CHAPTER 5. A SECOND VISITOR Mechanically wrote a gray thrust the paper into the pocket-ever skirt. The door swung open. A tall man, well-dressed, as far as could be seen in the uncertain light, a slouch hat pulled down over his eyes, stood on the threshold, surveying the interior of the garret. The adventure rose composately 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?' Wrote a 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 you ask him yourself?' inquired wrote a gray, tersolently. I don't know.' "'You don't, eh?' The man halted, close to where the candle stood on the floor between him and the adventurer. Well, then, I guess we'll find out. He was peering in the adventurer's direction, and now there came a savage scowl to his face. It seems to me I've seen those clothes somewhere before, and I guess 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 dangler, isn't it?' "'I am surely not mistaken.' "'Parsen dangler?' "'Alius, uh, please don't do that.' It seemed to wrote a gray that it happened in the space of time that it might take a watch to tick. The newcomer stooping to the floor and lifting the candle with 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 the adventurer had addressed as dangler, then an instant of silence, and then the adventurer's voice, from the doorway. "'I beg you not to vent your disappointment on the lady, dangler. 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 not at all a bad shot, even in the dark.  Dangler'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 put enough to the bed already. Do you hear? Where's the lamp?' "'It's over there on the floor, bust to pieces,' mumbled Rota Gray. You'll find the matches on the wash stand, and—' What's the idea? There was a sudden, steel-like note dominating the angry tones. What are you handing me that hogwash language for, eh?   See? What's the idea?' Rota 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 not retrieved, and instantly retrieved, now that it was made, meant discovery, and after that she shivered a little.  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. Rota 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 upon the chair, and began to pace restlessly, three or four steps each way, up and down in front of the bed. Rota Gray from the edge of the bed shifted back until her shoulders rested against the wall. Dangler, too, was dressed like a gentleman, but Dangler's face was not appealing.  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 Scarbalov's was queered. You got the seven-three-nine, didn't you?' "'Yes, of course, I got it,' answered Rota 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 someone has been budding in, and getting away with the goods under our noses. We know now, from last night, that it must have been the White Mall for one, though it's not likely she worked all alone. Skeeny dropped to the fact that the police were wise about Scarbalov's, and that's why we called it off, and the seven-three-nine went out. They must have got wise shadowing the White Mall, see? Then they pinched her, but she makes her get away and comes here, and if I've got the dope right, you hand Rough Rourke one, and help her beat it again. It looks blamed funny, doesn't it? When you come to consider that there's a leak somewhere. Is that so?' Rota Gray flashed back, and did you know before last night that it was the White Mall who was querying our game? If I had, the man gritted between his teeth, I'd— "'Well, then, how do you expect me to know it?' demanded Rota Gray, heatedly. And if the White Mall 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 in 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 walking, and, jerking back his hat, drew his hand nervously across his forehead. "'You make me tired,' said Rota Gray, wearily. Do you think you can find the door without too much trouble?' Rota 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 Mall'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 Mall. You helped her last night.' She doesn't know that you're anybody but Gypsy Nan, so you're the one person in New York she'll dare to communicate with sooner or later.  But that fellow I found here started me off. Who is he? What did he want?' "'He wanted the White Mall, too,' said Rota Gray, with a short laugh. "'Oh, he did, eh?' Dangler's lips twisted into a sudden, merciless smile. Well go on. Who is he?' "'I don't know who he is,' wrote a 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 Mall away from Rough Rourke last night, after Rourke had arrested her, and then he doped the rest out the same as you have, that he could find the White Mall again through Gypsy Nan. I don't know what he wanted her for. That's better,' snarled Dangler, the merciless smile still on his lips. "'I thought she must have had a pal, and now we know who her pal is. It's open and shut that she's sitting so tight that she hasn't been able to get into touch with him, and that's what's worrying Mr. Adventurer.' Rota Gray, save for a knot of her head, made no answer. Dangler laughed suddenly, as though in relief, then, coming closer to the bed, plunged his hand into his coat pocket, and tossed a handful of jewelry carelessly into Rota 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 Mall won't cut in to-night. Put those sparklers away with the rest until we get ready to fence them.' Rota 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 Dangler, with an appealing 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. Skenes got the sparrow tied up in the old room behind Schlecker'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 leading forward clapped Rota 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, Rota Gray made no comment. She wondered, as she gripped at the rings and brooches in her hand, so fiercely that the settings pricked into the flesh, if her face, in any way, mirrored the cold, sick misery that had suddenly taken possession of her soul. The sparrow. She knew the sparrow.  That part of it was true, the sparrow did have a mother who was sick. A fine old lady, finer than her son, Finch, her name was. Indirectly she knew Old Hayden Bond, the millionaire, and— Almost subconsciously she was aware that Dangler 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. It pays to do things right. It broke our way, at last, to-night, all right, all right. Today'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-B, and out it comes from the safety deposit box, and in to 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 will 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 they're 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 mall slip you at any cost. However 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. 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 them. Good night, old girl. See you later. Good night, said Rhoda Gray, dully. She closed the door. The short, ladder-like steps to the hallway below creaked once, and then all was still. Dangler did have on rubber-soled shoes. She sat upright, her hands clenched now, pressed 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.  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 Dangler and their bald meaning were true. Men did such things. Men made in the image of their maker did such things.  She swept the jewels from her lap to the blanket, and rising, seized the candle, and 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, and 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! Dangler 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 sparrows. That way was closed to her from the start. As the White Mall, then?  She wrung her hands in cruel desperation. Even to her own problems she found no solution, though she had wrestled with it all last night and all through the day. No solution saved 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 had once 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 which she wrote a 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 would 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 be collaborative 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 there helplessly. And time, the only precious ally she possessed, was slipping away from her. She could not go to the police as Gypsy Nan, and much less as the White Mall. She could not go to the police in any case, for the collaborative evidence, that obviously must exist unless Dangler and the others were fools, would indubitably dam 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.  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 Skarbalov's Escortois last night. Therefore he was a crook. Dangler had said that someone had been getting in ahead of them lately and snatching the plunder from under their noses, and Dangler now believed that it had been the White Mall. A wan's smile came to her lips. Instead of the White Mall, 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 would have been 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 adverse to Dangler's plan of using the sparrow as a pawn, who in this case would make a very convenient scapegoat for the adventurer, instead of Dangler. 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. 739 Dangler 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 the complete cipher into which any message might be coded, and? But why was her brain swerving off at inconsequential tangents? What did the 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 metamorphised 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 ten 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, miscellant and haggard aspect which was so simple and yet so effective a disguise. She worked rapidly, changing her clothes. She could not go out or act as Gypsy Nan, and so she must go in her own character, go as the White Mall, 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 the risk of 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 Mall. 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 Mall. She could only prepare for that 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 covered by the shawl, she took the candle again, closed the trapped door, and stepped over to the wash-stand. 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 and locked it behind her, and without any attempt at secrecy made her way downstairs. End of Chapter 5 CHAPTER 6 The rendezvous. Rhoda Gray's movements were a little unsteady as she stepped out on the sidewalk. Gypsy Nan's accepted inebriity 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 Rourke's men watching the house? She did not know. She only knew that as far as she was 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 Mall complete. It only required some place in which she, could, with safety, leave the garments that she discarded. And yes, this would do. A tumbled-down old shed, its battered door half open, ample proof that the place was in disuse, intersected the line of a high-board fence on her right. She stole inside. It was utter darkness, 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 with the aid of a damp cloth, her hands neatly gloved in black kid, the skirt, boots, stocking, 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 Mall and went on again. But at the end of the lane where it met across 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 Schlucker'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 that barred her exit from the lane, thousands of them, lights all the way, and, and out there they were searching everywhere, piteously, for the White Mall. And then, with her lips tightened, the straight little shoulders thrown back resolutely, 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 an intention. 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 the street, now through the black courtyard, now forced to take a fence, and taking it with the agility born of the open, athletic life that she had led with her father in the mining camps of South America, now hiding in 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 an agony of dread, that with her progress so slow, she would, after all, be too late. At times she almost cried out in her vexation and despair, as once when crouched behind a door-stube, a policeman, not two yards from her, stood and twirled his night-stick under a 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 Dangler met the men yet who had looted the millionaires safe? Had he already joined Skeeney in that old room behind Schlucker's place? Had the sparrow, she could not let her mind frame that question in concrete words. The sparrow. His real name was Martin, Martin Finch, Marty for short. In terms without numbers she had visited his sick and widowed mother, while the sparrow had served a two-year sentence for his first conviction in safe-breaking. The sparrow, from a first-class chauffeur mechanic, had showed signs of becoming a first-class craxman. It was true, but the sparrow was young, and she had never believed that he was inherently bad. Her opinion had been confirmed, when six months ago, on his release, listening both to her own pleadings and those of his mother, the sparrow had sworn that he would stick to the straight 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 a chauffeur. It was a vile and 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 the black and narrow driveway that led in between two blocks of down-at-the-heels tenements to a courtyard in the rear. Schlucker 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, Schlucker, or anything about Schlucker's place except its locality, but surely the old room behind Schlucker'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 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 past, 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 danglers.  Watched him in a tense, fascinated way. She was in time, then, only—only somehow 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 bad her to 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 perspective, and mental encounter with danger, did not hold the terror that the tangible, concrete, and actual presence of that peril did, and that was dangler 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 it being a coward? Her small, gloved hands clinched, 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 applied to herself, there hung a man's life. Shriller was disappearing around the side of Schlucker'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 Dangler 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 a 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 Schlucker's junk-shop, she could form no idea of her surroundings. But she could at last hear. Voices, one of which she recognized as Danglers, though she could not distinguish the words, reached her from upstairs. Slowly, with infinite care, she crossed the stairs, and on hands and knees now, lest she 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 Danglers 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.  Don't grouch, Skeeny.  It doesn't pay. Nothing 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 about the laugh that followed. It seemed to fan into flames 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 the brave, steady 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 in her its thrawl. And she went on up, step after step, as Dangler spoke again. There's nothing to it. The sparrow there fell for the telephone, when Stevie played the doctor. An old Hayden Bond, of course, grants his prison-bird chauffeur's request to spend the night with his mother, who the doctor says has taken worse, because the old guy knows that 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 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 green smudges and the sparrow's greasy fingerprints on it, that you remember we copped a few days ago in the garage, we'll set them straight. The cricket slipped it in among the papers he pulled out of the safe, and tossed around the floor. It looks as though the 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 fingerprints 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? Wrote a gray could see now. Her eyes were level with the landing, and diagonally across from the head of the stairs was the open doorway of the lighted room. She could not see all of the interior, but she could see quite enough.  The latter was skeiny, obviously, and the jackknife and the stick quite as obviously explained dangler's facetious reference to wood-carving. And then her eyes shifted and widened as they rested on the huddled form that she could see, looking under and beyond the table, and that lay sprawled out against the far wall of the room. Skeiny 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, dangler 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, Skeiny?  You'll get yours. Skeiny grunted compliance. Well, let's have a look at the white ones, then, he said. Rota Gray was standing upright in the little hallway now, and now pressed close to against the wall. She edged toward the door-jam, and a queer, grim little smile came and twisted the sensitive lips as she drew her revolver from her pocket. This pitiless way in which the newspapers had flayed the white mall was not, after all, to be wholly regretted. The cool, clever resourcefulness the years of reckless daring attributed to the white mall 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 mall. They would take her at face value, as one who would not only know how to use that revolver, but as one who would not hesitate, an instant to do so. From the room she heard Skeiny 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 Skeiny, a scintillating flash of light, as a magnified string of diamonds fell from his hand to the table. But Dangler did not move or speak, only his lips twitched, a queer whiteness came, and spread itself over his face.  It was Skeiny who spoke, as both men obeyed her. The white mall, so help me, he mumbled, and swallowed hard.  She smiled at him coldly. She quite understood. He had already complained that evening that the white mall 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 mall 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're not so 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 axe seemed to arouse Dangler to the last pitch of fury. The blood rushed to an angry tide in 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 jackknife 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 jackknife in a sort of horribly, supercritical appraisal of its edge. He spoke thickly for the gag that had been in his mouth.  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, jankled, 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 Yoll wrote a gray later hand on the sparrow's arm. Not that way, Marty, she said quietly. She smiled thinly at Dangler, who, with genuinely frightened eyes now, seemed fascinated by the sparrow's movements. I wouldn't care to have anything happen to Mr. Dangler, 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, used in a strange way to all else. There's enough cord there for both of them, said Rhoda Gray, crisply. Tie them to 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, first bound Dangler, and then Skeeney to their respective chairs. Skeeney for the most part kept his eyes on the floor, casting only fruit of glances at Rhoda Gray's revolver-muzzle. But Dangler 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 knot of her head to the door, and then, following the other, she back to the door herself, and halted an instant on the threshold. It has been a very profitable evening, Mr. Dangler, she said, coolly. I have to thank you for it. When your friends come, which I think I heard you say would be another hour or so, I hope you will not fail to convey to them my, you she fiend. Dangler had found his voice again.  His voice broke in its fury. The veins were standing out on the sides of his neck like whip-cords. 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. Reading by Rowdy Delaney, Idaho, U.S.A. The White Mall By Frank L. Packard Chapter 7 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 away. She swerved suddenly from the sidewalk as she came to an alleyway, which had been her objective, and she drew the sparrow in with her, out of sight of the street. The sparrow gripped at her hand. The White Mall, he whispered brokenly. God bless the White Mall. I ain't had a chance to say it before.  And there's no time to say it now, Marty, she said quickly. You are not out of this yet.  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 left Mr. Hayden Bonds, 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 never been near your mother, but could not prove an alibi of any sort? If you told them 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 in our crowd would trust you to the limit.  Thank you, Marty, she said. Well, then, how do you get into Mr. Hayden Bond's house, when, for instance, you were 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 them. Each car's got one in 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 sent me a taxi cab. If you were seen in that neighborhood now, let alone by 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 simple street directions. Be careful that he is someone who doesn't know you. Tell him he will be well paid, and give him this to begin with. She thrust a bank note into the sparrow's hand. You're sure to find one at some all-night cabaret around here? And remember, when you get home afterward, not a word to your mother, and not a word to-morrow or ever to anyone. 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 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've 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 to the curb, and the man leaned out and opened the door. Yes, him, 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. Wrote a gray settled back on the cushions.  It was much easier and infinitely safer this mode of travel than that of her early experience that evening. But earlier that evening she had had no one to go to a cab rank for her, and she had dared not 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. Wrote a gray calculated that they had been a little under a 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 had only a block now to go to reach the Hayden-Bahn 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 and down the Great Thirlfair, 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-Bahn 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 into 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 a 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 porterre inside, brushed the porterre 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, porterred. Diagonally across from her was another door that led, presumably, into the main hall of the house. The walls were tapestry'd, 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-portiers, 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 the 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 plushed-line 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 fingerprint at one edge, and thrust the paper into her pocket. And now suddenly her heartbeat began to quicken until its thumping became tumultuous. She was ready now. She looked around her, using the flashlight, and her eyes rested appraisingly on 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. She tightened her lips. 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 of the household. And as that someone reached the library door and opened it, she would disappear 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 be elapsed between the accident that knocked the shields from the wall and the time it would take for 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 the electric light switch and turned on the light. They must be able to see beyond any question of a 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 nightclothes, 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 a block down the avenue, and then the other block down the cross-street, 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 foot falls soundless on the rich heavy rug, she picked up the plushed-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, as it caught the light and flashed back its fire and life from a thousand facets, a numbness came stealing over her, a horror, and a great fear, and a dismay robbed her of the power of movement, until she seemed that she was rooted to the spot, and a low, grasping 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. This Miss wrote a gray, isn't it? The White Mall? He murmured amiably. I've been trying to find you all night. What quirking 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's 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. 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 Nann.  In the same boat, 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, even 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 am 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 that 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. Right so—of course—acknowledge 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 that 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 turn let me advise you to go at once. I intend to knock one of those shields 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 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 said coolly, far from it. There was money stolen that I cannot replace, and the theft of the money would be put on the same innocent shoulders. I see no other way than the one I 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 was used as the pawn, and if I am recognized as the White Mall, what does it matter, after last night? He took a step toward her impetuously, and stopped quite as impetuously. Her revolver had swung to level with his head. Pardon me, he said? Not at all, she said costically. 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 have been trying to find you tonight. It was the truth. I went to Gypsy Nans, 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 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 neglected to state that he had also told Gypsy Nans 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, insofar as your project is concerned, I too must say no. It was an impass.  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 the great metal shield with its encircling cluster of small arms, and wrenched it from its fastenings. It crashed to the floor with a den 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's far too dangerous. Yes, you will, she burst out wildly.  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.  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 the 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 dishevel, and the adventurer was sleeping from 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. Rota 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. It lipped, using her flashlight, she ran through the kitchen. In a moment more, she was standing at the garage door, listening, peering fruitively 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 Nans, 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 dangler, 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 adventure 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 portier? 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 Nann, some ten minutes later, she let herself into the garret and lighted the candle. She was conscious, as she hid the white mall'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 to be somehow temporarily relegated to the background. She flung herself down on the bed. It was not Gypsy Nann's habit to undress, and she blew out the light. But she could not sleep. An 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. CHAPTER VIII of the White Mall. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Rowdy Delaney, Idaho, USA. The White Mall by Frank L. Packard Chapter VIII The Coated Message It was strange. Most strange. Three days had passed, and to Gypsy Nann'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 Dangler, balked, almost a madman in his fury, in the little room over Schlucker's junk-shop, Dangler had not been seen, nor the adventurer, nor even Rough Rourke.  Rhoda Gray drew her shawl closer around her shoulders and shivered, as now, from shuffling down the block in the guise of Gypsy Nann, 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 tonight. 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 the neighborhood. And tonight, 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. Another would leave no stone unturned to get the White Mall. He had said so. She remembered the threat he had made. It had lived in the woman's soul ever since that night. Better anything than to fall into Dangler's hands?  But then she never would fall into Dangler's power. There was always an alternative. Yes, it was quite as bad as that. Death at her own hands was preferable. Bocked, outwitted, the plans of the criminal coterie, of which Dangler appeared to be the head, rendered again and again abortive, and believing it all due to the White Mall, all of Dangler'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 inner circle, it meant 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 day before, against thinking about it, but premonition had crept upon her stronger and stronger, until to-night, now it seemed, 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 footsteps 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 now she knelt on the narrow landing, and felt with her fingers along the floor the aperture, where, imitating the custom of Gypsy Nan, she had left her key when she went out, and 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, as it had 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 climactic effect. The pendulum had swung full the other way. At 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 in the darkness, showed on the garret stairs. Who's there? 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, dangler. She fumbled for the keyhole, found it, and inserted the key. Well, how's Bertha tonight? There seemed to be a strange acceleration 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 dangler? 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, she 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 crippled lately at every turn by that she-double, the White Mall, 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 that. Things will 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 Gypsy 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 Dangler, for she remembered only too well how once before it had nearly tripped her up. But you didn't come here to apologize.  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 to the full what Dangler, jumping at conclusions, had assumed was a grouch at his neglect. Also her mind worked quickly. Her clothes were no longer in the secret hiding-place here in the garret. They were out there in the old shed in the lane. It was perfectly safe, then, to let Dangler 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?  All right. Return Dangler, a sullenness creeping into his voice. Have it your own way, Bertha. I haven't got time to night to coach 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 Dangler's hands. The flames spurted up through the darkness. Dangler made his way over to the rickety wash-stand, found the candle that was stuck in the neck of the gin-bottle, and lighted it. He 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 would give far too much light here in the garret to be safe—for her. She watched him, with her hand in the pocket of the 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 Schluckers' 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 thrust the candle and his 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 the wall. And then Dangler 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 wash-stand, and began to distribute the money through his various pockets. He was smiling with curious complacency.  Maybe somebody tipped her off to keep away. Maybe she's 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 and pay a call of gratitude to you. I don't suppose there's anything to add to that. Abertha? No report to make? No, said Rhodogray shortly. I haven't any report to make. Well, no matter, said Dangler. 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 Rhodogray? What are you going to do? Get her, said Dangler. The man's passion flamed up suddenly. He spoke through his clothes' teeth. Get her. I made her a little promise, and I'm going to keep it. Understand? You've been saying that for quite a long time, retorted Rhodogray coolly. But the getting has been all the other way so far. How are you going to get her?  In the flickering candlelight, 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. Rhodogray, 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 proposed putting into operation? She didn't 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. For 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 a fraction of a second, and then she remembered the paper that she had thrust into the bodice of her dress. She hadn't 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 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 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 wash-stand, 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 a stub of a pencil, she remembered, in the wash-stand drawer, and armed with this, and with 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 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, she 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 now she 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 zeroes indicated the number of the letter involved. Also there being but twenty-six letters in the alphabet, it was obvious that the additions of three nines, which was twenty-seven, could not represent any letter, and the combination of nine, nine, nine, was therefore used to precede any arbitrary groups of numbers which were employed to express phrases and sentences, such as the seven, three, nine, that she had found scrawled on the piece of paper around the key on the first night she had come here, and which, had it been embodied in a message and not preceded by the nine, nine, nine, 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 a piece of wrapping paper. Three, two, one, zero, three, three, two, zero, three, two, zero, two, three, zero, six, six, six, three, one, zero, three, three, three, zero, one, one, one, one, zero, two, two, one, zero, four, four, four, two, zero, two, one, zero, one, one, one, one, two, zero, five, two, one, one, zero, seven, one, six. Adding the numerals between the zeros and giving to each its corresponding letter, she set down the result. Six, zero, one, zero, one, one, zero, five, zero, five, zero, two, two, zero, nine, zero, four, zero, five, zero, one, four, zero, three, zero, five, zero, nine, zero, one, four. F, A, K, E, E, V, I, D, E, N, C, E, N, 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 Dangler 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 Mall, 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, rapacecious, 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 the crime octopus, of which Dangler seemed to be the head, reached far into the 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 witnessed 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 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 Cronor, 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 tumbled-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 Scheister lawyer, had acted for them all collectively, and, one in 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 desolate, 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, Dangler and his 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 horde of fifty thousand dollars, and Dangler and the gang had set out to find that horde 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 ring money out of Viner for Perlmer, they were more than enough to enable Dangler, employed as Dangler would employ them, to ring from Nicky Viner the secret of where the old miser hit his wealth, for Viner would understand that Dangler 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, Dangler could go the limit and get all. As it stood then, Dangler and the gang had not found out the location of that horde, but they had found out where Perlmer kept his spuro as papers, stuffed at the back of a 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 on the east side, and extort from the old miser the neat little sum that Dangler 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 set staring at a cipher message that she was satisfied with 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 reprehensible and even more cowardly than it would be to set 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 means seemed to present no unsurmountable 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 Mall practically at will and without fear of detection. And further, the facilities for making that change, the change from Gypsy Nan to the White Mall, were now already at hand in the little old shed behind the lane. 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 Dangler, yes, and hereafter Pearlmer, too, should not pray like vultures on the man, and rob him what was rightfully his. If, therefore, she secured those papers from Pearlmer's desk, it automatically put an end to Dangler's scheme to-night, and if later, she saw to it that those papers came into Viner's possession, that too automatically ended Pearlmer'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 Dangler to rob Pearlmer's office would go there much before eleven anyway, since they would naturally allow for the possibility that Pearlmer might stay later in his office than usual, a contingency that doubtlessly accounted for midnight being set for the hour at which they proposed to lay old Nicky Viner by his 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 without interruption. She might even, perhaps, reach the office before Pearlmer 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 that fact that the office would be locked to dismay her. In the secret hiding-place here in the Garrett, 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 a 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. End of Chapter 8