Page:Frank Packard - The White Moll.djvu/302

 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."