The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-04-11

| plausible way to the police, had, as I the expression went, run true to form. l Danglar's story. as reported by the 1 papers, even rose above his own high water mark of vicious cunning, be- | cause it played upon a chord that ap- | pealed instantly to the police; and ! it rang true. not only because what l the police could find out about him ! made it likely, but also because it contained a modicum of truth in it. | self; and, furthermore, Danglar had | scored on still another count in that | his story must stimulate the police | into renewed activities as his unsus- pecting allies in the one thing, the ! one aim and object that, at that mo- ment, must obsess him above all others-the discovery of herself, the 1 White Mon-
 It was ingeniously simple. Dang l lars smooth and oily lie! He had been walking along the street, he had stated, when he saw a woman, as she passed under a street lamp, who he thought resembled the White Mol. To make sure, he followed her-at a l safe distance, as he believed. She entered the tenement. He hesitated. | He knew the reputation of the place, which bore out his first impression that the woman was the one he thought she was; but he did not want to make a fool of himself by calling in the police until he was positive of her identity, so he finally followed
 her inside, and heard her go upstairs. and crept up after her in the dark. And then, suddenly, he was set upon
 and hustled into a room. It was the White Moll, all right; and the shots came from her companion, a man whom he described minutely-the de-
 scription being that of the Adventur-
 err of course. They seemed to think
 that he, Danglar, was a plain-clothes
 man, and tried to sicken him of his
 job by Frightening him. And then
 they forced him through the window and down the fire escape, and fas- tened him there with handcuffs to mock the police, and the White Molrs companion had deliberately fired some more shots to make sure of bringing the police to the scene, and | then the two of them had run for it. 1
 Rhoda Gray's eyes darkened ang- rily. The newspapers said that Dang l lar had been temporarily held by the | police, though his story was believed to be true. for certainly the man would make mistake as to the | identity of the White Moll, since his | life, what the police could find out | about it.coincided with his own state | ments, and he would naturally there | fore have seen her many times in the | Bad Lands when she was working there under cover of her despicabIe l role of sweet and innocent charIly. | Danglar had made no pretensions to | elf-righteousness-h was too cute | for that. He admitted that he had | no specific occupation" that he l hung around the gambling hells a | good deal, that he followed the | I,o 01y1I ho1 1Oxz1 1yiS wits. He had probably given some l framed-up address to the police, put, | is so, the papers had not stated where | it was. Rhode Gray's face, under the | grime of Gypsy Mans disguise, grew | troubled and perplexed. Neither | had the papers, even the evening | papers, stated whether Danglar had | as yet been released-they had devot- | ed the rest of their space to the vili- | fication of the White Moll. They | had demanded in no uncertain tones | a more conclusive effort on the part l of the authorities to bring her, and | with her now the man in the case, as | they called the Adventurer, to justice | and
 The thought of the Adventurer caused her mind to swerve sharply off at a tangent. Where he had piqued and aroused her curiosity before, he
  complex a character than ever. It was strange, most strange. the way their lives, his and hers, had be- conc interwoveni She had owed
 him much; but last night she had re-
 paid him and squared accounts. She had told him so. She owed him
 nothing more. If a sense of grati-
 tude had once caused her to look
 upon him with-with- She bit n nf a
 Had it, become so much a part of
 her life, so much a habit. this throw ing of dust in the eyes of others, this constant passing of herself off for some one else, this constant deception, warranted thought it might be, that
 she must now seek to deceive herself! Why not frankly admit to her own
 soul, already in the secret. that she
 cared in spite of herself-for a thief Why not admit that a great hurt had
 come, one that no one but herself would ever know, a hurt that would
 last for always because it was a
 wound that could never be healed?
 A thief! She loved a. thief. She had fought a bitter. stubborn battle
 with her common sense to convince herself that he was not a thief. She
 had snatched hungrily at the incident
 that centered around those handcuffs,
 so oppo-tunely produced from the Advent,.rer's pocket. She had tried
 to argue that those handcuffs not only suggested, but proved he was
 a police officer in disguise, working on some case in which Danglar and the gang had been mixed up; and. as
 she tried to argue in this wise. she
 tried to shut here eyes to the fact
 that the same pocket out of which
 the handcuffs came was at exactly
 the same moment the repository of as
 many stolen banknotes as it would
 hold. She had tried to argue that
 the fact that he was so insistently at
 work to defeat Danglar'S plans was in his favor; but that argument, like
 all others, came quickly and nliser- ably to grief. Whereas the leak
 was, as Danglar called it. that sup
 piled the Adventurer with foreknowl-
 edge of the gangs movements, she
 had no idea, save that perhaps the