The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-04-04
''TE1E WHITE MOLL"
 FRANK l.. PACKARD Appearing every day in serial form in the Magazine Section of The Times
(Continued from Yesterday

had found in the secret hiding place
 and of making herself conversant
 with the gangs cipher; and she now
 set to work upon it. It was a num-
 erical cipher Each letter of the
 alphabet in regular rotation was rep resented by it's corresponding num-
 eral; zero was employed to set off
 one letter from another, and the ad-
 dition of the numerals between the
 zeros indicated the number of the letter invoFed. Also. there being
 but twenty-siX letters in the alpha
 bet, it was obvious that the addition
 of three hines, which was twenty.
 could not represent any letter, and
 the combination of 999 was therefore
 used to precede any of the arbitrary
 groups of numerals which were em-
 ployed to express phrases and sen-
 tences, such as the 739 that she had
 found scrawled on the piece of paper
 around her key the first night she had come here, and which, had it
 been embodied In message and not
 preceded by the 999, would have
 meant simply the addition of seven, three and nine. that Is. nineteen-and
 therefore would indicate the nine teenth letter of the alphabet. S.
 Rhoda Gray copied the first line
 of the message on the piece of wrap ping paper:
 3210103332032o230666 310333011110 022
 104442O2101112O5211O
 Adding the numerals between the zeros, and giving to each its corre- spending letter, she set down the suit:
 so1o11o505o22oso4o5o14oso5oso14
 k
 It was then but matter of group ing the letters into words; and, de- coded, the first line read:
 Fake evidence in....
 She worked steadily on. It was a lengthy message. and it took her a long time. It was an hour. perhaps more, after Danglar had gone. before | she had completed her task; and then. | after that, she sat for still a long time staring, not at the paper on | the chair before her, but at the flick l ering shadows thrown by the candle l on the opposite wall.
 Queer and strange were the under 1 currents and the cross-sections of life 1 that were to be found, amazingly | contradictory, amazingly incompre- 1 hensible, once one scratched beneath 1 the surface of the poverty and the | squaIor, and, yes. the crime. amongst ! the hiving thousands of New York'S l East Side! Tn the days-not so very IoQg aSo-when, the White Mon, slI had worked amongst these classes. she mad on one occasion, when he was sick. even kept old Viner in food She had not, at the time. ! graspfng, rapacfous, even unthankfu1, but she had little dreamed that he was a nliser worth fifty thousand dol JarsI
 Her mind swerved off suddenly at a tangent The tentacies of this crime octopus, of which Danglar seemed to be the head, reached far 1 and into most curiousp laces to fasten and hold and feed on the progeny of human foibIes! She could not help woinde dering where the lair was from which emanated the efficiency and system that, witness this code message tonight, kept it's members, perhaps widely scattered, fully in formed of it's every movement.
 She shook her head. That was something she had not yet learned; but it was something she must learn if ever she hoped to obtain the evid- ence that would clear her of the crime that circumstances had fasten- ed upon her. And yet she had made no move in that direction, because we'll because so far, it had seemed all she could dc to protect and safe guard herself in her present miser- able existence and surroundings. which aohorrent as they were. alone stood between her and a prison cell.
 Her forehead gathered into little furrows; and, reverting to the code message, her thoughts harl<ed back 1o a well-known crime. the author ship Of which still remained mys- 1ery. and which had stirred the East Side some two years ago. A man -sn the vernacular of the nderworld | a stage hand''-by the name of Kroner, credited with having a large a amount of cash. the proceeds of l some nefarious transaction, in his possession on the night in question, ( was found murdered in his room in i sn old and tumhle-down tenement of tInsavory reputation The police net l . had gathered in some of the co-ten- . ants on suspicion: Nicky Viner, re- | ferred to in the code messa ge. y amongst them. But nothing had s rome of the investigation. There I had been no charge of coilusion be- l tween the suspects; but Perlmer, a | ehyster lawyer, had acted for them a all collectively, and. one and all. they s had been discharged. In what de- t gree Perlmer's services had been of Y actual value had never been ascer- T 4ained. for the police. through lack { of evidence. had been obliged to drop l ahe case; but the underworld had a whispered to itself There was such y e thing as suppressing evidence, and e PerImer was known to have the cum I ming of fox. and a code of morals h that never st0d in the way, or re- T stricted him in any manner |
 The code message threw & new O light on all this Perlmer must d have known that old Nfcky Niner i had money, for. according to the code r message, Perlmer prepared a fake set | of afridavits and forged chain of r take evidence with which he had [ lbIa c ckmailed Nicky Viner ever since; | and Nicky Viner. known as a uls- ' solute shady character. innocent i enough of the crime, but afraid be- h cause his possession of money if h made public would tell against him. e and frightened because he had all c ready been arrested once suspicion u for that very crime, had whim pered 2