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: