The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-03-17

any friends. either. apart from a few of her fathers casual business ac- ouaintances; no one else-except the
 Bussard. It was very strangei Her reward for tha- one friendly act had come, in a nl&Iner little expected
 and it had come very quickly She had sought and found a genuine re-
 lief from her own sorrow in doing what she could to alleviate the mis- cry in that ,squalid, one-room home
 And then the sphere of her activities
 had broadened, slowly at first, not through any preconcefved intention on
 her part, but naturally and as al
 most an inevitable corollary conse-
 quent upon her relations with the Bussard and his iIl-fortuned family
 The Russards circle of Intin;a1es was amongst those who lay outside the law, those who gambled for their
 livelihood by stalking their wits to win against the tolls of the police; and so, more and more, she had come into close and intimate contact with
 the criminal element of New York
 until today, throughout it's length
 and breadth she was known and
 she had reason to believe. was loved
 and trusted by evefy crook in the underworld It vas a strange euiogy.
 seEf-pronounced. But it was none the
 less true. Then, she had been
 Rlloda Gray; now. even the Bussard,
 doubtless, had forgotten her name in the one with which he himself, at that queer baptisn1aI font of crime land, had christened her-the White
 Moll. It even went further than that. tI embra ced what might be called. the entourage of the under world, the police and the social work CTS with whom she inevitably came in contact. These, too. had long known her as the White Mol1. andsl had come. since she had volunteered l no further information, tacitly to ac- 1 cept her as such, and nothing more. l
 Again she shook her head. It 1 wasn't altogether a normal life. She l was only woman, with all the as- [ pirations of a woman. with all the i yearning of youth for it's measure of 1 gayety and pleasure. True, she had not made a reciuSe, of herself outside 1 her work; but, equally, on the other l hand, she had not made any intimate | friends in her own station in life. She 1 had never purposed continuing inde- ] finitely the work she was doing. nor l did she now; but, little by little. it 1 had forced it's claims upon her until 1 those claims were not easy to ignore. l Even though the circumstances in which her father had left her were ] barely more than sufficient foIt modest Nttle flat uptown, there was still always a little surplus, and that | surplus counted in certain quarters 1 for very much indeed. But it wasn't 1 only that. The small amount of l money that she was able to spend in ] that way had little to do with it.. The bonds which linked her to the | sordid surroundings that she had | come to know so we'll were stronger ! far than that. There wasn't any 1 money involved in this visit, for in l stance that she was going now to | make to Gypsy Nan. Gypsy Nan l
 Rhoda Gray had halted before the 1 doorway of a small. hovel-Ike, two- story building that was damned in 1 between two tenements. which. rela- lively, in their own class, were even 1 more disreputable than was the little l frame house itself. A secondhand l clothes store occupied a portion of | the ground floor, and housed the pro- prietor and his family as we'll per- mitting the rooms on the second floor to be rented out; the garret above ! was the abode of Gypsy Nan.
 There was separate entrance. 1 apart from that into the secondha nd 1 clothes store, and she pushed this l door open and stepped forward into | an absolutely black and musty-smen- l
 
 hands along the wall she reached the 1 stairs and began to make her way | She had found Gypsy Nan ! last night huddled in the lower door 1 way, and apparently in a condition | that was very much the worse for | wear She had stopped and helped | the woman upstairs to her sarret, ! whereupon Gypsy Nan, in language far more fervent than elegant, had 1 har tn nd h SIa med the door in her face.
 Rhoda Gray smiled a little wear 1 fly, as, on the second floor now, she | groped her way to the rear, and be- gan to mount a short. ladder-like of 1 steps to the attic. Gypsy Mans lack i of cordia1ity did noS absolve her. 1 Rhode Gray from coming back to- 1 night to see how the woman was to ! crowd one more visit on her already l over-eNpanded list. She had never 1 had any personal knowledge of ! Gypsy Nan before, but, in a sense, the | woman was no stranger to her Gypsy ] Nan was a character known far and | wide in the underworld as one pos ! sessing an unsuitable, and unquench- 1 able thirst. As to who she was, or l what she was or where she got her | for the gin she bought, it was !! not in the ethics of the Bad Lands l to inquire. She was just Gypsy Man. 1 So that, she did not obtrude herself ! too obviously upon their notice, the | police suffered her; so that she gave the underworld no reason for com- | plaint. the underworld accepted her at face value as one of it's own! |
 There was no hallway here at the | head of the ladder-like stairs, just a 1 sort of narrow platform in front of i the attic door. Rhode Gray. grop- ! ing out with her hands again. felt for {; the door, and knocked softly upon | it There was no answer She l knocked again Still receiving no reply. she tried the door. found it un-i locked. and, opening it, stood for an | instant on the threshold. A lamp, 1 almost empty. in-trmmed and smok- | ing badly, stood on a chair beside a | cheap iron bed; il threw a dull, vel l low glow about it's immediate vicini- 1 ty, and threw the remainder of the . garret into deep, impenetrabfe shad- |