Page:Frank Packard - The White Moll.djvu/222

 and turned to Rhoda Gray again. "The only one who knew all the details is Angel Jack, and he'll never tell now because he's dead. Whether he came down from the West with Deemer or not, or how he got wise to the stones, I don't know. But he got the stones, all right. And then he tumbled to the fact that the police were pushing him hard for another job he was 'wanted' for, and he had to get those stones out of sight in a hurry. He made a package of them and slipped them to old Luertz, who had always done his business for him, to keep for him; and before he could duck, the bulls had him for that other job. Angel Jack went up the river. See? Old Jake didn't know what was in that package; but he knew better than to monkey with it, because he always thought something of his own skin. He knew Angel Jack, and he knew what would happen if he didn't have that package ready to hand back the day Angel Jack got out of Sing Sing. Understand? But yesterday Angel Jack died—without a will; and old Jake appointed himself sole executor—without bonds! He opened that package, figured he'd begin turning it into money—and that's how we get our own back again. Old Jake will get a fake message to-night calling him out of the house on an errand uptown; and about ten o'clock Pinkie Bonn and the Pug will pay a visit there in his absence, and—well, it looks good, don't it, Bertha, after two years?"

Rhoda Gray was crouched down in her chair. She shrugged her shoulders now, and infused a sullen note into her voice.

"Yes, it's fine!" she sniffed. "I'll be rolling in wealth in my garret—which will do me a lot of good! That doesn't separate me from these rags, and the hell I've lived, does it—after two years?"

"I'm coming to that," said Danglar, with his short,