"Don't you talk to me like that, Pierre Danglar!" she shrilled. "I lie, do I? Well, I'll prove to you I don't! You said you were going to have supper with Cloran at about eleven o'clock, and perhaps I was a few minutes after that, but maybe you think it's easy to get all this Gypsy Nan stuff off me face and all, and rig up in my own clothes that I haven't seen for so long it's a wonder they hold together at all. I lie, do I? Well, just as I got to the Silver Sphinx, I saw a woman breaking her neck to get down the steps with you after her. She jumped into the automobile it was doped out I was to take, and you jumped into the other one, and both beat it down the street. I thought you'd gone crazy. I was afraid that Cloran would come out and recognize me, so I turned and ran, too.
The safest thing I could do was to get back into the Gypsy Nan game again, and that's what I did. And I've been lying low ever since, waiting to get word from some of you, and not a soul came near me.
You're a nice lot, you are! And now you come sneaking here and call me a liar! How'd you get to this shed, anyway?"
Danglar pushed his hand in a heavy, confused way across his eyes.
"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?"
