第91章 XXI THE RECKONING(3)

"Great God!" 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 assistant 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 God 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 God for you! Thank God 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 snatched 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.