Page:Frank Packard - The White Moll.djvu/70

 the corner; then, returning, he set the candle down upon the chair and began to pace restlessly, three or four steps each way, up and down in front of the bed.

Rhoda Gray, from the edge of the bed, shifted back until her shoulders rested against the wall. Danglar, too, was dressed like a gentleman—but Danglar's face was not appealing. The little round black eyes were shifty, they seemed to possess no pupils whatever, and they roved constantly; there was a hard, unyielding thinness about the lips, and the face itself was thin, almost gaunt, as though the skin had had to accommodate itself to more than was expected of it, and was elastically stretched over the cheek-bones.

"Well, I'm listening!" jerked out the man abruptly, "You knew our game at Skarbolov's was queered. You got the 'seven-three-nine,' didn't you?"

"Yes, of course, I got it," answered Rhoda Gray. "What about it?"

"For two weeks now, yes, more than two weeks"—the man's voice rasped angrily—"things have been going wrong, and some one has been butting in and getting away with the goods under our noses. We know now, from last night, that it must have been the White Moll, for one, though it's not likely she worked all alone. Skeeny dropped to the fact that the police were wise about Skarbolov's, and that's why we called it off, and the 'seven-three-nine' went out. They must have got wise through shadowing the White Moll. See? Then they pinch her, but she makes her get-away, and comes here, and, if the dope I've got is right, you hand Rough Rorke one, and help her to beat it again. It looks blamed funny—doesn't it?—when you come to consider that there's a leak somewhere!"

"Is that so!" Rhoda Gray flashed back. "And did