Was the man lying to her? Was he in any degree suspicious? Why should he be? He had given not the slightest sign that her uncouth language was either unexpected or unnecessary. Perhaps to Shluker, and perhaps to all the rest of the gang - except Danglar! - Gypsy Nan was accepted at face value as just Gypsy Nan; and, if that were so, the idea of playing up a natural wifely anxiety on Danglar's behalf could not be used unless Shluker gave her a lead in that direction. But, all that apart, she was getting nowhere. She bit her lips in disappointment. She had counted a great deal on this Shluker here, and Shluker was not proving the fount of information, far from it, that she had hoped he would.
She tried again-even more peremptorily than before.
"Aw, open up!" she snapped. "Wot's de use bein' a clam! Youse heard me, didn't youse? Where is he?"
Shluker leaned abruptly forward, and looked at her in a suddenly perturbed way.
"is there anything wrong?" he asked in a tense, lowered voice.
"What makes you so anxious to know?"
Rhoda Gray laughed shortly.
"Nothin'!" she answered coolly. "I told youse once, didn't I? I got a scare readin' dem papers - an' I ain't over it yet. Dat's wot I want to know for, an' youse seem afraid to open up!"
Shluker sank back again in his chair with an air of relief.
"Oh!" he ejaculated. "Well, that's all right, then. You were beginning to give me a scare, too. I ain't playin' the clam, and I dunno where he is; but I can tell you there's nothing to worry you any more about the rest of it. He was after the White Moll last night, and it didn't come off. They pulled one on him instead, and fastened him to the fire escape the way the papers said. Skeeny and the Cricket, who were in on the play with him, didn't have time to get him loose before the bulls got there. So Danglar told them to beat it, and he handed the cops the story that was in the papers.
He got away with it, all right, and they let go him to-day; but he phoned a little while ago that they were still stickin' around kind of close to him, and that I was to pass the word that the lid was to go down tight for the next few days, and -"
Shluker stopped abruptly as the telephone rang, and reached for the instrument.
Rhoda Gray fumbled unnecessarily with her shawl, as the other answered the call. Failure! A curious bitterness came to her. Her plan then, for to-night it least, was a failure. Shluker did not know where Danglar was. She was quite convinced of that. Shluker was - She glanced suddenly at the wizened little old man. From an ordinary tone, Shluker' s voice had risen sharply in protest about something. She listened now:
No, no; it does not matter what it is!
What?...No! I tell you, no! Nothing! Not to-night! Those are the orders....No, I don't know! Nan is here now....Eh?....You'll pay for it if you do!" Shluker was snarling threateningly now.
"What?....Well, then, wait! I'll come over....No, you can bet I won't be long! You wait! Understand?"
He banged the receiver on the hook, and got up from his chair hurriedly.
"Fools!" he muttered savagely. "No, I won't be long gettin' there!"
He grabbed Rhoda Gray's arm. "Yes, and you come, too! You will help me put a little sense into their heads, if it is possible - eh?
The fools!"
The man was violently excited. He half pulled Rhoda Gray down the length of the shop to the front door. Puzzled, bewildered, a little uneasy, she watched him lock the door, and then followed him across the courtyard, while he continued to mutter constantly to himself.
"Wot's de matter?" she asked him twice.
But it was not until they had reached the street, and Shluker was hurrying along as fast as he could walk, that he answered her.
"It's the Pug and Pinkie Bonn!" he jerked out angrily. "They're in the Pug's room. Pinkie went back there after telephonin'.
They've nosed out something they want to put through. The fools!
And after last night nearly havin' finished everything! I told 'em - you heard me - that everybody's to keep under cover now. But they think they've got a soft thing, and they say they're goin' to it. I've got to put a crimp in it, and you've got to help me.
Y'understand, Nan?"
"Yes," she said mechanically.
Her mind was working swiftly. The night, after all, perhaps, was not to be so much of a failure! To get into intimate touch with all the members of the clique was equally one of her objects, and, failing Danglar himself to-night, here was an "open sesame" to the re-treat of two of the others. She would never have a better chance, or one in which risk and danger, under the chaperonage, as it were, of Shluker here, were, if not entirely eliminated, at least reduced to an apparently negligible minimum. Yes; she would go. To refuse was to turn her back on her own proposed line of action, and on the decision which she had made herself.
