenged.

He was regarding her with eyes that, while they appraised shrewdly,
held a lurking hint of irony in their depths. And somehow, suddenly,
self-proclaimed crook though she held him to be, she found herself
seized with an absurd, unreasonable, but nevertheless passionate, desire
to make good her words.

“Yes, and to-night, too!” she asserted. “I did not steal this necklace.
I--never mind how--I--I got it. It was planned to put the theft on an
innocent man's shoulders. I was trying to thwart that plan. Whether you
believe me or not, I did not come here to steal the necklace; I came
here to return it.”

“Quite so! Of course!” acknowledged the Adventurer softly. “I am afraid
I interrupted you, then, in the act of returning it. Might I suggest,
therefore, Miss Gray, that as it's a bit dangerous to linger around here
unnecessarily, you carry out your intentions with all possible haste,
and get away.”

“And you?” she queried evenly.

“Myself, of course, as well.” He shrugged his shoulders philosophically.
“Under the circumstances, as a gentleman--will you let me say I prefer
that word to the one I know you are substituting for it--what else can I
do?”

She bit her lips. Was he mocking her? The gray eyes were inscrutable
now.

“Then please do not let me detain you!” she said sharply. “And in my
turn, let me advise you to go at once. I intend to knock one of
those shields down from the wall before I go, in order to arouse the
household. I will, however, in part payment for last night, allow you
three full minutes from the time you climb out of that window, so that
you may have ample time to get away.”

He stared at her in frank bewilderment.

“Good Lord!” he gasped. “You--you're joking, Miss Gray.”

“No, I am not,” she replied coolly. “Far from it! There was money stolen
that I cannot replace, and the theft of the money would be put upon
the same innocent shoulders. I see no other way than the one I have
mentioned. If whoever runs into this room is permitted to get a glimpse
of me, and is given the impression that the necklace, which I shall
leave on the floor, was dropped in my haste, the supposition remains
that, at least, I got away with the money. I am certainly not the
innocent man who has been used as the pawn; and if I am recognized as
the White Moll, what does it matter--after last night?”

He took a step toward her impetuously--and stopped quite as impetuously.
Her revolver had swung to a level with his head.

“Pardon me!” he said.

“Not at all!” she said caustically.

For the first time, as she watched him warily, the Adventurer appeared
to lose some of his self-assurance. He shifted a little uneasily on
his feet, and the corners of his eyes puckered into a nest of perturbed
wrinkles.

“I say, Miss Gray, you can't mean this!” he protested. “You're not
serious!”

“I have told you that I am,” she answered steadily. “Those three minutes
that I gave you are going fast.”

“Then look here!” he exclaimed earnestly. “I'll tell you something. I
said I had been trying to find you to-night. It was the truth. I went to
Gypsy Nan's--and might have been spared my pains. I told her about last
night, and that I knew you were in danger, and that I wanted to help
you. I mention this so that you will understand that I am not just
speaking on the spur of the moment, now that I have an opportunity of
repeating that offer in person.”

She looked at him impassively for a moment. He had neglected to state
that he had also told Gypsy Nan he desired to enter into a partnership
with her--in crime.

“It is very kind of you,” she said sweetly. “I presume, then, that you
have some suggestion to make?”

“Only what any--may I say it?--gentleman would suggest under the
circumstances. It is far too dangerous a thing for a woman to attempt;
it would be much less dangerous for me. I realize that you are in
earnest now, and I will agree to carry out your plan in every detail
once I am satisfied that you are safely away.”

“The idea being,” she observed monotonously, “that, being safely away,
and the necklace being left safely on the floor, you are left safely in
possession of--the necklace. Well, my answer is--no!”

His face hardened a little.

“I'm sorry, then,” he said. “For in that case, in so far as your project
is concerned, I, too, must say--no!”

It was an impasse. She studied his face, the strong jaw set a little
now, the lips molded in sterner lines, and for all her outward show of
composure, she knew a sick dismay. And for a moment she neither moved
nor spoke. What he would do next, she did not know; but she knew
quite well that he had not the slightest intention of leaving her here
undisturbed to carry out her plan, unless--unless, somehow, she could
outwit him. She bit her lips again. And then inspiration came. She
turned, and with a sudden leap gained the wall, and the next instant,
holding him back with her revolver as she reached up with her left hand,
she caught at the great metal shield with its encircling cluster of
small arms, and wrenched it from its fastenings. It crashed to the floor
with a din infernal that, in the night silence, went racketing through
the house like the reverberations of an explosion.

“My God, what have you done!” he cried out hoarsely.

“What I said I'd do!” she answered. She was white-faced, frightened at
her own act, fighting to maintain her nerve. “You'll go now, I imagine!”
 she flung at him passionately. “You haven't much time.”

“No!” he said. His composure was instantly at command again. “No,”
 he repeated steadily; “not until after you have gone. I
refuse--positively--to let you run any such risk as that. It is far too
dangerous.”

“Yes, you will!” she burst out wildly. “You will! You must! You shall!
I--I--” The house itself seemed suddenly to have awakened. From above
doors opened and closed. Indistinctly there came the sound of a voice.
She clenched her hand in anguished desperation. “Go, you--you coward!”
 she whispered frantically.

“Miss Gray, for God's sake, do as I tell you!” he said between his
teeth. “You don't realize the danger. It's not the pursuit. They are not
coming down here unarmed after that racket. I know that you came in by
that door there. Go out that way. I will play the game for you. I swear
it!”

There were footsteps, plainly audible now, out in the main hall.

“Quick!” he urged. “Are we both to be caught? See!” He backed suddenly
toward the window.

“See! I am too far away now to touch that necklace before they get here.
Throw it down, and get behind the portiere of the rear door!”

Mechanically she was retreating. They were almost at the other door now,
those footsteps outside in the main hall. With a backward spring she
reached the portiere. The door handle across the room rattled. She
glanced at the Adventurer. He was close to the window. It was true,
he could not get the necklace and at the same time hope to escape. She
whipped it from her pocket, tossed it from her to the floor near the
plush-lined case--and slipped behind the portiere.

The door opposite to her was wrenched violently open. She could
see through the corner of the portiere. There was a sharp, excited
exclamation, as a gray-haired man, in pajamas, evidently Mr. Hayden-Bond
himself, sprang into the room. He was followed by another man in equal
dishabille.

And the Adventurer was leaping for the window.

There was a blinding flash, the roar of a report, as the millionaire
flung up a revolver and fired; it was echoed by the splatter and tinkle
of falling glass. The Adventurer was astride the window sill now, his
face deliberately and unmistakably in view.

“A foot too high, and a bit to the right!” said the Adventurer
debonairly--and the window sill was empty.

Rhoda Gray stole silently through the doorway behind her. She could hear
the millionaire and his companion, the butler, probably, rush across the
library to the window. As she gained the pantry, she heard another shot.
Tight-lipped, using her flashlight, she ran through the kitchen. In a
moment more, she was standing at the garage door, listening, peering
furtively outside. The street itself was empty; there were shouts,
though, from the direction of the Avenue. She stepped out on the side
street, and walking composedly that she might not attract attention,
though very impulse urged her to run with frantic haste, she reached the
corner and the waiting taxicab. She gave the chauffeur an address that
would bring her to the street in the rear of Gypsy Nan's and within
reach of the lane where she had left her clothes, and, with an
injunction to hurry, sprang into the cab.

And then for a long time she sat there with her hands tightly clasped in
her lap. Her mind, her brain, her very soul itself seemed in chaos and
turmoil. There was the Sparrow, who was safe; and Danglar, who would
move heaven and hell to get her now; and the Adventurer, who--Her mind
seemed to grope around in cycles; it seemed to moil on and on and arrive
at nothing. The Adventurer had played the game--perhaps because he had
had to; but he had not risked that revolver shot in her stead because
he had had to. Who was he? How had he come there? How had he found her
there? How had he known that she had entered by that rear door behind
the portiere? She remembered how that he had offered not a single
explanation.

Almost mechanically she dismissed the taxi when at last it stopped;
and almost mechanically, as Gypsy Nan, some ten minutes later, she let
herself into the garret, and lighted the candle. She was conscious, as
she hid the White Moll's clothes away, that she was thankful she had
regained in safety even the questionable sanctuary of this wretched
place; but, strangely, thoughts of her own peril seemed somehow to be
temporarily relegated to the background.

She flung herself down on the bed--it was not Gypsy Nan's habit to
undress--and blew out the light. But she could not sleep. And hour after
hour in the darkness she tossed unrestfully. It was very strange! It
was not as it had been last night. It was not the impotent, frantic
rebellion against the horrors of her own situation, nor the fear and
terror of it, that obsessed her to-night. It was the Adventurer who
plagued her.




VIII. THE CODE MESSAGE

It was strange! Most strange! Three days had passed, and to Gypsy Nan's
lodging no one had come. The small crack under the partition that had
been impressed into service as a letter-box had remained empty. There
had been no messages--nothing--only a sinister, brooding isolation.
Since the night Rhoda Gray had left Danglar, balked, almost a madman in
his fury, in the little room over Shluker's junk shop, Danglar had not
been seen--nor the Adventurer--nor even Rough Rorke. Her only visitant
since then had been an ugly premonition of impending peril, which came
and stalked like a hideous ghost about the bare and miserable garret,
and which woke her at night with its whispering voice--which was the
voice of intuition.

Rhoda Gray drew her shawl closer around her shoulders and shivered, as
now, from shuffling down the block in the guise of Gypsy Nan, she halted
before the street door of what fate, for the moment, had thrust upon her
as a home; and shivered again, as, with abhorrence, she pushed the door
open and stepped forward into the black, unlighted hallway. Soul, mind
and body were in revolt to-night. Even faith, the simple faith in God
that she had known since childhood, was wavering. There seemed nothing
but horror around her, a mental horror, a physical horror; and the sole
means of even momentary relief and surcease from it had been a pitiful
prowling around the streets, where even the fresh air seemed to be
denied to her, for it was tainted with the smells of squalor that ruled,
rampant, in that neighborhood.

And to-night, stronger than ever, intuition and premonition of
approaching danger lay heavy upon her, and oppressed her with a sense of
nearness. She was not a coward; but she was afraid. Danglar would leave
no stone unturned to get the White Moll. He had said so. She remembered
the threat he had made--it had lived in her woman's soul ever since that
night. Better anything than to fall into Danglar's hands! She caught her
breath a little, and shivered again as she groped her way up the dark
stairs. But, then, she never would fall into Danglar's power. There was
always an alternative. Yes, it was quite as bad as that--death at her
own hands was preferable. Balked, outwitted, the plans of the criminal
coterie, of which Danglar appeared to be the head, rendered again and
again abortive, and believing it all due to the White Moll, all of
Danglar's shrewd, unscrupulous cunning would be centered on the task
of running her down; and if, added to this, he discovered that she
was masquerading as Gypsy Nan, one of their own inner circle, it mean
that--She closed her lips in a hard, tight line. She did not want
to think of it. She had fought all day, and the days before, against
thinking about it, but premonition had crept upon her stronger and
stronger, until to-night, now, it seemed as though her mind could dwell
on nothing else.

On the landing, she paused suddenly and listened. The street door had
opened and closed, and now a footstep sounded on the stairs behind her.
She went on again along the hall, feeling her way; and reaching the
short, ladder-like steps to the garret, she began to mount them. Who
was it there behind her? One of the unknown lodgers on the lower floor,
or--? She could not see, of course. It was pitch black. But she could
hear. And as she knelt now on the narrow landing, and felt with her
fingers along the floor for the aperture, where, imitating the custom
of Gypsy Nan, she had left her key when she went out, she heard the
footsteps coming steadily on, passing the doors below her, and making
toward the garret ladder. And then, stifling a startled little cry, her
hand closed on the key, and closed, as it had closed on that first night
when she had returned here in the role of Gypsy Nan, on a piece of
paper wrapped around the key. The days of isolation were ended with
climacteric effect; the pendulum had swung full the other way--to-night
there was both a visitor and a message!

The paper detached from the key and thrust into her bodice, she stood up
quickly. A form, looming up even in the darkness, showed on the garret
stairs. “Who's dere?” she croaked.

“It's all right,” a voice answered in low tones. “You were just ahead of
me on the street. I saw you come in. It's Pierre.”

Pierre! So that was his name! It was only the voice she recognized.
Pierre--Danglar! She fumbled for the keyhole, found it, and inserted the
key. “Well, how's Bertha to-night?”

There seemed to be a strange exhilaration in the man's voice. He was
standing beside her now, close beside her, and now his hand played with
a curiously caressing motion on her shoulder. The touch seemed to scorch
and burn her. Who was this Danglar, who was Pierre to her, and to whom
she was Bertha? Her breath came quickly in spite of herself; there came,
too, a frenzy of aversion, and impulsively she flung his hand away, and
with the door unlocked now, stepped from him into the garret.

“Feeling a bit off color, eh?” he said with a short laugh, as he
followed her, and shut the door behind him. “Well, I don't know as I
blame you. But, look here, old girl, have a heart! It's not my fault.
I know what you're grouching about--it's because I haven't been around
much lately. But you ought to know well enough that I couldn't help it.
Our game has been crimped lately at every turn by that she-devil, the
White Moll, and that dude pal of hers.” He laughed out again--in
savage menace now. “I've been busy. Understand, Bertha? It was either
ourselves, or them. We've got to go under--or they have. And we won't! I
promise you that! Things'll break a little better before long, and I'll
make it up to you.”

She could not see him in the blackness of the garret. She breathed a
prayer of gratitude that he could not see her. Her face, in spite of
Gipsy Nan's disguising grime, must be white, white as death itself. It
seemed to plumb some infamous depth from which her soul recoiled, this
apology of his for his neglect of her. And then her hands at her
sides curled into tight-clenched little fists as she strove to control
herself. His words, at least, supplied her with her cue.

“Of course!” she said tartly, but in perfect English--the vernacular of
Gypsy Nan was not for Danglar, for she remembered only too well how
once before it had nearly tripped her up. “But you didn't come here to
apologize! What is it you want?”

“Ah, I say, Bertha!” he said appeasingly. “Cut that out! I couldn't help
being away, I tell you. Of course, I didn't come here to apologize--I
thought you'd understand well enough without that. The gang's out of
cash, and I came to tap the reserves. Let me have a package of the long
green, Bertha.”

It was a moment before she spoke. Her woman's instinct prompted her to
let down the bars between them in no single degree, that her protection
lay in playing up to the full what Danglar, jumping at conclusions, had
assumed was a grouch at his neglect. Also, her mind worked quickly.
Her own clothes were no longer in the secret hiding place here in
the garret; they were out there in that old shed in the lane. It was
perfectly safe, then, to let Danglar go to the hiding place himself,
assuming that he knew where it was--which, almost of necessity, he must.

“Oh!” she said ungraciously. “Well, you know where it is, don't you?
Suppose you go and get it yourself!”

“All right!” returned Danglar, a sullenness creeping into his voice.
“Have it your own way, Bertha! I haven't got time to-night to coax
you out of your tantrums. That's what you want, but I haven't got
time--to-night.”

She did not answer.

A match crackled in Danglar's hand; the flames spurted up through the
darkness. Danglar made his way over to the rickety washstand, found the
candle that was stuck in the neck of the gin bottle, lighted it, held
the candle above his head, and stared around the garret.

“Why the devil don't you get another lamp?” he grumbled--and started
toward the rear of the garret.

Rhoda Gray watched him silently. She did not care to explain that she
had not replaced the lamp for the very simple reason that it gave far
too much light here in the garret to be safe--for her! She watched him,
with her hand in the pocket of her greasy skirt clutched around another
legacy of Gypsy Nan--her revolver. And now she became conscious that
from the moment she had entered the garret, her fingers, hidden in that
pocket, had sought and clung to the weapon. The man filled her with
detestation and fear; and somehow she feared him more now in what he was
trying to make an ingratiating mood, than she had feared him in the full
flood of his rage and anger that other night at Shluker's place.

She drew back a little toward the cot bed against the wall, drew back to
give him free passage to the door when he should return again, her eyes
still holding on the far end of the garret, where, with the slope of the
roof, the ceiling was no more than shoulder high. There seemed something
horribly weird and grotesque in the scene before her. He had pushed the
narrow trap-door in the ceiling upward, and had thrust candle and
head through the opening, and the faint yellow light, seeping back and
downward in flickering, uncertain rays, suggested the impression of
a gruesome, headless figure standing there hazily outlined in the
surrounding murk. It chilled her; she clutched at her shawl, drew it
more closely about her, and edged still nearer to the wall.

And then Danglar closed the trap-door again, and came back with the
candle in one hand, and one of the bulky packages of banknotes from the
hiding place in the other. He set the candle down on the washstand, and
began to distribute the money through his various pockets.

He was smiling with curious complacency.

“It was your job to play the spider to the White Moll if she ever showed
up again here in your parlor,” he said. “Maybe somebody tipped her off
to keep away, maybe she was too wily; but, anyway, since you have not
sent out any word, it is evident that our little plans along that
line didn't work, since she has failed to come back to pay a call of
gratitude to you. I don't suppose there's anything to add to that, eh,
Bertha? No report to make?”

“No,” said Rhoda Gray shortly. “I haven't any report to make.”

“Well, no matter!” said Danglar. He laughed out shortly. “There are
other ways! She's had her fling at our expense; it's her turn to pay
now.” He laughed again--and in the laugh now there was something
both brutal in its menace, and sinister in its suggestion of gloating
triumph.

“What do you mean?” demanded Rhoda Gray quickly. “What are you going to
do?”

“Get her!” said Danglar. The man's passion flamed up suddenly; he spoke
through his closed teeth. “Get her! I made her a little promise. I'm
going to keep it! Understand?”

“You've been saying that for quite a long time,” retorted Rhoda Gray
coolly. “But the 'getting' has been all the other way so far. How are
you going to get her?”

Danglar's little black eyes narrowed, and he thrust his head forward and
out from his shoulders savagely. In the flickering candle light, with
contorted face and snarling lips, he looked again the beast to which she
had once likened him.

“Never mind how I'm going to get her!” he flung out, with an oath. “I
told you I'd been busy. That's enough! You'll see--”

Rhoda Gray, in the semi-darkness, shrugged her shoulders. Was the man,
prompted by rage and fury, simply making wild threats, or had he at last
some definite and perhaps infallible plan that he purposed putting into
operation? She did not know; and, much as it meant to her, she did
not dare take the risk of arousing suspicion by pressing the question.
Failing, then, to obtain any intimation of what he meant to do, the next
thing most to be desired was to get rid of him.

“You've got the money. That's what you came for, wasn't it?” she
suggested coldly.

He stared at her for a moment, and then his face gradually lost its
scowl.

“You're a rare one, Bertha!” he exclaimed admiringly. “Yes; I've got the
money--and I'm going. In fact, I'm in a hurry, so don't worry! You got
the dope, like everybody else, for to-night, didn't you? It was sent out
two hours ago.”

The dope! It puzzled her for the fraction of a second--and then she
remembered the paper she had thrust into the bodice of her dress. She
had not read it. She lunged a little in the dark.

“Yes,” she said curtly.

“All right!” he said-and moved toward the door. “That explains why I'm
in a hurry--and why I can't stop to oil that grouch out of you. But I'll
keep my promise to you, too, old girl. I'll make up the last few days to
you. Have a heart, eh, Bertha! 'Night!”

She did not answer him. It seemed as though an unutterable dread had
suddenly been lifted from her, as he passed out of the door and began
to descend the steps to the hall below. Her “grouch,” he had called
it. Well, it had served its purpose! It was just as well that he should
think so! She followed to the door, and deliberately slammed it with a
bang. And from below, his laugh, more an amused chuckle, echoed back and
answered her.

And then, for a long time she stood there by the door, a little weak
with the revulsion of relief upon her, her hands pressed hard against
her temples, staring unseeingly about the garret. He was gone. He filled
her with terror. Every instinct she possessed, every fiber of her being
revolted against him. He was gone. Yes, he was gone--for the time being.
But--but what was the end of all this to be?

She shook her head after a moment, shook it helplessly and wearily, as,
finally, she walked over to the washstand, took the piece of paper from
the bodice of her dress, and spread it out under the candle light. A
glance showed her that it was in cipher. There was the stub of a pencil,
she remembered, in the washstand drawer, and, armed with this, and a
piece of wrapping paper that had once enveloped one of Gypsy Nan's gin
bottles, she took up the candle, crossed the garret, and sat down on the
edge of the cot, placing the candle on the chair in front of her.

If the last three days had been productive of nothing else, they had at
least furnished her with the opportunity of studying the notebook she
had found in the secret hiding place, and of making herself conversant
with the gang's cipher; and she now set to work upon it. It was a
numerical cipher. Each letter of the alphabet in regular rotation was
represented by its corresponding numeral; a zero was employed to set off
one letter from another, and the addition of the numerals between the
zeros indicated the number of the letter involved. Also, there being but
twenty-six letters in the alphabet, it was obvious that the addition of
three nines, which was twenty-seven, could not represent any letter,
and the combination of 999 was therefore used to precede any of the
arbitrary groups of numerals which were employed to express phrases and
sentences, such as the 739 that she had found scrawled on the piece of
paper around her key on the first night she had come here, and which,
had it been embodied in a message and not preceded by the 999, would
have meant simply the addition of seven, three and nine, that is,
nineteen--and therefore would indicate the nineteenth letter of the
alphabet, S.

Rhoda Gray copied the first line of the message on the piece of wrapping
paper:

   321010333203202306663103330111102210444202101112052110761


Adding the numerals between the zeros, and giving to each its
corresponding letter, she set down the result:

             6010110505022090405014030509014
             f a  k e e  v i d e  n c e i  n

It was then but a matter of grouping the letters into words; and,
decoded, the first line read:

             Fake evidence in......

She worked steadily on. It was a lengthy message, and it took her a long
time. It was an hour, perhaps more, after Danglar had gone, before she
had completed her task; and then, after that, she sat for still a long
time staring, not at the paper on the chair before her, but at the
flickering shadows thrown by the candle on the opposite wall.

Queer and strange were the undercurrents and the cross-sections of
life that were to be found, amazingly contradictory, amazingly
incomprehensible, once one scratched beneath the surface of the poverty
and the squalor, and, yes, the crime, amongst the hiving thousands of
New York's East Side! In the days--not so very long ago--when, as
the White Moll, she had worked amongst these classes, she had on one
occasion, when he was sick, even kept old Viner in food. She had not, at
the time, failed to realize that the man was grasping, rapacious, even
unthankful, but she had little dreamed that he was a miser worth fifty
thousand dollars!

Her mind swerved off suddenly at a tangent. The tentacles of this crime
octopus, of which Danglar seemed to be the head, reached far and into
most curious places to fasten and hold and feed on the progeny of human
foibles! She could not help wondering where the lair was from which
emanated the efficiency and system that, as witness this code message
to-night, kept its members, perhaps widely scattered, fully informed of
its every movement.

She shook her head. That was something she had not yet learned; but it
was something she must learn if ever she hoped to obtain the evidence
that would clear her of the crime that circumstances had fastened upon
her. And yet she had made no move in that direction, because--well,
because, so far, it had seemed all she could do to protect and safeguard
herself in her present miserable existence and surroundings, which,
abhorrent as they were, alone stood between her and a prison cell.

Her forehead gathered into little furrows; and, reverting to the code
message, her thoughts harked back to a well-known crime, the authorship
of which still remained a mystery, and which had stirred the East Side
some two years ago. A man--in the vernacular of the underworld a “stage
hand”--by the name of Kroner, credited with having a large amount of
cash, the proceeds of some nefarious transaction, in his possession
on the night in question, was found murdered in his room in an old and
tumble-down tenement of unsavory reputation. The police net had gathered
in some of the co-tenants on suspicion; Nicky Viner, referred to in the
code message, amongst them. But nothing had come of the investigation.
There had been no charge of collusion between the suspects; but Perlmer,
a shyster lawyer, had acted for them all collectively, and, one and all,
they had been discharged. In what degree Perlmer's services had been of
actual value had never been ascertained, for the police, through lack
of evidence, had been obliged to drop the case; but the underworld had
whispered to itself. There was such a thing as suppressing evidence,
and Perlmer was known to have the cunning of a fox, and a code of morals
that never stood in the way, or restricted him in any manner.

The code message threw a new light on all this. Perlmer must have known
that old Nicky Viner had money, for, according to the code message,
Perlmer prepared a fake set of affidavits and forged a chain of fake
evidence with which he had blackmailed Nicky Viner ever since; and Nicky
Viner, known as a dissolute, shady character, innocent enough of the
crime, but afraid because his possession of money if made public would
tell against him, and frightened because he had already been arrested
once on suspicion for that very crime, had whimpered--and paid. And
then, somehow, Danglar and the gang had discovered that the old, seedy,
stoop-shouldered, bearded, down-at-the-heels Nicky Viner was not all
that he seemed; that he was a miser, and had a hoard of fifty thousand
dollars--and Danglar and the gang had set out to find that hoard and
appropriate it. Only they had not succeeded. But in their search they
had stumbled upon Perlmer's trail, and that was the key to the plan they
had afoot to-night. If Perlmer's fake and manufactured affidavits were
clever enough and convincing enough to wring money out of Viner for
Perlmer, they were more than enough to enable Danglar, employed as
Danglar would employ them, to wring from Nicky Viner the secret of where
the old miser hid his wealth; for Viner would understand that Danglar
was not hampered by having to safeguard himself on account of having
been originally connected with the case in a legal capacity, or any
capacity, and therefore in demanding all or nothing, would have no cause
for hesitation, failing to get what he wanted, in turning the evidence
over to the police. In other words, where Perlmer had to play his man
cautiously and get what he could, Danglar could go the limit and get
all. As it stood, then, Danglar and the gang had not found out the
location of that hoard; but they had found out where Perlmer kept his
spurious papers--stuffed in at the back of the bottom drawer of his desk
in his office, practically forgotten, practically useless to Perlmer
any more, for, having once shown them to Viner, there was no occasion
to call them into service again unless Viner showed signs of getting
a little out of hand and it became necessary to apply the screws once
more.

For the rest, it was a very simple matter. Perlmer had an office in a
small building on lower Sixth Avenue, and it was his custom to go to
his office in the evenings and remain there until ten o'clock or so.
The plan then, according to the code message, was to loot Perlmer's
desk some time after the man had gone home for the night, and then, at
midnight, armed with the false documents, to beard old Nicky Viner in
his miserable quarters over on the East Side, and extort from the old
miser the neat little sum that Danglar estimated would amount to some
fifty thousand dollars in cash.

Rhoda Gray's face was troubled and serious. She found herself wishing
for a moment that she had never decoded the message. But she shook her
head in sharp self-protest the next instant. True, she would have evaded
the responsibility that the criminal knowledge now in her possession had
brought her; but she would have done so, in that case, deliberately at
the expense of her own self-respect. It would not have excused her
in her own soul to have sat staring at a cipher message that she was
satisfied was some criminal plot, and have refused to decode it simply
because she was afraid a sense of duty would involve her in an effort to
frustrate it. To have sat idly by under those circumstances would have
been as reprehensible--and even more cowardly--than it would be to sit
idly by now that she knew what was to take place. And on that latter
score to-night there was no argument with herself. She found herself
accepting the fact that she would act, and act promptly, as the only
natural corollary to the fact that she was in a position to do so.
Perhaps it was that way to-night, not only because she had on a previous
occasion already fought this principle of duty out with herself, but
because to-night, unlike that other night, the way and the means seemed
to present no insurmountable difficulties, and because she was now far
better prepared, and free from all the perplexing, though enormously
vital, little details that had on the former occasion reared themselves
up in mountainous aspect before her. The purchase of a heavy veil, for
instance, the day after the Hayden-Bond affair, would enable her now to
move about the city in the clothes of the White Moll practically at will
and without fear of detection. And, further, the facilities for making
that change, the change from Gypsy Nan to the White Moll, were now
already at hand--in the little old shed down the lane.

And as far as any actual danger that she might incur to-night was
concerned, it was not great. She was not interested in the fifty
thousand dollars in an intrinsic sense; she was interested only in
seeing that old Nicky Viner, unappealing, yes, and almost repulsive both
in personality and habits as the man was, was not blackmailed out of
it; that Danglar, yes, and hereafter, Perlmer too, should not prey
like vultures on the man, and rob him of what was rightfully his.
If, therefore, she secured those papers from Perlmer's desk, it
automatically put an end to Danglar's scheme to-night; and if, later,
she saw to it that those papers came into Viner's possession, that, too,
automatically ended Perlmer's persecutions. Indeed, there seemed little
likelihood of any danger or risk at all. It could not be quite ten o
clock yet; and it was not likely that whoever was delegated by Danglar
to rob Perlmer's office would go there much before eleven anyway, since
they would naturally allow for the possibility that Perlmer might stay
later in his office than usual, a contingency that doubtless accounted
for midnight being set as the hour at which they proposed to lay old
Nicky Viner by the heels. Therefore, it seemed almost a certainty
that she would reach there, not only first, but with ample time at her
disposal to secure the papers and get away again without interruption.
She might even, perhaps, reach the office before Perlmer himself had
left--it was still quite early enough for that--but in that case she
need only remain on watch until the lawyer had locked up and gone away.
Nor need even the fact that the office would be locked dismay her.
In the secret hiding-place here in the garret, among those many other
evidences of criminal activity, was the collection of skeleton keys,
and--she was moving swiftly around the attic now, physically as active
as her thoughts.

It was not like that other night. There were few preparations to make.
She had only to secure the keys and a flashlight, and to take with her
the damp cloth that would remove the grime streaks from her face, and
the box of composition that would enable her to replace them when she
came back--and five minutes later she was on the street, making her way
toward the lane, and, specifically, toward the deserted shed where she
had hidden away her own clothing.




IX. ROOM NUMBER ELEVEN

Another five minutes, and in her own personality now, a slim, trim
figure, neatly gloved, the heavy veil affording ample protection to her
features, Rhoda Gray emerged from the shed and the lane, and started
rapidly toward lower Sixth Avenue. And as she walked, her mind, released
for the moment from the consideration of her immediate venture, began
again, as it had so many times in the last three days, its striving
and its searching after some loophole of escape from her own desperate
situation. But only, as it ever did, confusion came--a chaos of things,
contributory things and circumstances, and the personalities of those
with whom this impossible existence had thrown her into contact. Little
by little she was becoming acquainted with the personnel of the gang--in
an impersonal way, mostly. Apart from Danglar, there was Shluker, who
must of necessity be one of them; and Skeeny, the man who had been with
Danglar in Shluker's room; and the Cricket, whom she had never seen; and
besides these, there were those who were mentioned in the cipher message
to-night, and detailed to the performance of the various acts and scenes
that were to lead up to the final climax--which, she supposed, was the
object and reason for the cipher message, in order that even those not
actually employed might be thoroughly conversant with the entire plan,
and ready to act intelligently if called upon. For there were others, of
course, as witness herself, or, rather, Gypsy Nan, whose personality she
had so unwillingly usurped.

It was vital, necessary, that she should know them all, and more than
in that impersonal way, if she counted upon ever freeing herself of the
guilt attributed to her. For she could see no other way but one--that
of exposing and proving the guilt of this vile clique who now surrounded
her, and who had actually instigated and planned the crime of which she
was accused. And it was not an easy task!

And then there were those outside this unholy circle who kept forcing
their existence upon her consciousness, because they, too, played an
intimate part in the sordid drama which revolved around her, and whose
end she could not foresee. There was, for instance--the Adventurer. She
drew in her breath quickly. She felt the color creep slowly upward, and
tinge her throat and cheeks--and then the little chin, strong and firm,
was lifted in a sort of self-defiant challenge. True, the man had been a
great deal in her thoughts, but that was only because her curiosity was
piqued, and because on two occasions now she had had very real cause for
gratitude to him. If it had not been for the Adventurer, she would even
now be behind prison bars. Why shouldn't she think of him? She was
not an ingrate! Why shouldn't she be interested? There was something
piquantly mysterious about the man--who called himself an adventurer.
She would even have given a good deal to know who he really was, and how
he, too, came to be so conversant with Danglar's plans as fast as they
were matured, and why, on those two particular occasions, he had not
only gone out of his way to be of service to her, but had done so at
very grave risk to himself. Of course, she was interested in him--in
that way. How could she help it? But in any other way--the little chin
was still tilted defiantly upward--even the suggestion was absurd. The
man might be chivalrous, courageous, yes, outwardly, even a gentleman in
both manner and appearance; he might be all those things, and, indeed,
was--but he was a thief, a professional thief and crook. It seemed
very strange, of course; but she was judging him, not alone from the
circumstances under which they had met and been together, but from what
he had given her to understand about himself.

The defiance went suddenly from her face; and, for a moment, her
lips quivered a little helplessly. It was all so very strange, and so
forbidding, and--and, perhaps she hadn't the stout heart that a man
would have--but she did not understand, and she could not see her way
through the darkness that was like a pall wrapped about her--and it was
hard just to grope out amidst surroundings that revolted her and made
her soul sick. It was hard to do this and--and still keep her courage
and her faith.

She shook her head presently as she went along, shook it reprovingly at
herself, and the little shoulders squared resolutely back. There must
be, and there would be, a way out of it all, and meanwhile her position,
bad as it was, was not without, at least, a certain compensation. There
had been the Sparrow the other night whom she had been able to save,
and to-night there was Nicky Viner. She could not be blind to that. Who
knew! It might be for just such very purposes that her life had been
turned into these new channels!

She looked around her sharply now. She had reached the lower section
of Sixth Avenue. Perlmer's office, according to the address given, was
still a little farther on. She walked briskly. It was very different
to-night, thanks to her veil! It had been horrible that other night,
when she had ventured out as the White Moll and had been forced to keep
to the dark alleyways and lanes, and the unfrequented streets!

And now, through a jeweler's window, she noted the time, and knew a
further sense of relief. It was even earlier than she had imagined. It
was not quite ten o'clock; she would, at least, be close on the heels of
Perlmer's departure from his office, if not actually ahead of time, and
therefore she would be first on the scene, and--yes, this was the place;
here was Perlmer's name amongst those on the name-plate at the street
entrance of a small three-story building.

She entered the hallway, and found it deserted. It was a rather dirty
and unkempt place, and very poorly lighted--a single incandescent alone
burned in the hall. Perlmer's room, so the name-plate indicated, was
Number Eleven, and on the next floor.

She mounted the stairs, and paused on the landing to look around her
again. Here, too, the hallway was lighted by but a single lamp; and
here, too, an air of desertion was in evidence. The office tenants, it
was fairly obvious, were not habitual night workers, for not a ray of
light came from any of the glass-paneled doors that flanked both sides
of the passage. She nodded her head sharply in satisfaction. It was
equally obvious that Perlmer had already gone. It would take her but a
moment, then, unless the skeleton keys gave her trouble. She had never
used a key of that sort, but--She moved quietly down the hallway, and,
looking quickly about her to assure herself again that she was not
observed, stopped before the door of Room Number Eleven.

A moment she hung there, listening; then she slipped the skeleton keys
from her pocket, and, in the act of inserting one of them tentatively
into the keyhole, she tried the door--and with a little gasp of surprise
returned the keys hurriedly to her pocket. The door was unlocked; it had
even opened an inch already under her hand.

Again she looked around her, a little startled now; and instinctively
her hand in her pocket exchanged the keys for her revolver. But she
saw nothing, heard nothing; and it was certainly dark inside there, and
therefore only logical to conclude that the room was unoccupied.

Reassured, she pushed the door cautiously and noiselessly open, and
stepped inside, and closed the door behind her. She stood still for an
instant, and then the round, white ray of her flashlight went dancing
inquisitively around the office. It was a medium-sized room, far
from ornate in its appointments, bare floored, the furniture of the
cheapest--Perlmer's clientele did not insist on oriental rugs and
mahogany!

Her appraisal of the room, however, was but cursory. She was interested
only in the flat-topped desk in front of her. She stepped quickly around
it--and stopped-and a low cry of dismay came from her as she stared at
the floor. The lower drawer had been completely removed, and now lay
upturned beside the swivel chair, its contents strewn around in all
directions.

And for a moment she stared at the scene, nonplused, discomfited. She
had been so sure that she would be first--and she had not been first.
There was no need to search amongst those papers on the floor. They told
their own story. The ones she wanted were already gone.

In a numbed way, mechanically, she retreated to the door; and, with the
flashlight playing upon it, she noticed for the first time that the
lock had been roughly forced. It was but corroborative of the despoiled
drawer; and, at the same time, the obvious reason why the door had not
been relocked when whoever had come here had gone out again.

Whoever had come here! She could have laughed out hysterically. Was
there any doubt as to who it was? One of Danglar's emissaries; the
Cricket, perhaps-or perhaps even Danglar himself! They had seen to it
that lack of prompt action, at least, would not be the cause of marring
their plans.

A little dazed, overwrought, confused at the ground being cut from under
her where she had been so confident of a sure footing, she made her way
out of the building, and to the street--and for a block walked almost
aimlessly along. And then suddenly she turned hurriedly into a cross
street, and headed over toward the East Side. The experience had
not been a pleasant one, and it had upset most thoroughly all her
calculations; but it was very far, after all, from being disastrous.
It meant simply that she must now find Nicky Viner himself and warn
the man, and there was ample time in which to do that. The code message
specifically stated midnight as the hour at which they proposed to favor
old Viner with their unhallowed attentions, and as it was but a little
after ten now, she had nearly a full two hours in which to accomplish
what should not take her more than a few minutes.

Rhoda Gray's lips tightened a little, as she hurried along. Old Nicky
Viner still lived in the same disreputable tenement in which he had
lived on the night of that murder two years ago, and she could not ward
off the thought that it had been--yes, and was--an ideal place for a
murder, from the murderer's standpoint! The neighborhood was one of the
toughest in New York, and the tenement itself was frankly nothing more
than a den of crooks. True, she had visited there more than once, had
visited Nicky Viner there; but she had gone there then as the White
Moll, to whom even the most abandoned would have touched his cap.
To-night it was very different--she went there as a woman. And
yet, after all--she amended her own thoughts, smiling a little
seriously--surely she could disclose herself as the White Moll there
again to-night if the actual necessity arose, for surely crooks,
pokegetters, shillabers and lags though they were, and though the place
teemed with the dregs of the underworld, no one of them, even for the
reward that might be offered, would inform against her to the police!
And yet--again the mental pendulum swung the other way--she was not so
confident of that as she would like to be. In a general way there could
be no question but that she could count on the loyalty of those who
lived there; but there were always those upon whom one could never
count, those who were dead to all sense of loyalty, and alive only to
selfish gain and interest--a human trait that, all too unfortunately,
was not confined to those alone who lived in that shadowland outside
the law. Her face, beneath the thick veil, relaxed a little. Well, she
certainly did not intend to make a test case of it and disclose herself
there as the White Moll, if she could help it! She would enter the
tenement unnoticed if she could, and make her way to Nicky Viner's two
miserable rooms on the second floor as secretively as she could. And,
knowing the place as she did, she was quite satisfied that, if she
were careful enough and cautious enough, she could both enter and leave
without being seen by any one except, of course, Nicky Viner.

She walked on quickly. Five minutes, ten minutes passed; and now, in a
narrow street, lighted mostly by the dull, yellow glow that seeped
up from the sidewalk through basement entrances, queer and forbidding
portals to sinister interiors, or filtered through the dirty windows
of uninviting little shops that ran the gamut from Chinese laundries
to oyster dens, she halted, drawn back in the shadows of a doorway, and
studied a tenement building that was just ahead of her. That was where
old Nicky Viner lived. A smile of grim whimsicality touched her lips.
Not a light showed in the place from top to bottom. From its exterior it
might have been uninhabited, even long deserted. But to one who knew, it
was quite the normal condition, quite what one would expect. Those who
lived there confined their activities mostly to the night; and their
exodus to their labors began when the labors of the world at large
ended--with the fall of darkness.

For a little while she watched the place, and kept glancing up and down
the street; and then, seizing her opportunity when for half a block or
more the street was free of pedestrians, she stole forward and reached
the tenement door. It was half open, and she slipped quickly inside into
the hall.

She stood here for a moment motionless; listening, striving to
accommodate her eyes to the darkness, and instinctively her hand went to
her pocket for the reassuring touch of her revolver. It was black back
there in the hallway of Gypsy Nan's lodging; she had not thought that
any greater degree of blackness could exist; but it was blacker here.
Only the sense of touch promised to be of any avail. If one could have
moved as noiselessly as a shadow moves, one could have passed another
within arm's-length unseen. And so she listened, listened intently.
And there was very little sound. Once she detected a footstep from the
interior of some room as it moved across a bare floor; once she heard
a door creak somewhere upstairs; and once, from some indeterminate
direction, she thought she heard voices whispering together for a
moment.

She moved suddenly then, abruptly, almost impulsively, but careful
not to make the slightest noise. She dared not remain another instant
inactive. It was what she had expected, what she had counted upon as an
ally, this darkness, but she was not one who laughed, even in daylight,
at its psychology. It was beginning to attack her now; her imagination
to magnify even the actual dangers that she knew to be around her. And
she must fight it off before it got a hold upon her, and before panic
voices out of the blackness began to shriek and clamor in her ears, as
she knew they would do with pitifully little provocation, urging her to
turn and flee incontinently.

The staircase, she remembered, was at her right; and feeling out before

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