The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-03-28
THE RENDEZVOUS

Rhoda Gray's movements were little unsteady as she stepped out on the sidewalk. Gypsy Mans accepted inebriety was not without it's com pensation- It enabled her, as she swayed for a moment, to schutinize the street in all directions. Were any of Rough Rorkes men watching the house? She did not know; she only knew that as far as she had been able to discover. she had not been followed when she had gone out that afternoon. Up the street. to her right, there were a few pedestrians; to her lift, as far as the corner, the block was clear. She turned in the latter direction. She had noticed that afternoon that there was a lane between Gypsy Mans house and the corner; she gained this and slipped into it unobserved,
 And now, in the comparative dark ness, she hurried her steps. Some where here in the lane she would make the transformation from Gypsy Nan to the White Mon complete; it required only some place in which she could with safety leave the gar ments that she discarded, and Yes, this would do! A tunnble-down old shed, its battered door half open, ample proof that the place was in disuse, intersected the line of high board fence on her right.
 She stole inside. It was utterly dark, but she had no need for light. It was a matter of perhaps three minutes; and then, the revolver transferred to the pocket of her jacket the stains removed from her face by the aid of the damp cloth. her hands neatly gloved in black kid, the skirt, boots, stockings, shawl, spectacles and wig of Gypsy Nan carefully piled together and hidden in a hole under the rotting boards of the floor, behind the door,she emerg- ed as the White Mou, and went on again.
 But at the end of the lane, where it met a cross street, and the street lamp flung out an ominous challenge, and, dim though it was, seemed to glare with the brightness of day. light, she faltered for a moment and drew back. She knew where Shlu- ker's place was. because she knew, as few knew it, every nook and cranny in the East Side, and it was long way to that old junk shop. almost over the East River, and and there would be lights like this one here that barred her exit from the lane thousands of them, lights all the way. and-and out there they were searching everywhere, pitilessly for the White Mol1-
 And then, with her lips frightened, the straight little shoulders thrown resolutely back, she slipped from the lane to the sidewalk, and, hugging the shadows of the buildings, started forward.
 She was alert now in mind and body, every faculty strained and in tension. It was a long way, and il would take great while-by wide detours, by lanes and a1leyways, for only on those streets that were rela- lively deserted and poorly lighted would she dare trust herself to the open. And as she went along, now , slxirring the side of a street, now though some black courtyard, now forced to take fence. and taking it with the agility born of the open. athletic life she had led with her father in the mining camps of South America, now hiding at the mouth of a lane waiting her chance to cross an intersecting street when some re- ceding footstep should have died away, the terror of delay came grip ming at her heart with an icy clutch, st,bmerging the fear of personal per- fl in the agony of dread that, with her progress so slow. she would. after