Part 45

“My God!” he said heavily. “So that's it, is it?” His voice became suddenly conciliating in its tones. “Look here, Bertha, old girl, don't get sore. I didn't understand, see? And there was a whole lot that looked queer. We even lost the jewels at old Luertz's last night. Do you know who that woman was? It was the White Moll! She led us a chase all over Long Island, and--”

“The White Moll!” ejaculated Rhoda Gray. And then her laugh, short and jeering, rang out. The tables were turned. She had him on the defensive now. “You needn't tell me I She got away again, of course! Why don't you hire a detective to help you? You make me weary! So, it was the White Moll, was it? Well, I'm listening--only I'd like to know first how you got here to this shed.”

“There's nothing in that!” he answered impatiently. “There's something more important to talk about. I was coming over to the garret, and just as I reached the corner I saw you go into the lane. I followed you; that's all there is to that.”

“Oh!” she sniffed. She stared at him for a moment. There was something in which there was the uttermost of irony now, it seemed, in this meeting between them. Last night she had striven to meet him alone, and she had meant to devote to-night to the same purpose; and she was here with him now, and in a place than which, in her wildest hopes, she could have imagined one no better suited to the reckoning she would have demanded and forced. And she was helpless, powerless to make use of it. She was unarmed. Her revolver was gone. Without that to protect her, at an intimation that she was the White Moll she would never leave the shed alive. The spot would be quite as ideal under those circumstances for him, as it would have been under other circumstances for her. She shrugged her shoulders. Danglar's continued silence evidently invited further comment on her part. “Oh!” she sniffed again. “And I suppose, then, that you have been chasing the White Moll ever since last night at eleven, and that's why you didn't get around sooner to allay my fears, even though you knew I must be half mad with anxiety at the way things broke last night. She'll have us down and out for keeps if you haven't got brains enough to beat her. How much longer is this thing going on?”

Danglar's little black eyes narrowed. She caught a sudden glint of triumph in them. It was Danglar now who laughed.

“Not much longer!” His voice was arrogant with malicious satisfaction. “The luck had to turn, hadn't it? Well, it's turned! I've got the White Moll at last!”

She felt the color leave her face. It seemed as though something had closed with an icy clutch upon her heart. She had heard aright, hadn't she?--that he had said he had got the White Moll at last. And there was no mistaking the mans s sinister delight in making that announcement. Had she been premature, terribly premature, in assuring herself that her identity was still safe as far as he was concerned? Did it mean that, after all, he had been playing at cat-and-mouse with her, as she had at first feared?

“You--you've got the White Moll?” She forced the words from her lips, striving to keep her voice steady and in control, and to infuse into it an ironical incredulity.

“Sure!” he said complacently. “The showdown comes to-night. In another hour or so we'll have her where we want her, and--”

“Oh!” She laughed almost hysterically in relief. “I thought so! You haven't got her yet. You're only going to get her--in another hour or so! You make me tired! It's always in 'another hour or so' with you--and it never comes off!”

Danglar scowled at her under the taunt.

“It'll come off this time!” he snarled in savage menace. “You hold that tongue of yours! Yes, it'll come off! And when it does”--a sweep of fury sent the red into his working face--“I'll keep the promise I made her once--that she'd wish she had never been born! D'ye hear, Bertha?”

“I hear,” she said indifferently. “But would you mind telling me how you are going to do it? I might believe you then--perhaps!”

“Damn you, Bertha!” he exploded. “Sometimes I'd like to wring that pretty neck of yours; and sometimes!”--he moved suddenly toward her--“I would sell my soul for you, and--”

She retreated from him coolly.

“Never mind about that! This isn't a love scene!” she purred caustically. “And as for the other, save it for the White Moll. What makes you think you've got her at last?”

“I don't think--I know.” He stood gnawing at his lips, eying her uncertainly, half angrily, half hungrily. And then he shrugged his shoulders. “Listen!” he said. “I've got some one else, too! And I know now where the leak that's queered every one of our games and put the White Moll wise to every one of our plans beforehand has come from. I guess you'll believe me now, won't you? We've got that dude pal of hers fastened up tighter than the night he fastened me with his cursed handcuffs! Do you know who that same dude pal is?” He laughed in an ugly, immoderate way. “You don't, of course, so I'll tell you. It's the Pug!” Rhoda Gray did not answer. It was growing dark here in the shed now--perhaps that was why the man's form blended suddenly into the doorway and wall, and blurred before her. She tried to think, but there seemed to have fallen upon her a numbed and agonized stupefaction. There was no confusing this issue. Danglar had found out that the Adventurer was the Pug. And it meant--oh, what did it mean? They would kill him. Of course, they would kill him! The Adventurer, discovered, would be safer at the mercy of a pack of starved pumas, and...

“I thought that would hold you!” said Danglar with brutal serenity. “That's why I didn't get around till now. I didn't get back from that chase until daylight--the she-fiend stole our car--and then I went to bed to get a little sleep. About three o'clock this afternoon Pinkie Bonn woke me up. He was half batty with excitement. He said he was over in the tenement in the Pug's room. The Pug wasn't in, and Pinkie was waiting for him, and then all of a sudden he heard a woman screaming like mad from somewhere. He went to the door and looked out, and saw a man dash out of a room across the hall, and burst in the door of the next room. There was a woman in there with her clothes on fire. She'd upset a coal-oil stove, or something. The man Pinkie had seen beats the fire out, and everybody in the tenement begins to collect around the door. And then Pinkie goes pop-eyed. The man's face was the face of the White Moll's dude pal--but he had on the Pug's clothes. Pinkie's a wise guy. He slips away to me without getting himself in the limelight or spilling any beans. And I didn't ask him if he'd been punching the needle again overtime, either. It fitted like a glove with what happened at old Luertz's last night. You don't know about that. Pinkie and this double-crossing snitch went there--and only found a note from the White Moll. He'd tipped her off before, of course, and the note made a nice little play so's he'd be safe himself with us. Well, that's about all. We had to get him--where we wanted him--and we got him. We waited until he showed up again as the Pug, and then we put over a frame-up deal on him that got him to go over to that old iron plant in Harlem, you know, behind Jake Malley's saloon, where we had it fixed to hand Cloran his last night--and the Pug's there now. He's nicely gagged, and tied, and quite safe. The plant's been shut down for the last two months, and there's only the watchman there, and he's 'squared.' We gave the Pug two hours of solitary confinement to think it over and come across. We just asked him for the White Moll's address, so's we could get her and the sparklers she swiped at Old Luertz's place last night.”

Still Rhoda Gray did not speak for a moment. She seemed to be held in thrall by both terror and a sickening dismay. It did not seem real, her surroundings here, this man, and the voice that was gloatingly pronouncing the death sentence upon the man who had come unbidden into her life, and into her heart, the man she loved. Yes, she understood! Danglar's words had been plain enough. The Adventurer had been trapped--not through Danglar's cunning, or lack of cunning on the Adventurer's own part, but through force of circumstances that had caused him to fling all thought of self-consideration to the winds in an effort to save another's life. Her hands, hidden in the folds of her skirt, clenched until they hurt. And it was another self, it seemed, subconsciously enacting the role of Gypsy Nan, alias Danglar's wife, who spoke at last.

“You are a fool! You are all fools!” she cried tempestuously. “What do you expect to gain by that? Do you imagine you can make the Pug come across with any information by a threat to kill him if he doesn't? You tried that once. You had him cold, or at least you thought you had, and so did he, that night in old Nicky Viner's room, and he laughed at you even when he expected you to fire the next second. He's not likely to have changed any since then, is he?”

“No,” said Danglar, with a vicious chuckle; “and that's why I'm not trying the same game twice. That's why we've got him over in the old iron plant now.”

There was something she did not like in Danglar's voice, something of ominous assurance, something that startled her.

“What do you mean?” she demanded sharply.

“It's a lonely place,” said Danglar complacently. “There's no one around but the watchman, and he's an old friend of Shluker's; and it's so roomy over there that no one could expect him to be everywhere at once. See? That let's him out. He's been well greased, and he won't know anything. Don't you worry, old girl! That's what I came here for--to tell you that everything is all right, after all. The Pug will talk. Maybe he wouldn't if he just had his choice between that and the quick, painless end that a bullet would bring; but there are some things that a man can't stand. Get me? We'll try a few of those on the Pug, and, believe me, before we're through, there won't be any secrets wrapped up in his bosom.”

Rhoda Gray stood motionless. Thank God it had grown dark--dark enough to hide the whiteness that she knew had crept over her face, and the horror that had crept into her eyes. “You mean”--her voice was very low--“you mean you're going to torture him into talking?”

“Sure!” said Danglar. “What do you think!”

“And after that?”

“We bump him off, of course,” said Danglar callously. “He knows all about us, don't he? And I guess we'll square up on what's coming to him! He's put the crimp into us for the last time!” Danglar's voice pitched suddenly hoarse in fury. “That's a hell of a question to ask! What do you think we'd do with a yellow cur that's double-crossed us like that?”