Produced by Polly Stratton
THE WHITE MOLL
By Frank Packard
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. NIGHT IN THE UNDERWORLD
II. SEVEN-THREE-NINE
III. ALIAS GYPSY NAN
IV. THE ADVENTURER
V. A SECOND VISITOR
VI. THE RENDEZVOUS
VII. FELLOW THIEVES
VIII. THE CODE MESSAGE
IX. ROOM NUMBER ELEVEN
X. ON THE BRINK
XI. SOME OF THE LESSER BREED
XII. CROOKS vs. CROOKS
XIII. THE DOOR ACROSS THE HALL
XIV. THE LAME MAN
XV. IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER
XVI. THE SECRET PANEL
XVII. THE SILVER SPHINX
XVIII. THE OLD SHED
XIX. BREAD UPON THE WATERS
XX. A LONE HAND
XXI. THE RECKONING
I. NIGHT IN THE UNDERWORLD
It was like some shadowy pantomime: The dark mouth of an alleyway throwninto murky relief by the rays of a distant street lamp...the swift,forward leap of a skulking figure...a girl's form swaying and strugglingin the man's embrace. Then, a pantomime no longer, there came a halfthreatening, half triumphant oath; and then the girl's voice, quiet,strangely contained, almost imperious:
"Now, give me back that purse, please. Instantly!" The man, alreadyretreating into the alleyway, paused to fling back a jeering laugh.
"Say, youse've got yer nerve, ain't youse!"
The girl turned her head so that the rays of the street lamp, faint asthey were, fell full upon her, disclosing a sweet, oval face, out ofwhich the dark eyes gazed steadily at the man.
And suddenly the man leaned forward, staring for an instant, and thenhis hand went awkwardly to touch his cap.
"De White Moll!" he mumbled deferentially. He pulled the peak of hiscap down over his eyes in a sort of shame-faced way, as though to avoidrecognition, and, stepping nearer, returned the purse.
"'Scuse me, miss," he said uneasily. "I didn't know it was youse--honestto Gawd, I didn't! 'Scuse me, miss. Good-night!"
For a moment the girl stood there motionless, looking down the alleywayafter the retreating figure. From somewhere in the distance came therumble of an elevated train. It drowned out the pound of the man'sspeeding footsteps; it died away itself--and now there was no othersound. A pucker, strangely wistful, curiously perturbed, came andfurrowed her forehead into little wrinkles, and then she turned andwalked slowly on along the deserted street.
The White Moll! She shook her head a little. The attack had not unnervedher. Why should it? It was simply that the man had not recognized herat first in the darkness. The White Moll here at night in one of theloneliest, as well as one of the most vicious and abandoned, quartersof New York, was as safe and inviolate as--as--She shook her head again.Her mind did not instantly suggest a comparison that seemed whollyadequate. The pucker deepened, but the sensitive, delicately chiseledlips parted now in a smile. Well, she was safer here than anywhere elsein the world, that was all.
It was the first time that anything like this had happened, and, for thevery reason that it was unprecedented, it seemed to stir her memory now,and awaken a dormant train of thought. The White Moll! She rememberedthe first time she had ever been called by that name. It took her backalmost three years, and since that time, here in this sordid realmof crime and misery, the name of Rhoda Gray, her own name, her actualidentity, seemed to have become lost, obliterated in that of theWhite Moll. A "dip" had given it to her, and the underworld, quick andtrenchant in its "monikers," had instantly ratified it. There was nota crook or denizen of crimeland, probably, who did not know the WhiteMoll; there was, probably, not one to-day who knew, or cared, that shewas Rhoda Gray!
She went on, traversing block after block, entering a less deserted,though no less unsavory, neighborhood. Here, a saloon flung a suddenglow of yellow light athwart the sidewalk as its swinging doors jerkedapart; and a form lurched out into the night; there, from a dance-hallcame the rattle of a tinny piano, the squeak of a raspy violin, ahigh-pitched, hectic burst of laughter; while, flanking the streeton each side, like interjected inanimate blotches, rows of squalidtenements and cheap, tumble-down frame houses silhouetted themselves inbroken, jagged points against the sky-line. And now and then a man spoketo her--his untrained fingers fumbling in clumsy homage at the brim ofhis hat.
How strange a thing memory was! How strange, too, the coincidences thatsometimes roused it into activity! It was a man, a thief, just like theman to-night, who had first brought her here into this shadowland ofcrime. That was just before her father had died. Her father had beena mining engineer, and, though an American, had been for many yearsresident in South America as the representative of a large Englishconcern. He had been in ill health for a year down there, when, actingon his physician's advice, he had come to New York for consultation, andshe had accompanied him. They had taken a little flat, the engineer hadplaced himself in the hands of a famous specialist, and an operation hadbeen decided upon. And then, a few days prior to the date set for theoperation and before her father, who was still able to be about, hadentered the hospital, the flat had been broken into during the earlymorning hours. The thief, obviously not counting on the engineer'swakefulness, had been caught red-handed. At first defiant, the man hadfinally broken down, and had told a miserable story. It was hackneyedpossibly, the same story told by a thousand others as a last defense inthe hope of inducing leniency through an appeal to pity, but somehow toher that night the story had rung true. Pete McGee, alias the Bussard,the man had said his name was. He couldn't get any work; there was theshadow of a long abode in Sing Sing that lay upon him as a curse--a jobhere to-day, his record discovered to-morrow, and the next day out onthe street again. It was very old, very threadbare, that story; therewere even the sick wife, the hungry, unclothed children; but to her ithad rung true. Her father had not placed the slightest faith in it,and but for her intervention the Bussard would have been incontinentlyconsigned to the mercies of the police.
Her face softened suddenly now as she walked along. She remembered wellthat scene, when, at the end, she had written down the address the manhad given her.
"Father is going to let you go, McGee, because I ask him to," she hadsaid. "And to-morrow morning I will go to this address, and if I findyour story is true, as I believe it is, I will see what I can do foryou."
"It's true, miss, so help me God!" the man had answered brokenly. "Yousecome an' see. I'll be dere-an'-an'-God bless youse, miss!"
And so they had let the man go free, and her father, with a whimsical,tolerant smile, had shaken his head at her. "You'll never find thataddress, Rhoda-or our friend the Bussard, either!"
But she had found both the Bussard and the address, and destitutionand a squalor unspeakable. Pathetic still, but the vernacular of theunderworld where men called their women by no more gracious names than"molls" and "skirts" no longer strange to her ears, there came to heragain now the Bussard's words in which he had paid her tribute on thatmorning long ago, and with which he had introduced her to a shrunkenform that lay upon a dirty cot in the barefloored room:
"Meet de moll I was tellin' youse about, Mag. She's white--all de wayup. She's white, Mag; she's a white moll--take it from me."
The White Moll!
The firm little chin came suddenly upward; but into the dark eyesunbidden came a sudden film and mist. Her father's health had been toofar undermined, and he had been unable to withstand the shock of theoperation, and he had died in the hospital. There weren't
any relatives,except distant ones on her mother's side, somewhere out in California,whom she had never seen. She and her father had been all in all to eachother, chums, pals, comrades, since her mother's death many years ago.She had gone everywhere with him save when the demands of her educationhad necessarily kept them apart; she had hunted with him in SouthAmerica, ridden with him in sections where civilization was still in themaking, shared the crude, rough life of mining camps with him--and ithad seemed as though her life, too, had gone out with his.
She brushed her hand hastily across her eyes. There hadn't been anyfriends either, apart from a few of her father's casual businessacquaintances; no one else--except the Bussard. It was very strange! Herreward for that one friendly act had come in a manner little expected,and it had come very quickly. She had sought and found a genuine relieffrom her own sorrow in doing what she could to alleviate the misery inthat squalid, one-room home. And then the sphere of her activities hadbroadened, slowly at first, not through any preconceived intentionon her part, but naturally, and as almost an inevitable corollaryconsequent upon her relations with the Bussard and his ill-fortunedfamily.
The Bussard's circle of intimates was amongst those who lay outside thelaw, those who gambled for their livelihood by staking their wits, towin against the toils of the police; and so, more and more, she had comeinto close and intimate contact with the criminal element of New York,until to-day, throughout its length and breadth, she was known, and,she had reason to believe, was loved and trusted by every crook in theunderworld. It was a strange eulogy, self-pronounced! But it was nonethe less true. Then, she had been Rhoda Gray; now, even the Bussard,doubtless, had forgotten her name in the one with which he himself, atthat queer baptismal font of crimeland, had christened her--the WhiteMoll. It even went further than that. It embraced what might be calledthe entourage of the underworld, the police and the social workers withwhom she inevitably came in contact. These, too, had long known heras the White Moll, and had come, since she had volunteered no furtherinformation, tacitly to accept her as such, and nothing more.
Again she shook her head. It wasn't altogether a normal life. She wasonly a woman, with all the aspirations of a woman, with all the yearningof youth for its measure of gayety and pleasure. True, she had not madea recluse of herself outside her work; but, equally, on the other hand,she had not made any intimate friends in her own station in life. Shehad never purposed continuing indefinitely the work she was doing, nordid she now; but, little by little, it had forced its claims uponher until those claims were not easy to ignore. Even though thecircumstances in which her father had left her were barely more thansufficient for a modest little flat uptown, there was still always alittle surplus, and that surplus counted in certain quarters for verymuch indeed. But it wasn't only that. The small amount of money that shewas able to spend in that way had little to do with it. The bonds whichlinked her to the sordid surroundings that she had come to know so wellwere stronger far than that. There wasn't any money involved in thisvisit, for instance, that she was going now to make to Gypsy Nan. GypsyNan was...
Rhoda Gray had halted before the doorway of a small, hovel-like,two-story building that was jammed in between two tenements, which,relatively, in their own class, were even more disreputable than was thelittle frame house itself. A secondhand-clothes store occupied a portionof the ground floor, and housed the proprietor and his family as well,permitting the rooms on the second floor to be "rented out"; the garretabove was the abode of Gypsy Nan.
There was a separate entrance, apart from that into thesecondhand-clothes store, and she pushed this door open and steppedforward into an absolutely black and musty-smelling hallway. By feelingwith her hands along the wall she reached the stairs and began to makeher way upward. She had found Gypsy Nan last night huddled in the lowerdoorway, and apparently in a condition that was very much the worsefor wear. She had stopped and helped the woman upstairs to her garret,whereupon Gypsy Nan, in language far more fervent than elegant, hadordered her to begone, and had slammed the door in her face.
Rhoda Gray smiled a little wearily, as, on the second floor now, shegroped her way to the rear, and began to mount a short, ladder-likeflight of steps to the attic. Gypsy Nan's lack of cordiality did notabsolve her, Rhoda Gray, from coming back to-night to see how the womanwas--to crowd one more visit on her already over-expanded list. She hadnever had any personal knowledge of Gypsy Nan before, but, in a sense,the woman was no stranger to her. Gypsy Nan was a character knownfar and wide in the under-world as one possessing an insatiable andunquenchable thirst. As to who she was, or what she was, or where shegot her money for the gin she bought, it was not in the ethics ofthe Bad Lands to inquire. She was just Gypsy Nan. So that she did notobtrude herself too obviously upon their notice, the police sufferedher; so that she gave the underworld no reason for complaint, theunderworld accepted her at face value as one of its own!
There was no hallway here at the head of the ladder-like stairs, just asort of narrow platform in front of the attic door. Rhoda Gray, gropingout with her hands again, felt for the door, and knocked softly upon it.There was no answer. She knocked again. Still receiving no reply, shetried the door, found it unlocked, and, opening it, stood for an instanton the threshold. A lamp, almost empty, ill-trimmed and smoking badly,stood on a chair beside a cheap iron bed; it threw a dull, yellow glowabout its immediate vicinity, and threw the remainder of the garret intodeep, impenetrable shadows; but also it disclosed the motionless form ofa woman on the bed.
Rhoda Gray's eyes darkened, as she closed the door behind her, andstepped quickly forward to the bedside. For a moment she stood lookingdown at the recumbent figure; at the matted tangle of gray-streakedbrown hair that straggled across a pillow which was none too clean; atthe heavy-lensed, old-fashioned, steel-bowed spectacles, awry now, thatwere still grotesquely perched on the woman's nose; at the sallow face,streaked with grime and dirt, as though it had not been washed formonths; at a hand, as ill-cared for, which lay exposed on the tornblanket that did duty for a counterpane; at the dirty shawl thatenveloped the woman's shoulders, and which was tightly fastened aroundGypsy Nan's neck-and from the woman her eyes shifted to an empty bottleon the floor that protruded from under the bed.
"Nan!" she called sharply; and, stooping over, shook the woman'sshoulder. "Nan!" she repeated. There was something about the woman'sbreathing that she did not like, something in the queer, pinchedcondition of the other's face that suddenly frightened her. "Nan!" shecalled again.
Gypsy Nan opened her eyes, stared for a moment dully, then, in acuriously quick, desperate way, jerked herself up on her elbow.
"Youse get t'hell outer here!" she croaked. "Get out!"
"I am going to," said Rhoda Gray evenly. "And I'm going at once." Sheturned abruptly and walked toward the door. "I'm going to get a doctor.You've gone too far this time, Nan, and--"
"No, youse don't!" Gypsy Nan s voice rose in a sudden scream. She satbolt upright in bed, and pulled a revolver out from under the coverings."Youse don't bring no doctor here! See! Youse put a finger on dat door,an' it won't be de door youse'1l go out by!"
Rhoda Gray did not move.
"Nan, put that revolver down!" she ordered quietly. "You don't know whatyou are doing."
"Don't!" leered Gypsy Nan. The revolver held, swaying a littleunsteadily, on Rhoda Gray. There was silence for a moment; then GypsyNan spoke again, evidently through dry lips, for she wet them again andagain with her tongue: "Say, youse are de White Moll, ain't youse?"
"Yes," said Rhoda Gray.
Gypsy Nan appeared to ponder this for an instant.
"Well den, come back here an' sit down on de foot of de bed," shecommanded finally.
Rhoda Gray obeyed without hesitation. There was nothing to do but humorthe woman in her present state, a state that seemed one bordering ondelirium and complete collapse.
"Nan," she said, "you--"
"De White Moll!" mumbled Gypsy Nan. "I wonder if de dope dey hands outabout youse is all
on de level? My Gawd, I wonder if wot dey says istrue?"
"What do they say?" asked Rhoda Gray gently.
Gypsy Nan lay back on her pillow as though her strength, over-taxed, hadfailed her; her hand, though it still clutched the revolver, seemed tohave been dragged down by the weapon's weight, and now rested upon theblanket.
"Dey say," said Gypsy Nan slowly, "dat youse knows more on de insidehere dan anybody else--t'ings youse got from de spacers' molls, an' fromde dips demselves when youse was lendin' dem a hand; dey say dere ain'tmany youse couldn't send up de river just by liftin' yer finger, but datyouse're straight, an' dat youse've kept yer map closed, an' dat youse're safe."
Rhoda Gray's dark eyes softened, as she leaned forward and laid a handgently over the one of Gypsy Nan that held the revolver.
"It couldn't be any other way, could it, Nan?" she said simply.
"Wot yer after?" demanded Gypsy Nan, with sudden mockery. "De gun? Well,take it!" She let go her hold of the weapon. "But don't kid yerself datyouse're kiddin' me into givin' it to youse because youse have got apretty smile an' a sweet voice! Savvy? I"--she choked suddenly, andcaught at her throat--"I guess youse're de only chance I got-dat's all."
"That's better," said Rhoda Gray encouragingly. "And now you'll let mego and get a doctor, won't you, Nan?"
"Wait!" said Gypsy Nan hoarsely. "Youse're de only chance I got. Willyouse swear youse won't t'row me down if I tells youse somet'ing? Iain't got no other way. Will youse swear youse'll see me through?"
"Of course, Nan," said Rhoda Gray soothingly. "Of course, I will, Nan. Ipromise."
Gypsy Nan came up on her elbow.
"Dat ain't good enough!" she cried out. "A promise ain't good enough!For Gawd's sake, come across all de way! Swear youse'll keep mum an' seeme through!"
"Yes, Nan"--Rhoda Gray's eyes smiled reassurance--"I swear it. But youwill be all right again in the morning."
"Will I? You think so, do you? Well, I can only say that I wish I did!"
Rhoda Gray leaned sharply forward, staring in amazement at the figureon the bed. The woman's voice was the same, it was still hoarse, stillheavy, and the words came with painful effort; but the English wassuddenly perfect now.
"Nan, what is it? I don't understand!" she said tensely. "What do youmean?"
"You think you know what's the matter with me." There was a curiousmockery in the weak voice. "You think I've drunk myself into this state.You think I'm on the verge of the D.T.'s now. That empty bottle underthe bed proves it, doesn't it? And anybody around here will tell youthat Gypsy Nan has thrown enough empties out of the window there tostock a bottle factory for years, some of them on the flat roof justoutside the window, some of them on the roof of the shed below, and someof them down into the yard, just depending on how drunk she was and howfar she could throw. And that proves it, too, doesn't it? Well, maybeit does, that's what I did it for; but I never touched the stuff, not adrop of it, from the day I came here. I didn't dare touch it. I had tokeep my wits. Last night you thought I was drunk when you found me inthe doorway downstairs. I wasn't. I was too sick and weak to get uphere. I almost told you then, only I was afraid, and--and I thought thatperhaps I'd be all right to-day."
"Oh, I didn't know!" Rhoda Gray was on her knees beside the bed. Therewas no room to question the truth of the woman's words, it was in GypsyNan's eyes, in the struggling, labored voice.
"Yes." Gypsy Nan clutched at the shawl around her neck, and shivered."I thought I might be all right to-day, and that I'd get better. But Ididn't. And now I've got about a chance in a hundred. I know. It's myheart."
"You mean you've been alone here, sick, since last night?" There wasanxiety, perplexity, in Rhoda Gray's face. "Why didn't you call someone? Why did you even hold me back a few minutes ago, when you admityourself that you need immediate medical assistance so badly?"
"Because," said Gypsy Nan, "if I've got a chance at all, I'd finish itfor keeps if a doctor came here. I--I'd rather go out this way thanin that horrible thing they call the 'chair.' Oh, my God, don't youunderstand that! I've seen pictures of it! It's a horrible thing--ahorrible thing--horrible!"
"Nan"--Rhoda Gray steadied her voice--"you re delirious. You do not knowwhat you are saying. There isn't any horrible thing to frighten you.Now you just lie quietly here. I'll only be a few minutes, and--" Shestopped abruptly as her wrists were suddenly imprisoned in a franticgrip.
"You swore it!" Gypsy Nan was whispering feverishly. "You swore it! Theysay the White Moll never snitched. That's the one chance I've got, andI'm going to take it. I'm not delirious--not yet. I wish to God it wasnothing more than that! Look!"
With a low, startled cry, Rhoda Gray was on her feet. Gypsy Nan wasgone. A sweep of the woman's hand, and the spectacles were off, thegray-streaked hair a tangled wig upon the pillow--and Rhoda Gray foundherself staring in a numbed sort of way at a dark-haired woman who couldnot have been more than thirty, but whose face, with its streaks ofgrime and dirt, looked grotesquely and incongruously old.