gang as the Pug. That took about a year. I was almost another year with
you as an accepted member of the gang. You know what happened
during that period. A little while ago I found out that the woman we
wanted--with you, Danglar--was your wife, living in hiding in this
garret as Gypsy Nan. But the jewels themselves were still missing.
To-night they are not. A--a friend of mine, one very much misjudged
publicly, I might say, has them, and has told me they would be handed to
the police.
“And so, Danglar, after coming here to-night, I sent the Sparrow out
to gather together a few of the authorities who are interested in the
case--my friend the assistant district attorney; Cloran, the house
detective; Rough Rorke of headquarters, who on one occasion was very
much interested in Gypsy Nan; and enough men to make the round of
arrests. They should be conveniently hidden across the road now, and
waiting for my signal. My idea, you see, was to allow Mrs. Danglar to
enter here without having her suspicions aroused, and to see that
she did not get away again if she arrived before those who are duly
qualified--which I am not--to arrest her did; also, in view of what
transpired earlier this evening, I must confess I was a little anxious
about those several years' accumulation of stolen funds up there in the
ceiling. As I said at the beginning, I hardly expected the luck to get
you both at the same time; though we should have got you, Danglar, and
every one of the rest of the gang before morning, and--”
“You,” Rhoda Gray whispered, “you--are not a thief!” Brain and soul
seemed on fire. It seemed as though she had striven to voice those
words a dozen times since he had been speaking, but that she had been
afraid--afraid that this was not true, this great, wonderful thing, that
it could not be true. “You--you are not a--a thief!”
The Adventurer's face lost its immobility. He half rose from his chair,
staring at her in a startled way--but it was Danglar now who spoke.
“It's a lie!” he screamed out. “It's a lie!” The man's reason appeared
to be almost unhinged; a mad terror seemed to possess him. “It's all a
lie! I never heard of this rajah bunk before in my life! I never heard
of Deemer, or any jewels before. You lie! I tell you, you lie! You can't
prove it; you can't--”
“But I can,” said Rhoda Gray in a low voice. The shawl fell from her
shoulders; from her blouse she took the package of jewels and held them
out to the Adventurer. “Here are the stones. I got them from where you
had put them in old Luertz's room. I was hidden there all the time last
night.” She was removing her spectacles and her wig of tangled gray hair
as she spoke, and now she turned her face full upon Danglar. “I heard
you discuss Deemer's murder with your brother last night, and plan to
get rid of Cloran, who you thought was the only existing witness you
need fear, and--”
“Great God!” The Adventurer cried out. “You--Rhoda! The White Moll! I--I
don't understand, though I can see you are not the woman who originally
masqueraded as Gypsy Nan, for I knew her, as I said, by sight.”
He was on his feet now, his face aflame with a great light. He took a
step toward her.
“Wait!” she said hurriedly. She glanced at Danglar. The man's face was
blanched, his body seemed to have shriveled up, and there was a light
in his eyes as they held upon her that was near to the borderland of
insanity. “That night at Skarbolov's!” she said, and tried to hold her
voice in control. “Gypsy Nan, this man's wife, died that night in the
hospital. I had found her here sick, and I had promised not to divulge
her secret. I helped her get to the hospital. She was dying; she was
penitent in a way; she wanted to prevent a crime that she said was to be
perpetrated that night, but she would not inform on her accomplices. She
begged me to forestall them, and return the money anonymously the next
day. That was the choice I had--either to allow the crime to be carried
out, or else swear to act alone in return for the information that would
enable me to keep the money away from the thieves without bringing the
police into it. I--I was caught. You--you saved me from Rough Rorke, but
he followed me. I put on Gypsy Nan's clothes, and managed to outwit
him. I had had no opportunity to return the money, which would have been
proof of my innocence; the only way I could prove it, then, was to try
and find the authors of the crime myself. I--I have lived since then as
Gypsy Nan, fighting this hideous gang of Danglar's here to try and save
myself, and--and to-night I thought I could see my way clear. I--I knew
enough at last about this man to make him give me a written statement
that it was a pre-arranged plan to rob Skarbolov. That would
substantiate my story. And”--she looked again at Danglar; the man
was still crouched there, eying her with that same mad light in his
eyes--“and he must be made to--to do it now for--”
“But why didn't you ask me?” cried the Adventurer. “You knew me as the
Pug, and therefore must have believed that I, too, know all about it.”
“Yes,” she said, and turned her head away to hide the color she felt was
mounting to her cheeks. “I--I thought of that. But I thought you were a
thief, and--and your testimony wouldn't have been much good unless, with
it, I could have handed you, too, over to the police, as I intended to
do with Danglar; and--and--I--I couldn't do that, and--Oh, don't you
see?” she ended desperately.
“Rhoda! Rhoda!” There was a glad, buoyant note in the Adventurer's
voice. “Yes, I see! Well, I can prove it for you now without any of
those fears on my behalf to worry you! I went to Skarbolov's myself,
knowing their plans, to do exactly what you did. I did not know you
then, and, as Rough Rorke, who was there because, as I heard later,
his suspicions had been aroused through seeing some of the gang lurking
around the back door in the lane the night before, had taken the actual
money from you, I contrived to let you get away, because I was afraid
that you were some new factor in the game, some member of the gang that
I did not know about, and that I must watch, too! Don't you understand?
The jewels were still missing. I had not got the general warning that
was sent out to the gang that night to lay low, for at the last moment
it seems that Danglar here found out that Rough Rorke had suspicions
about Skarbolov's place.” He came close to her--and with the muzzle of
his revolver he pushed Danglar's huddled figure back a little further
against the washstand. “Rhoda--you are clear. The assistant district
attorney who had your case is the one I spoke of a few minutes ago. That
night at Hayden-Bond's, though I did not understand fully, I knew
that you were the bravest, truest little woman into whom God had ever
breathed the breath of life. I told him the next day there was some
mistake, something strange behind it all. I told him what happened at
Hayden-Bond's. He agreed with me. You have never been indicted. Your
case has never come before the grand jury. And it never will now! Rhoda!
Rhoda! Thank God for you! Thank God it has all come out right, and--”
A peal of laughter, mad, insane, horrible in its perverted mirth, rang
through the garret. Danglar's hands were creeping queerly up to his
temples. And then, oblivious evidently in his frenzy of the revolver in
the Adventurer's hand, and his eye catching the weapons that lay upon
the cot, he made a sudden dash in that direction--and Rhoda Gray,
divining his intention, sprang for the cot, too, at the same time. But
Danglar never reached his objective. As Rhoda Gray caught up the weapons
and thrust them into her pocket, she heard Danglar's furious snarl,
and whirling around, she saw the two men locked and struggling in each
other's embrace.
The Adventurer's voice reached her, quick, imperative:
“Show the candle at the window, Rhoda! The Sparrow is waiting for it in
the yard below. Then open the door for them.”
A sudden terror and fear seized her. The Adventurer was not fit, after
what he had been through to-night to cope with Danglar. He had been
limping badly even a few minutes ago. It seemed to her, as she rushed
across the garret and snatched up the candle, that Danglar was getting
the best of it even now. And the Adventurer could have shot him down,
and been warranted in doing it! She reached the window, waved the candle
frantically several times across the pane, then setting the candle down
on the window ledge, she ran for the door.
She looked back again, as she turned the key in the lock. With a crash,
pitching over the chair, both men went to the floor--and the Adventurer
was underneath. She cried out in alarm, and wrenched the door open--and
stood for an instant there on the threshold in a startled way.
They couldn't be coming already! The Sparrow hadn't had time even to
get out of the yard. But there were footsteps in the hall below, many of
them. She stepped out on the landing; it was too dark to see, but...
A sudden yell as she showed even in the faint light of the open garret
door, the quicker rush of feet, reached her from below.
“The White Moll! That's her! The White Moll!” She flung herself flat
down, wrenching both the automatic and the revolver from her pocket. She
understood now! That was Pinkie Bonn's voice. It was the gang arriving
to divide up the spoils, not the Sparrow and the police. Her mind was
racing now with lightning speed. If they got her, they would get the
Adventurer in there, too, before the police could intervene. She
must hold this little landing where she lay now, hold those short,
ladder-like steps that the oncoming footsteps from below there had
almost reached.
She fired once--twice--again; but high, over their heads, to check the
rush.
Yells answered her. A vicious tongue-flame from a revolver, another
and another, leaped out at her from the black below; the spat, spat of
bullets sounded from behind her as they struck the walls.
Again she fired. They were at least more cautious now in their rush--no
one seemed anxious to be first upon the stairs. She cast a wild glance
through the open door into the garret at her side. The two forms in
there, on their feet again, were spinning around and around with
the strange, lurching gyrations of automatons--and then she saw the
Adventurer whip a terrific blow to Danglar's face--and Danglar fall and
lie still--and the Adventurer come leaping toward her.
But faces were showing now above the level of the floor, and there was
suddenly an increased uproar from further back in the rear until it
seemed that pandemonium itself were loosed.
“It's the police! The police behind us!” she heard Shluker's voice
shriek out.
She jumped to her feet. Two of the gang had reached the landing and were
smashing at the Adventurer. There seemed to be a swirling mob in riot
there below. The Adventurer was fighting like a madman. It was hand to
hand now.
“Quick! Quick!” she cried to the Adventurer. “Jump back through the
door.”
“Oh, no, you don't!” It was Skeeny--she could see the man's brutal face
now. “Oh, no, you don't, you she-devil!” he shouted, and, over-reaching
the Adventurer's guard, struck at her furiously with his clubbed
revolver.
It struck her a glancing blow on the head, and she reeled and staggered,
but recovered herself. And now it seemed as though it were another
battle that she fought--and one more desperate; a battle to fight back
a horrible giddiness from overpowering her, and with which her brain was
swimming, to fight it back for just a second, the fraction of a second
that was needed until--until--“Jump!” she cried again, and staggered
over the threshold, and, as the Adventurer leaped backward beside her,
she slammed the door, and locked it--and slid limply to the floor.
When she regained consciousness she was lying on the cot. It seemed very
still, very quiet in the garret. She opened her eyes. It--it must be
all right, for that was the Sparrow standing there watching her, and
shifting nervously from foot to foot, wasn't it? He couldn't be there,
otherwise. She held out her hand.
“Marty,” she said, and smiled with trembling lips, “we--we owe you a
great deal.”
The Sparrow gulped.
“Gee, you're all right again! They said it wasn't nothin', but you had
me scared worse'n down at the iron plant when I had to do the rough act
with that gent friend of yours to stop him from crawlin' after you and
fightin' it out, and queerin' the whole works. You don't owe me nothin',
Miss Gray; and, besides, I'm gettin' a lot more than is comm' to me,
'cause that same gent friend of yours there says I'm goin' to horn in
on the rewards, and I guess that's goin' some, for they got the whole
outfit from Danglar down, and the stuff up in the ceiling there, too.”
She turned her head. The Adventurer was coming toward the cot.
“Better?” he called cheerily.
“Yes,” she said. “Quite! Only I--I'd like to get away from here, from
this--this horrible place at once, and back to--to my flat if they'll
let me. Are--are they all gone?”
The Adventurer's gray eyes lighted with a whimsical smile.
“Nearly all!” he said softly. “And--er--Sparrow, suppose you go and find
a taxi!”
“Me? Sure! Of course! Sure!” said the Sparrow hurriedly, and retreated
through the door.
She felt the blood flood her face, and she tried to avert it.
He bent his head close to hers.
“Rhoda,” his voice was low, passionate, “I--”
“Wait!” she said. “Your friend--the assistant district attorney--did he
come?”
“Yes,” said the Adventurer. “But I shooed them all out, as soon as
we found you were not seriously hurt. I thought you had had enough
excitement for one night. He wants to see you in the morning.”
“To see me”--she rose up anxiously on her elbow--“in the morning?”
He was smiling at her. His hands reached out and took her face between
them, and made her look at him.
“Rhoda,” he said gently, “I knew to-night in the iron plant that you
cared. I told him so. What he wants to see you for is to tell you that
he thinks I am the luckiest man in all the world. You are clear, dear.
Even Rough Rorke is singing your praises; he says you are the only woman
who ever put one over on him.”
She did not answer for a moment; and then with a little sob of glad
surrender she buried her face on his shoulder.
“It--it is very wonderful,” she said brokenly, “for--for even we, you
and I, each thought the other a--a thief.”
“And so we were, thank God!” he whispered--and lifted her head until now
his lips met hers. “We were both thieves, Rhoda, weren't we? And, please
God, we will be all our lives--for we have stolen each other's heart.”