Page:Frank Packard - The White Moll.djvu/272

 to break his spirit. Her lips tightened as she went along. Surely she could accomplish it! She had but to evade the watchman—only, first, the lost revolver, the one safeguard against an adverse turn of fortune, must be replaced, and that was where she was going now. She knew, from her associations with the underworld as the White Moll in the old days, where such things could be purchased and no questions asked, if one were known. And she was known in the establishment to which she was going, for evil days had once fallen upon its proprietor, one "Daddy" Jacques, in that he had incurred the enmity of certain of his own ilk in the underworld, and on a certain night, which he would not be likely to forget, she had stood between him and a manhandling that would probably have cost him his life, and Yes, this was the place.

She entered a dirty-windowed, small and musty pawnshop. A little old man, almost dwarf-like in stature, with an unkempt, tawny beard, who wore a greasy and ill-fitting suit, and upon whose bald head was perched an equally greasy skull cap, gazed at her inquiringly from behind the counter.

"I want a gun, and a good one, please," she said, after a glance around her to assure herself that they were alone.

The other squinted at her through his spectacles, as he shook his head.

"I haven't got any, lady," he answered. "We're not allowed to sell them without"

"Oh, yes, you have, Daddy," she contradicted quietly, as she raised her veil. "And quick, please; I'm in a hurry."

The little old man leaned forward, staring at her for a moment as though fascinated; and then his hand, in a fumbling way, removed the skull cap from his