The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-04-04

! the plan they had afoot tonight. Ii | Perlmer's fake and manufactured af. | fidavits were clever enough and con- vincing enough to wiring money out of Viner for Per1mer, they were more than enough to enable Danglar, em- p1oyed as DangIar would employ them, to wiring from Nicky Viner the secret of where the old miser hid his wealth; for Viner would understand that Danglar was not haInpered by having to safeguard himself on ac- count of having been originally con- nected witht he case in a legal ca = pacity, or any capacity, and therefore in demanding all or nothing, would have no cause for hesitation, failing to get what he wanted, in turning the evidence over to the police. In other words, where Perlmer had to play his man cautiously and get what he could, Danglar could go the limit and get all. As it stood, then, Danglar and the gang had not found out the location of that hoard; but they had found out where PerImer kept his spurious papers-stuffed in at the back of the bottom drawer of his desk in his office, practically for gotten, practically useless to Perl mer any more. for, having once shown them to Viner, there was no occasion to call them into service again un- less Ciner showed signs of getting little out of hand and it became neces- sary to apply the screws once more.
 For the rest. it was a very sim pie matter. Perlmer had an office in a small building on lower Sixth Avenue, and it was his custom to go to his office in the evenings and remain there until ten o'clock or so. The n1an then arnnr6ino n message, was to loot Perlmer's desk some time after the man had gone home for the night. and then, at mid night, armed with the false docu- ments, to beard old Nicky Viner in his miserable quarters over on the East Side, and extort from the old miser the neat little sum that Danglar estimated would amount to some fifty thousand dollars in cash.
 Rhoda Gray's face was troubled and serious, She found herself wishing for a moment that she had never de- coded the message. But she shook her head in sharp seIf-protest the next instant. True, she would have evaded the responsibility that the criminal knowledge now in her pos session had brought her; but she would have done so, in that case, de- liberateIy at the expense of her own
  cused her in her own soul 10 have sat staring at a cipher message that she was satisfied was some criminal plot, and have refused to decode It l simply because she was afraid sense of duty would involve her in an ef- fort to frustrate it. To have sat idly 1 by under those circumstances would 1 have been as reprehensible-and i even more cowardly-than it would | a fn ali hu chA what was to take place. And on 1 that latter score tonight there was | no argument with herself. She found herself accepting the fact that she would act. and act promptly, as he only natural corollary to the fact hat she was in position to do so. Perhaps it was that way tonight. not only because she had on a previous already fought this principle of duty out with herself, but because .onight. unlike that other night the way and the means seemed to present 10 insurmountable difficulties. and because she was now far better pre- pared. and free from all the perplex- ing. though enormously vital, little | details that had on the former occa- sion reared themselves up in moun- -ainous aspect before her. The pur- chase of a heavy veil, for instance,
 
 fair, would enable her now to move l about the city in the clothes of the White MoH practically at will and without fear of detection. And fur her, the facilities for making that | change, the change from Gypsy Nan O the White Moll were now already It hand-in the little old shed down he lane.
 And as far as any actual danger IL. ! concerned. tt was not great. She was lot interested in the fifty thousand lollars in an intrinsic sense; she was interested only in seeing that old 1 licky Viner, unappea1ing, yes and lmost repulsive both in personality nd habits as the man was, was not lackmailed out of it; that Danglar, es. and hereafter, Perlmer too hould not prey like vultures on the nan, and rob him of what was right ully his. If. therefore, she secured hose papers from Per1mer's desk, it put an end to Dang1ar's cheme tonight; and if, later, she saw O it that those papers came into 1 liners possession, that. too, auto aatically ended Perlmers persecu- ions. Indeed. there seemed little likelihood of any danger or risk at Il. It could not be quite 10 o'clock ets ana It was not likely that whO- yer was delegated by Danglar to rob 'erlmer's office would go there much efore II anyway, since they would allow for the possibility l hat Perlmer might stay later in his flee than usual, a conting gency that oubtless accounted for midnight be- ng set as the hour at which they , to lay old Nicky Viner, by he heels Therefore, it seemed all nost a certainty that she would reach here, not only first, but with ample ime at her disposal to secure the apers and get away again without She might even, per- aps, reach the office before Perlmer imself had left-:t was still quite arly enough for that-but in that ase she need only remain on watch ntiI the lawyer had locked up and one away. Nor need even the fact