The White Moll Part 32

"You," Rhoda Gray whispered, "you--are not a thief!" Brain and soul seemed on fire. It seemed as though she had striven to voice those words a dozen times since he had been speaking, but that she had been afraid--afraid that this was not true, this great, wonderful thing, that it could not be true. "You--you are not a--a thief!"

The Adventurer's face lost its immobility. He half rose from his chair, staring at her in a startled way--but it was Danglar now who spoke.

"It's a lie!" he screamed out. "It's a lie!" The man's reason appeared to be almost unhinged; a mad terror seemed to possess him. "It's all a lie! I never heard of this rajah bunk before in my life! I never heard of Deemer, or any jewels before. You lie! I tell you, you lie! You can't prove it; you can't--"

"But I can," said Rhoda Gray in a low voice. The shawl fell from her shoulders; from her blouse she took the package of jewels and held them out to the Adventurer. "Here are the stones. I got them from where you had put them in old Luertz's room. I was hidden there all the time last night." She was removing her spectacles and her wig of tangled gray hair as she spoke, and now she turned her face full upon Danglar. "I heard you discuss Deemer's murder with your brother last night, and plan to get rid of Cloran, who you thought was the only existing witness you need fear, and--"

"Great G.o.d!" The Adventurer cried out. "You--Rhoda! The White Moll! I--I don't understand, though I can see you are not the woman who originally masqueraded as Gypsy Nan, for I knew her, as I said, by sight."

He was on his feet now, his face aflame with a great light. He took a step toward her.

"Wait!" she said hurriedly. She glanced at Danglar. The man's face was blanched, his body seemed to have shriveled up, and there was a light in his eyes as they held upon her that was near to the borderland of insanity. "That night at Skarbolov's!" she said, and tried to hold her voice in control. "Gypsy Nan, this man's wife, died that night in the hospital. I had found her here sick, and I had promised not to divulge her secret. I helped her get to the hospital. She was dying; she was penitent in a way; she wanted to prevent a crime that she said was to be perpetrated that night, but she would not inform on her accomplices. She begged me to forestall them, and return the money anonymously the next day. That was the choice I had--either to allow the crime to be carried out, or else swear to act alone in return for the information that would enable me to keep the money away from the thieves without bringing the police into it. I--I was caught. You--you saved me from Rough Rorke, but he followed me. I put on Gypsy Nan's clothes, and managed to outwit him. I had had no opportunity to return the money, which would have been proof of my innocence; the only way I could prove it, then, was to try and find the authors of the crime myself. I--I have lived since then as Gypsy Nan, fighting this hideous gang of Danglar's here to try and save myself, and--and to-night I thought I could see my way clear. I--I knew enough at last about this man to make him give me a written statement that it was a pre-arranged plan to rob Skarbolov. That would substantiate my story. And"--she looked again at Danglar; the man was still crouched there, eying her with that same mad light in his eyes--"and he must be made to--to do it now for--"

"But why didn't you ask me?" cried the Adventurer. "You knew me as the Pug, and therefore must have believed that I, too, know all about it."

"Yes," she said, and turned her head away to hide the color she felt was mounting to her cheeks. "I--I thought of that. But I thought you were a thief, and--and your testimony wouldn't have been much good unless, with it, I could have handed you, too, over to the police, as I intended to do with Danglar; and--and--I--I couldn't do that, and--Oh, don't you see?" she ended desperately.

"Rhoda! Rhoda!" There was a glad, buoyant note in the Adventurer's voice. "Yes, I see! Well, I can prove it for you now without any of those fears on my behalf to worry you! I went to Skarbolov's myself, knowing their plans, to do exactly what you did. I did not know you then, and, as Rough Rorke, who was there because, as I heard later, his suspicions had been aroused through seeing some of the gang lurking around the back door in the lane the night before, had taken the actual money from you, I contrived to let you get away, because I was afraid that you were some new factor in the game, some member of the gang that I did not know about, and that I must watch, too! Don't you understand?

The jewels were still missing. I had not got the general warning that was sent out to the gang that night to lay low, for at the last moment it seems that Danglar here found out that Rough Rorke had suspicions about Skarbolov's place." He came close to her--and with the muzzle of his revolver he pushed Danglar's huddled figure back a little further against the washstand. "Rhoda--you are clear. The a.s.sistant district attorney who had your case is the one I spoke of a few minutes ago. That night at Hayden-Bond's, though I did not understand fully, I knew that you were the bravest, truest little woman into whom G.o.d had ever breathed the breath of life. I told him the next day there was some mistake, something strange behind it all. I told him what happened at Hayden-Bond's. He agreed with me. You have never been indicted. Your case has never come before the grand jury. And it never will now! Rhoda!

Rhoda! Thank G.o.d for you! Thank G.o.d it has all come out right, and--"

A peal of laughter, mad, insane, horrible in its perverted mirth, rang through the garret. Danglar's hands were creeping queerly up to his temples. And then, oblivious evidently in his frenzy of the revolver in the Adventurer's hand, and his eye catching the weapons that lay upon the cot, he made a sudden dash in that direction--and Rhoda Gray, divining his intention, sprang for the cot, too, at the same time. But Danglar never reached his objective. As Rhoda Gray caught up the weapons and thrust them into her pocket, she heard Danglar's furious snarl, and whirling around, she saw the two men locked and struggling in each other's embrace.

The Adventurer's voice reached her, quick, imperative:

"Show the candle at the window, Rhoda! The Sparrow is waiting for it in the yard below. Then open the door for them."

A sudden terror and fear seized her. The Adventurer was not fit, after what he had been through to-night to cope with Danglar. He had been limping badly even a few minutes ago. It seemed to her, as she rushed across the garret and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the candle, that Danglar was getting the best of it even now. And the Adventurer could have shot him down, and been warranted in doing it! She reached the window, waved the candle frantically several times across the pane, then setting the candle down on the window ledge, she ran for the door.

She looked back again, as she turned the key in the lock. With a crash, pitching over the chair, both men went to the floor--and the Adventurer was underneath. She cried out in alarm, and wrenched the door open--and stood for an instant there on the threshold in a startled way.

They couldn't be coming already! The Sparrow hadn't had time even to get out of the yard. But there were footsteps in the hall below, many of them. She stepped out on the landing; it was too dark to see, but...

A sudden yell as she showed even in the faint light of the open garret door, the quicker rush of feet, reached her from below.

"The White Moll! That's her! The White Moll!" She flung herself flat down, wrenching both the automatic and the revolver from her pocket. She understood now! That was Pinkie Bonn's voice. It was the gang arriving to divide up the spoils, not the Sparrow and the police. Her mind was racing now with lightning speed. If they got her, they would get the Adventurer in there, too, before the police could intervene. She must hold this little landing where she lay now, hold those short, ladder-like steps that the oncoming footsteps from below there had almost reached.

She fired once--twice--again; but high, over their heads, to check the rush.

Yells answered her. A vicious tongue-flame from a revolver, another and another, leaped out at her from the black below; the spat, spat of bullets sounded from behind her as they struck the walls.

Again she fired. They were at least more cautious now in their rush--no one seemed anxious to be first upon the stairs. She cast a wild glance through the open door into the garret at her side. The two forms in there, on their feet again, were spinning around and around with the strange, lurching gyrations of automatons--and then she saw the Adventurer whip a terrific blow to Danglar's face--and Danglar fall and lie still--and the Adventurer come leaping toward her.

But faces were showing now above the level of the floor, and there was suddenly an increased uproar from further back in the rear until it seemed that pandemonium itself were loosed.

"It's the police! The police behind us!" she heard Shluker's voice shriek out.

She jumped to her feet. Two of the gang had reached the landing and were smashing at the Adventurer. There seemed to be a swirling mob in riot there below. The Adventurer was fighting like a madman. It was hand to hand now.

"Quick! Quick!" she cried to the Adventurer. "Jump back through the door."

"Oh, no, you don't!" It was Skeeny--she could see the man's brutal face now. "Oh, no, you don't, you she-devil!" he shouted, and, over-reaching the Adventurer's guard, struck at her furiously with his clubbed revolver.

It struck her a glancing blow on the head, and she reeled and staggered, but recovered herself. And now it seemed as though it were another battle that she fought--and one more desperate; a battle to fight back a horrible giddiness from overpowering her, and with which her brain was swimming, to fight it back for just a second, the fraction of a second that was needed until--until--"Jump!" she cried again, and staggered over the threshold, and, as the Adventurer leaped backward beside her, she slammed the door, and locked it--and slid limply to the floor.

When she regained consciousness she was lying on the cot. It seemed very still, very quiet in the garret. She opened her eyes. It--it must be all right, for that was the Sparrow standing there watching her, and shifting nervously from foot to foot, wasn't it? He couldn't be there, otherwise. She held out her hand.

"Marty," she said, and smiled with trembling lips, "we--we owe you a great deal."

The Sparrow gulped.

"Gee, you're all right again! They said it wasn't nothin', but you had me scared worse'n down at the iron plant when I had to do the rough act with that gent friend of yours to stop him from crawlin' after you and fightin' it out, and queerin' the whole works. You don't owe me nothin', Miss Gray; and, besides, I'm gettin' a lot more than is comm' to me, 'cause that same gent friend of yours there says I'm goin' to horn in on the rewards, and I guess that's goin' some, for they got the whole outfit from Danglar down, and the stuff up in the ceiling there, too."

She turned her head. The Adventurer was coming toward the cot.

"Better?" he called cheerily.

"Yes," she said. "Quite! Only I--I'd like to get away from here, from this--this horrible place at once, and back to--to my flat if they'll let me. Are--are they all gone?"

The Adventurer's gray eyes lighted with a whimsical smile.

"Nearly all!" he said softly. "And--er--Sparrow, suppose you go and find a taxi!"

"Me? Sure! Of course! Sure!" said the Sparrow hurriedly, and retreated through the door.

She felt the blood flood her face, and she tried to avert it.

He bent his head close to hers.

"Rhoda," his voice was low, pa.s.sionate, "I--"

"Wait!" she said. "Your friend--the a.s.sistant district attorney--did he come?"

"Yes," said the Adventurer. "But I shooed them all out, as soon as we found you were not seriously hurt. I thought you had had enough excitement for one night. He wants to see you in the morning."

"To see me"--she rose up anxiously on her elbow--"in the morning?"

He was smiling at her. His hands reached out and took her face between them, and made her look at him.

"Rhoda," he said gently, "I knew to-night in the iron plant that you cared. I told him so. What he wants to see you for is to tell you that he thinks I am the luckiest man in all the world. You are clear, dear.

Even Rough Rorke is singing your praises; he says you are the only woman who ever put one over on him."

She did not answer for a moment; and then with a little sob of glad surrender she buried her face on his shoulder.

"It--it is very wonderful," she said brokenly, "for--for even we, you and I, each thought the other a--a thief."

"And so we were, thank G.o.d!" he whispered--and lifted her head until now his lips met hers. "We were both thieves, Rhoda, weren't we? And, please G.o.d, we will be all our lives--for we have stolen each other's heart."