The White Moll | Page 4

deepened, but the sensitive,
delicately chiseled lips parted now in a smile. Well, she was safer here
than anywhere else in the world, that was all.
It was the first time that anything like this had happened, and, for the
very reason that it was unprecedented, it seemed to stir her memory
now, and awaken a dormant train of thought. The White Moll! She
remembered the first time she had ever been called by that name. It
took her back almost three years, and since that time, here in this sordid
realm of crime and misery, the name of Rhoda Gray, her own name,
her actual identity, seemed to have become lost, obliterated in that of
the White Moll. A "dip" had given it to her, and the underworld, quick
and trenchant in its "monikers," had instantly ratified it. There was not
a crook or denizen of crimeland, probably, who did not know the White

Moll; there was, probably, not one to-day who knew, or cared, that she
was Rhoda Gray!
She went on, traversing block after block, entering a less deserted,
though no less unsavory, neighborhood. Here, a saloon flung a sudden
glow of yellow light athwart the sidewalk as its swinging doors jerked
apart; and a form lurched out into the night; there, from a dance-hall
came the rattle of a tinny piano, the squeak of a raspy violin, a
high-pitched, hectic burst of laughter; while, flanking the street on each
side, like interjected inanimate blotches, rows of squalid tenements and
cheap, tumble-down frame houses silhouetted themselves in broken,
jagged points against the sky-line. And now and then a man spoke to
her - his untrained fingers fumbling in clumsy homage at the brim of
his hat.
How strange a thing memory was! How strange, too, the coincidences
that sometimes roused it into activity! It was a man, a thief, just like the
man to-night, who had first brought her here into this shadowland of
crime. That was just before her father had died. Her father had been a
mining engineer, and, though an American, had been for many years
resident in South America as the representative of a large English
concern. He had been in ill health for a year down there, when, acting
on his physician's advice, he had come to New York for consultation,
and she had accompanied him. They had taken a little flat, the engineer
had placed himself in the hands of a famous specialist, and an operation
had been decided upon. And then, a few days prior to the date set for
the operation and before her father, who was still able to be about, had
entered the hospital, the flat had been broken into during the early
morning hours. The thief, obviously not counting on the engineer's
wakefulness, had been caught red-handed. At first defiant, the man had
finally broken down, and had told a miserable story. It was hackneyed
possibly, the same story told by a thousand others as a last defense in
the hope of inducing leniency through an appeal to pity, but somehow
to her that night the story had rung true. Pete McGee, alias the Bussard,
the man had said his name was. He couldn't get any work; there was the
shadow of a long abode in Sing Sing that lay upon him as a curse - a
job here to-day, his record discovered to-morrow, and the next day out

on the street again. It was very old, very threadbare, that story; there
were even the sick wife, the hungry, unclothed children; but to her it
had rung true. Her father had not placed the slightest faith in it, and but
for her intervention the Bussard would have been incontinently
consigned to the mercies of the police.
Her face softened suddenly now as she walked along. She remembered
well that scene, when, at the end, she had written down the address the
man had given her.
"Father is going to let you go, McGee, because I ask him to," she had
said. "And to-morrow morning I will go to this address, and if I find
your story is true, as I believe it is, I will see what I can do for you."
"It's true, miss, so help me God!" the man had answered brokenly.
"Youse come an' see. I'll be dere-an'-an'-God bless youse, miss!"
And so they had let the man go free, and her father, with a whimsical,
tolerant smile, had shaken his head at her. "You'll never find that
address, Rhoda-or our friend the Bussard, either!"
But she had found both the Bussard and the address, and destitution
and a squalor unspeakable. Pathetic still, but the vernacular of the
underworld where men called their women by no more gracious names
than "molls" and "skirts" no longer