The White Moll Part 7

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

"Youse must have good ears!" she scoffed.

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

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

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

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

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

"The fact that I can a.s.sure you that, whoever else it may be, the person outside there cannot be Rough Rorke, is simply a proof that, if I had the opportunity, I could be of real a.s.sistance to the White Moll,"

he said imperturbably. "Well"--a grim little smile flickered suddenly across his lips--"do you hear any one now?"

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

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

"If"--he smiled significantly--"if, by any good fortune, you see the White Moll again, please give her this and let her decide for herself.

It is a telephone number. She can always reach me there by asking for--the Adventurer." He was still extending the piece of paper.

"Quick!" he whispered, as the door k.n.o.b rattled.

V. A SECOND VISITOR

Mechanically Rhoda Gray thrust the paper into the pocket of her skirt.

The door swung open. A tall man, well dressed, as far as could be seen in the uncertain light, a slouch hat pulled far down over his eyes, stood on the threshold, surveying the interior of the garret.

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

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

"h.e.l.lo!" he flung out harshly. "Who's the dude, Nan?"

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

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

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

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

The Adventurer laughed softly.

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

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

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

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

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

"d.a.m.n it!" he shouted. "Where are the matches? Where's the lamp? This cursed candle's put enough to the bad already! Do you hear? Where's the lamp?"

"It's over dere on de floor, bust to pieces," mumbled Rhoda Gray.

"Youse'll find the matches on de washstand, an--"

"What's the idea?" There was a sudden, steel-like note dominating the angry tones. "What are you handing me that hog-wash language for? Eh?

It's d.a.m.ned queer! There's been d.a.m.ned queer doings around here ever since last night! See? What's the idea?"

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

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

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

Rhoda Gray bridled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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