第63章 XV IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER(1)

The man with the withered hand had passed through into the other room. She heard them talking together, as she followed. She forced herself to walk with as nearly a leisurely defiant air as she could. The last time she had been with Danglar - as Gypsy Nan - she had, in self-protection, forbidding intimacy, played up what he called her "grouch" at his neglect of her.

She paused in the doorway. Halfway across the room, at the table, Danglar's gaunt, swarthy face showed under the rays of a shaded oil lamp. Behind her spectacles, she met his small, black ferret eyes steadily.

"Hello, Bertha!" he called out cheerily. "How's the old girl to-night?" He rose from his seat to come toward her. "And how's the cold?"

Rhoda Gray scowled at him.

"Worse!" she said curtly-and hoarsely. "And a lot you care! I could have died in that hole, for all you knew! She pushed him irritably away, as he came near her. "Yes, that's what I said!

And you needn't start any cooing game now! Get down to cases!"

She jerked her hand toward the twisted figure that had slouched into a chair beside the table. "He says you've got it doped out to pull something that will let me out of this Gypsy Nan stunt.

Another bubble, I suppose!" She shrugged her shoulders, glanced around her, and, locating a chair - not too near the table - seated herself indifferently. "I'm getting sick of bubbles!" she announced insolently. "What's this one?"

He stood there for a moment biting at his lips, hesitant between anger and tolerant amusement; and then, the latter evidently gaining the ascendency, he too shrugged his shoulders, and with a laugh returned to his chair.

"You're a rare one, Bertha!" he said coolly. "I thought you'd be wild with delight. I guess you're sick, all right - because usually you're pretty sensible. I've tried to tell you that it wasn't my fault I couldn't go near you, and that I had to keep away from -"

"What's the use of going over all that again?" she interrupted tartly. "I guess I -"

"Oh, all right!" said Danglar hurriedly. "Don't start a row! After to-night I've an idea you'll be sweet enough to your husband, and I'm willing to wait. Matty maybe hasn't told you the whole of it."

Matty! So that was the deformed creature's name. She glanced at him. He was grinning broadly. A family squabble seemed to afford him amusement. Her eyes shifted and made a circuit of the room. It was poverty-stricken in appearance, bare-floored, with the scantiest and cheapest of furnishings, its one window tightly shuttered.

"Maybe not," she said carelessly.

"Well, then, listen, Bertha!" Danglar's voice was lowered earnestly.

"We've uncovered the Nabob's stuff! Do you get me? Every last one of the sparklers!"

Rhoda Gray's eyes went back to the deformed creature at Danglar's side, as the man laughed out abruptly.

"Yes," grinned Matty Danglar, "and they weren't in the empty money-belt that you beat it with like a scared cat after croaking Deemer!"

How queer and dim the light seemed to go suddenly - or was it a blur before her own eyes? She said nothing. Her mind seemed to be groping its way out of darkness toward some faint gleam of light showing in the far distance. She heard Danglar order his brother savagely to hold his tongue. That was curious, too, because she was grateful for the man's gibe. Gypsy Nan, in her proper person, had murdered a man named Deemer in an effort to secure - Danglar's voice came again:

"Well, to-night we'll get that stuff, all of it - it's worth a cool half million; and to-night we'll get Mr. House-Detective Cloran for keeps - bump him off. That cleans everything up. How does that strike you, Bertha?"

Rhoda Gray's hands under her shawl locked tightly together. Her premonition had not betrayed her. She was face to face to-night with the beginning of the end.

"It sounds fine!" she said derisively.

Danglar's eyes narrowed for an instant; and then he laughed.

"You're a rare one, Bertha!" he ejaculated again. "You don't seem to put much stock in your husband lately."

"Why should I?" she inquired imperturbably. "Things have been breaking fine, haven't they? - only not for us!" She cleared her throat as though it were an effort to talk. "I'm not going crazy with joy till I've been shown."

Danglar leaned suddenly over the table.

"Well, come and look at the cards, then," he said impressively.

"Pull your chair up to the table, and I'll tell you."

Rhoda Gray tilted her chair, instead, nonchalantly back against the wall - it was quite light enough where she was!

"I can hear you from here," she said coolly. "I'm not deaf, and I guess Matty's suite is safe enough so that you won't have to whisper all the time!"

The deformed creature at the table chortled again.

Danglar scowled.

"Damn you, Bertha!" he flung out savagely. "I could wring that neck of yours sometimes, and -"

"I know you could, Pierre," she interposed sweetly. "That's what I like about you - you're so considerate of me! But suppose you get down to cases. What's the story about those sparklers? And what's the game that's going to let me shed this Gypsy Nan stuff for keeps?"

"I'll tell her, Pierre," grinned the deformed one. "It'll keep you two from spitting at one another; and neither of you have got all night to stick around here." He swung his withered hand suddenly across the table, and as suddenly all facetiousness was gone both from his voice and manner. "Say, you listen hard, Bertha! What Pierre's telling you is straight. You and him can kiss and make up to-morrow or the next day, or whenever you damned please; but to-night there ain't any more time for scrapping. Now, listen!