then--what? She shivered a little, and her face grew drawn and tired.
It was the old, old story of the pitcher and the well. It was almost
inevitable that sooner or later, for some crime or another, the man she
loved would be caught at last, and would spend the greater portion of
his days behind prison bars. That was what the love that had come into
her life held as its promise to her! It was terrible enough without her
agency being the means of placing him there!
She did not want to think about it. She forced her mind into other
channels, though they were scarcely less disquieting. Why was it that
during the day just past there had been not a sign from Danglar or any
one of the gang, when every plan of theirs had gone awry last night, and
she had failed to keep her appointment in the role of Danglar's wife?
Why was it? What did it mean? Surely Danglar would never allow what had
happened to pass unchallenged, and--was that some one now?
She halted suddenly by the door to listen, her hand going instinctively
to the wide, voluminous pocket of her greasy skirt for her revolver.
Yes, there was a footstep in the hall below, but it was descending
now to the ground floor, not coming up. She even heard the street door
close, but still she hung there in a strained, tense way, and into her
face there came creeping a gray dismay. Her pocket was empty.
The revolver was gone! Its loss, pregnant with a hundred ominous
possibilities, seemed to bring a panic fear upon her, holding her for a
moment inert--and then she rushed frantically to the cot. Perhaps it had
fallen out of her pocket during the hours she had lain there asleep.
She searched the folds of the soiled and crumpled blanket, that was the
cot's sole covering, then snatched the blanket completely off the cot
and shook it; and then, down on her knees, she searched the floor under
the cot. There was no sign of the revolver.
Rhoda Gray stood up, and stared in a stunned way about her. Was this,
then, the explanation of her having seemingly been left undisturbed
here all through the day? Had some one, after all, been here, and--? She
shook her head suddenly with a quick, emphatic gesture of dissent.
The door was still locked, she could see the key on the inside; and,
besides, as a theory, it wasn't logical. They wouldn't have taken her
revolver and left her placidly asleep!
The loss of the revolver was a vital matter. It was her one safeguard;
the one means by which she could first gain and afterwards hold the
whip-hand over Danglar in the interview she proposed to have with him;
the one means of escape, the last resort, if she herself were cornered
and fell into his power. It had sustained her more than once, that
resolution to turn it against herself if she were in extremity. It meant
everything to her, that weapon, and it was gone now; but the panic that
had seized upon her was gone too, and she could think rationally and
collectively again.
Last night, or rather this morning, when she had made her way back to
the shed out there in the lane behind the garret, she had been in a
state of almost utter exhaustion. She had changed from the clothes of
the White Moll to those of Gypsy Nan, but she must have done so almost
mechanically for she had no concrete recollection of it. It was quite
likely then, even more than probable, that she had left the revolver in
the pocket of her other clothes; for she had certainly had, not only her
revolver, but her flashlight and her skeleton keys with her when she had
visited old Luertz's place last night, and later on too, when she had
jumped into that automobile in front of the Silver Sphinx, she had had
her revolver, for she had used it to force the chauffeur out of the
car--and she had no one of those articles now.
Of course! That was it! She stepped impulsively to the door, and,
opening it, made her way quickly down the stairs to the street. The
revolver was undoubtedly in the pocket of her other skirt, and she felt
a surge of relief sweep upon her; but a sense of relief was far from
enough. She would not feel safe until the weapon was again in her
possession, and intuitively she felt that she had no time to lose in
securing it. She had already been left too long alone not to make a
break in that unaccountable isolation they had accorded her as something
to be expected at any moment. She hurried now down the street to the
lane that intervened between Gypsy Nan's house and the next corner,
glanced quickly about her, and, seeing no one in her immediate vicinity,
slipped into the lane. She gained the deserted shed some fifty yards
along the lane, entered through the broken door that hung, half open, on
sagging hinges, and, dropping on her knees, reached in under the decayed
and rotting flooring. She pushed aside impatiently the package of
jewels, at whose magnificence she had gazed awe-struck and bewildered
the night before, and drew out the bundle that comprised her own
clothing. Her hand sought the pocket eagerly. Yes, it was here--at least
the flashlight was, and so were the skeleton keys. That was what had
happened! She had been near utter collapse last night, and she had
forgotten, and--Rhoda Gray, unconscious even that she still held the
clothing in her hands, rose mechanically to her feet. There was a sudden
weariness in her eyes as she stared unseeingly about her. Yes, the
flashlight and the keys were here--but the revolver was not! Her brain
harked back in lightning flashes over the events of the preceding night.
She must have lost it somewhere, then. Where? She had had it in the
automobile, that she knew positively; but after that she did not
remember, unless--yes, it must have been that! When she had jumped from
the car and flung herself down at the roadside! It must have fallen out
of her pocket then.
Her heart seemed to stand still. Suppose they had found it! They would
certainly recognize it as belonging to Gypsy Nan! They were not fools.
The deduction would be obvious--the identity of the White Moll would
be solved. Was that why no one had apparently come near her? Were they
playing at cat-and-mouse, watching her before they struck, so that she
would lead them to those jewels under the flooring here that were worth
a king's ransom? They certainly believed that the White Moll had them.
The Adventurer's note, so ironically true, that he had intended as an
alibi for himself, and which he had exchanged for the package in old
Luertz's place, would have left no doubt in their minds but that the
stones were in her possession. Was that it? Were they--She held her
breath. It seemed as though suddenly her limbs were refusing to support
her weight. In the soft earth outside she had heard no step, but she saw
now a shadow fall athwart the half-open door-way. There was no time to
move, even had she been capable of action. It seemed as though even
her soul had turned to stone, and, with the White Moll's clothes in her
hands, she stood there staring at the doorway, and something that was
greater than fear, because it mingled horror, ugly and forbidding,
fell upon her. It was still just light enough to see. The shadow moved
forward and came inside. She wanted to scream, to rush madly in retreat
to the farthest corner of the shed; but she could not move. It was
Danglar who was standing there. He seemed to sway a little on his feet,
and the dark, sinister face seemed blotched, and he seemed to smile as
though possessed of some unholy and perverted sense of humor.
She was helpless, at his mercy, unarmed, saved for her wits. Her wits!
Were wits any longer of avail? She could believe nothing else now except
that he had been watching her--before he struck.
“What are you doing here, and what are those clothes you've got in your
hands?” he rasped out.
She could only fence for time in the meager hope that some loophole
would present itself. She forced an assumed defiance into her tones and
manner, that was in keeping with the sort of armed truce, which, from
her first meeting with Danglar, she had inaugurated as a barrier between
them.
“You have asked me two questions,” she said tartly. “Which one do you
want me to answer first?”
“Look here,” he snapped, “you cut that out! There's one or two things
need explaining--see? What are those clothes?”
Her wits! Perhaps he did not know as much as she was afraid he did! She
seemed to have become abnormally contained, her mind abnormally acute
and active. It was not likely that the woman, his wife, whom he believed
she was, had worn her own clothes in his presence since the day, some
two years ago, when she had adopted the disguise of Gypsy Nan; and she,
Rhoda Gray, remembered that on the night Gypsy Nan, re-assuming her true
personality, had gone to the hospital, the woman's clothes, like these
she held now, had been of dark material. It was not likely that a man
would be able to differentiate between those clothes and the clothes of
the White Moll, especially as the latter hung folded in her hands now,
and even though he had seen them on her at the Silver Sphinx last night.
“What clothes do you suppose they are but my own?--though I haven't had
a chance to wear them much lately!” she countered crisply.
He scowled at her speculatively.
“What are you doing with them out here in this hole, then?” he demanded.
“I had to wear them last night, hadn't I?” she retorted. “I'd have
looked well coming out of Gypsy Nan's garret dressed as myself if
any one had seen me!” She scowled at him in turn. She was beginning to
believe that he had not even an inkling of her identity. Her safest play
was to stake everything on that belief. “Say, what's the matter with
you?” she inquired disdainfully. “I came out here and changed last
night; and I changed into these rags I'm wearing now when I got back
again; and I left my own clothes here because I was expecting to get
word that I could put them on again soon for keeps--though I might have
known from past experience that something would queer the fine promises
you made at Matty's last night! And the reason I'm out here now is
because I left some things in the pocket, amongst them”--she stared at
him mockingly--“my marriage certificate.”
Danglar's face blackened.
“Curse you!” he burst out angrily. “When you get your tantrums on,
you've got a tongue, haven't you! You'd have been wearing your clothes
now, if you'd have done as you were told. You're the one that queered
things last night.” His voice was rising; he was rocking even more
unsteadily upon his feet. “Why in hell weren't you at the Silver
Sphinx?”
Rhoda Gray squinted at him through Gypsy Nan's spectacles. She knew
an hysterical impulse to laugh outright in the sure consciousness of
supremacy over him now. The man had been drinking. He was by no means
drunk; but, on the other hand, he was by no means sober--and she was
certain now that, though she did not know how he had found her here in
the shed, not the slightest suspicion of her had entered his mind.
“I was at the Silver Sphinx,” she announced coolly.
“You lie!” he said hoarsely. “You weren't! I told you to be there at
eleven, and you weren't. You lie! What are you lying to me for--eh? I'll
find out, you--you--”
Rhoda Gray dashed the clothes down on the floor at her feet, and faced
the man as though suddenly overcome in turn herself with passion,
shaking both closed fists at him.
“Don't you talk to me like that, Pierre Danglar!” she shrilled. “I lie,
do I? Well, I'll prove to you I don't! You said you were going to have
supper with Cloran at about eleven o'clock, and perhaps I was a few
minutes after that, but maybe you think it's easy to get all this Gypsy
Nan stuff off me face and all, and rig up in my own clothes that I
haven't seen for so long it's a wonder they hold together at all. I lie,
do I? Well, just as I got to the Silver Sphinx, I saw a woman breaking
her neck to get down the steps with you after her. She jumped into the
automobile it was doped out I was to take, and you jumped into the other
one, and both beat it down the street. I thought you'd gone crazy. I was
afraid that Cloran would come out and recognize me, so I turned and ran,
too. The safest thing I could do was to get back into the Gypsy Nan
game again, and that's what I did. And I've been lying low ever since,
waiting to get word from some of you, and not a soul came near me.
You're a nice lot, you are! And now you come sneaking here and call me a
liar! How'd you get to this shed, anyway?”
Danglar pushed his hand in a heavy, confused way across his eyes.
“My God!” he said heavily. “So that's it, is it?” His voice became
suddenly conciliating in its tones. “Look here, Bertha, old girl, don't
get sore. I didn't understand, see? And there was a whole lot that
looked queer. We even lost the jewels at old Luertz's last night. Do you
know who that woman was? It was the White Moll! She led us a chase all
over Long Island, and--”
“The White Moll!” ejaculated Rhoda Gray. And then her laugh, short and
jeering, rang out. The tables were turned. She had him on the defensive
now. “You needn't tell me I She got away again, of course! Why don't you
hire a detective to help you? You make me weary! So, it was the White
Moll, was it? Well, I'm listening--only I'd like to know first how you
got here to this shed.”
“There's nothing in that!” he answered impatiently. “There's something
more important to talk about. I was coming over to the garret, and just
as I reached the corner I saw you go into the lane. I followed you;
that's all there is to that.”
“Oh!” she sniffed. She stared at him for a moment. There was something
in which there was the uttermost of irony now, it seemed, in this
meeting between them. Last night she had striven to meet him alone, and
she had meant to devote to-night to the same purpose; and she was here
with him now, and in a place than which, in her wildest hopes, she
could have imagined one no better suited to the reckoning she would have
demanded and forced. And she was helpless, powerless to make use of it.
She was unarmed. Her revolver was gone. Without that to protect her, at
an intimation that she was the White Moll she would never leave the shed
alive. The spot would be quite as ideal under those circumstances
for him, as it would have been under other circumstances for her. She
shrugged her shoulders. Danglar's continued silence evidently invited
further comment on her part. “Oh!” she sniffed again. “And I suppose,
then, that you have been chasing the White Moll ever since last night at
eleven, and that's why you didn't get around sooner to allay my fears,
even though you knew I must be half mad with anxiety at the way things
broke last night. She'll have us down and out for keeps if you haven't
got brains enough to beat her. How much longer is this thing going on?”
Danglar's little black eyes narrowed. She caught a sudden glint of
triumph in them. It was Danglar now who laughed.
“Not much longer!” His voice was arrogant with malicious satisfaction.
“The luck had to turn, hadn't it? Well, it's turned! I've got the White
Moll at last!”
She felt the color leave her face. It seemed as though something had
closed with an icy clutch upon her heart. She had heard aright, hadn't
she?--that he had said he had got the White Moll at last. And there was
no mistaking the mans s sinister delight in making that announcement.
Had she been premature, terribly premature, in assuring herself that her
identity was still safe as far as he was concerned? Did it mean that,
after all, he had been playing at cat-and-mouse with her, as she had at
first feared?
“You--you've got the White Moll?” She forced the words from her lips,
striving to keep her voice steady and in control, and to infuse into it
an ironical incredulity.
“Sure!” he said complacently. “The showdown comes to-night. In another
hour or so we'll have her where we want her, and--”
“Oh!” She laughed almost hysterically in relief. “I thought so! You
haven't got her yet. You're only going to get her--in another hour or
so! You make me tired! It's always in 'another hour or so' with you--and
it never comes off!”
Danglar scowled at her under the taunt.
“It'll come off this time!” he snarled in savage menace. “You hold that
tongue of yours! Yes, it'll come off! And when it does”--a sweep of fury
sent the red into his working face--“I'll keep the promise I made her
once--that she'd wish she had never been born! D'ye hear, Bertha?”
“I hear,” she said indifferently. “But would you mind telling me how you
are going to do it? I might believe you then--perhaps!”
“Damn you, Bertha!” he exploded. “Sometimes I'd like to wring that
pretty neck of yours; and sometimes!”--he moved suddenly toward her--“I
would sell my soul for you, and--”
She retreated from him coolly.
“Never mind about that! This isn't a love scene!” she purred
caustically. “And as for the other, save it for the White Moll. What
makes you think you've got her at last?”
“I don't think--I know.” He stood gnawing at his lips, eying her
uncertainly, half angrily, half hungrily. And then he shrugged his
shoulders. “Listen!” he said. “I've got some one else, too! And I know
now where the leak that's queered every one of our games and put the
White Moll wise to every one of our plans beforehand has come from. I
guess you'll believe me now, won't you? We've got that dude pal of
hers fastened up tighter than the night he fastened me with his cursed
handcuffs! Do you know who that same dude pal is?” He laughed in an
ugly, immoderate way. “You don't, of course, so I'll tell you. It's the
Pug!” Rhoda Gray did not answer. It was growing dark here in the shed
now--perhaps that was why the man's form blended suddenly into the
doorway and wall, and blurred before her. She tried to think, but there
seemed to have fallen upon her a numbed and agonized stupefaction. There
was no confusing this issue. Danglar had found out that the Adventurer
was the Pug. And it meant--oh, what did it mean? They would kill him. Of
course, they would kill him! The Adventurer, discovered, would be safer
at the mercy of a pack of starved pumas, and...
“I thought that would hold you!” said Danglar with brutal serenity.
“That's why I didn't get around till now. I didn't get back from that
chase until daylight--the she-fiend stole our car--and then I went to
bed to get a little sleep. About three o'clock this afternoon Pinkie
Bonn woke me up. He was half batty with excitement. He said he was over
in the tenement in the Pug's room. The Pug wasn't in, and Pinkie was
waiting for him, and then all of a sudden he heard a woman screaming
like mad from somewhere. He went to the door and looked out, and saw
a man dash out of a room across the hall, and burst in the door of the
next room. There was a woman in there with her clothes on fire. She'd
upset a coal-oil stove, or something. The man Pinkie had seen beats the
fire out, and everybody in the tenement begins to collect around the
door. And then Pinkie goes pop-eyed. The man's face was the face of the
White Moll's dude pal--but he had on the Pug's clothes. Pinkie's a wise
guy. He slips away to me without getting himself in the limelight or
spilling any beans. And I didn't ask him if he'd been punching the
needle again overtime, either. It fitted like a glove with what happened
at old Luertz's last night. You don't know about that. Pinkie and this
double-crossing snitch went there--and only found a note from the White
Moll. He'd tipped her off before, of course, and the note made a nice
little play so's he'd be safe himself with us. Well, that's about all.
We had to get him--where we wanted him--and we got him. We waited until
he showed up again as the Pug, and then we put over a frame-up deal on
him that got him to go over to that old iron plant in Harlem, you know,
behind Jake Malley's saloon, where we had it fixed to hand Cloran his
last night--and the Pug's there now. He's nicely gagged, and tied, and
quite safe. The plant's been shut down for the last two months, and
there's only the watchman there, and he's 'squared.' We gave the Pug two
hours of solitary confinement to think it over and come across. We just
asked him for the White Moll's address, so's we could get her and the
sparklers she swiped at Old Luertz's place last night.”
Still Rhoda Gray did not speak for a moment. She seemed to be held in
thrall by both terror and a sickening dismay. It did not seem real,
her surroundings here, this man, and the voice that was gloatingly
pronouncing the death sentence upon the man who had come unbidden into
her life, and into her heart, the man she loved. Yes, she understood!
Danglar's words had been plain enough. The Adventurer had been
trapped--not through Danglar's cunning, or lack of cunning on the
Adventurer's own part, but through force of circumstances that had
caused him to fling all thought of self-consideration to the winds in
an effort to save another's life. Her hands, hidden in the folds of her
skirt, clenched until they hurt. And it was another self, it seemed,
subconsciously enacting the role of Gypsy Nan, alias Danglar's wife, who
spoke at last.
“You are a fool! You are all fools!” she cried tempestuously. “What do
you expect to gain by that? Do you imagine you can make the Pug come
across with any information by a threat to kill him if he doesn't? You
tried that once. You had him cold, or at least you thought you had, and
so did he, that night in old Nicky Viner's room, and he laughed at you
even when he expected you to fire the next second. He's not likely to
have changed any since then, is he?”
“No,” said Danglar, with a vicious chuckle; “and that's why I'm not
trying the same game twice. That's why we've got him over in the old
iron plant now.”
There was something she did not like in Danglar's voice, something of
ominous assurance, something that startled her.
“What do you mean?” she demanded sharply.
“It's a lonely place,” said Danglar complacently. “There's no one around
but the watchman, and he's an old friend of Shluker's; and it's so roomy
over there that no one could expect him to be everywhere at once. See?
That let's him out. He's been well greased, and he won't know anything.
Don't you worry, old girl! That's what I came here for--to tell you that
everything is all right, after all. The Pug will talk. Maybe he wouldn't
if he just had his choice between that and the quick, painless end that
a bullet would bring; but there are some things that a man can't stand.
Get me? We'll try a few of those on the Pug, and, believe me, before
we're through, there won't be any secrets wrapped up in his bosom.”
Rhoda Gray stood motionless. Thank God it had grown dark--dark enough to
hide the whiteness that she knew had crept over her face, and the horror
that had crept into her eyes. “You mean”--her voice was very low--“you
mean you're going to torture him into talking?”
“Sure!” said Danglar. “What do you think!”
“And after that?”
“We bump him off, of course,” said Danglar callously. “He knows all
about us, don't he? And I guess we'll square up on what's coming to him!
He's put the crimp into us for the last time!” Danglar's voice pitched
suddenly hoarse in fury. “That's a hell of a question to ask! What do
you think we'd do with a yellow cur that's double-crossed us like that?”
Plead for the Adventurer's life? It was useless; it was worse than
useless--it would only arouse suspicion toward herself. From the
standpoint of any one of the gang, the Adventurer's life was forfeit.
Her mind was swift, cruelly swift, in its workings now. There came the
prompting to disclose her own identity to tell Danglar that he need not
go to the Adventurer to discover the whereabouts of the White Moll, that
she was here now before him; there came the prompting to offer herself
in lieu of the man she loved. But that, too, was useless, and worse than
useless; they would still do away with the Adventurer because he had
been the Pug, and the only chance he now had, as represented by whatever
she might be able to do, would be gone, since she would but have
delivered herself into their hands.
She drew back suddenly. Danglar had stepped toward her. She was unable
to avoid him, and his arm encircled her waist. She shivered as the
pressure of his arm tightened.
“It's all right, old girl!” he said exuberantly. “You've been through
hell, you have; but it's all right at last. You leave it to me! Your
husband's got a kiss to make up for every drop of that grease you've had
to put on the prettiest face in New York.”
It seemed as though she must scream out. It was hideous. She could not
force herself to endure it another instant even for safety's safe. She
pushed him away. It was unbearable--at any risk, cost what it might.
Mind, soul and body recoiled from the embrace.
“Leave me alone!” she panted. “You've been drinking. Leave me alone!”
He drew back, and laughed.