Page:Frank Packard - The White Moll.djvu/109

 were shouts, though, from the direction of the Avenue.

She stepped out on the side street, and walking composedly that she might not attract attention, though every impulse urged her to run with frantic haste, she reached the corner and the waiting taxicab. She gave the chauffeur an address that would bring her to the street in the rear of Gypsy Nan's and within reach of the lane where she had left her clothes, and, with an injunction to hurry, sprang into the cab.

And then for a long time she sat there with her hands tightly clasped in her lap. Her mind, her brain, her very soul itself seemed in chaos and turmoil. There was the Sparrow, who was safe; and Danglar, who would move heaven and hell to get her now; and the Adventurer, who Her mind seemed to grope around in cycles; it seemed to moil on and on and arrive at nothing. The Adventurer had played the game—perhaps because he had had to; but he had not risked that revolver shot in her stead—because he had had to. Who was he? How had he come there? How had he found her there? How had he known that she had entered by that rear door behind the portière? She remembered how that he had offered not a single explanation. Almost mechanically she dismissed the taxi when at last it stopped; and almost mechanically, as Gypsy Nan, some ten minutes later, she let herself into the garret, and lighted the candle. She was conscious, as she hid the White Moll's clothes away, that she was thankful she had regained in safety even the questionable sanctuary of this wretched place; but, strangely, curiously, thoughts of her own peril seemed somehow to be temporarily relegated to the background.

She flung herself down on the bed—it was not Gypsy Nan's habit to undress—and blew out the light.