The White Moll | Page 6

rooms on the second floor to be "rented out"; the garret
above was the abode of Gypsy Nan.
There was a separate entrance, apart from that into the
secondhand-clothes store, and she pushed this door open and stepped
forward into an absolutely black and musty-smelling hallway. By
feeling with her hands along the wall she reached the stairs and began
to make her way upward. She had found Gypsy Nan last night huddled
in the lower doorway, and apparently in a condition that was very much
the worse for wear. She had stopped and helped the woman upstairs to
her garret, whereupon Gypsy Nan, in language far more fervent than
elegant, had ordered her to begone, and had slammed the door in her
face.

Rhoda Gray smiled a little wearily, as, on the second floor now, she
groped her way to the rear, and began to mount a short, ladder-like
flight of steps to the attic. Gypsy Nan's lack of cordiality did not
absolve her, Rhoda Gray, from coming back to-night to see how the
woman was - to crowd one more visit on her already over-expanded list.
She had never 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 under-world as one possessing an
insatiable and unquenchable thirst. As to who she was, or what she was,
or where she got her money for the gin she bought, it was not in the
ethics of the Bad Lands to inquire. She was just Gypsy Nan. 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 complaint,
the underworld accepted her at face value as one of its own!
There was no hallway here at the head of the ladder-like stairs, just a
sort of narrow platform in front of the attic door. Rhoda Gray, groping
out with her hands again, felt for the door, and knocked softly upon it.
There was no answer. She knocked again. Still receiving no reply, she
tried the door, found it unlocked, and, opening it, stood for an instant
on the threshold. A lamp, almost empty, ill-trimmed and smoking badly,
stood on a chair beside a cheap iron bed; it threw a dull, yellow glow
about its immediate vicinity, and threw the remainder of the garret into
deep, impenetrable shadows; but also it disclosed the motionless form
of a woman on the bed.
Rhoda Gray's eyes darkened, as she closed the door behind her, and
stepped quickly forward to the bedside. For a moment she stood
looking down at the recumbent figure; at the matted tangle of
gray-streaked brown hair that straggled across a pillow which was none
too clean; at the heavy-lensed, old-fashioned, steel-bowed spectacles,
awry now, that were still grotesquely perched on the woman's nose; at
the sallow face, streaked with grime and dirt, as though it had not been
washed for months; at a hand, as ill-cared for, which lay exposed on the
torn blanket that did duty for a counterpane; at the dirty shawl that
enveloped the woman's shoulders, and which was tightly fastened
around Gypsy Nan's neck-and from the woman her eyes shifted to an

empty bottle on the floor that protruded from under the bed.
"Nan!" she called sharply; and, stooping over, shook the woman's
shoulder. "Nan!" she repeated. There was something about the woman's
breathing that she did not like, something in the queer, pinched
condition of the other's face that suddenly frightened her. "Nan!" she
called again.
Gypsy Nan opened her eyes, stared for a moment dully, then, in a
curiously quick, desperate way, jerked herself up on her elbow.
"Youse get t'hell outer here!" she croaked. "Get out!"
"I am going to," said Rhoda Gray evenly. "And I'm going at once." She
turned abruptly and walked toward the door. "I'm going to get a doctor.
You've gone too far this time, Nan, and -"
"No, youse don't!" Gypsy Nan s voice rose in a sudden scream. She sat
bolt upright in bed, and pulled a revolver out from under the coverings.
"Youse don't bring no doctor here! See! Youse put a finger on dat door,
an' it won't be de door youse'1l go out by!"
Rhoda Gray did not move.
"Nan, put that revolver down!" she ordered quietly. "You don't know
what you are doing."
"Don't!?" leered Gypsy Nan. The revolver held, swaying a little
unsteadily, on Rhoda Gray. There was silence for a moment; then
Gypsy Nan spoke again, evidently through dry lips, for she wet them
again and again with her tongue: "Say, youse are de White Moll, ain't
youse?"
"Yes," said Rhoda Gray.
Gypsy Nan appeared to ponder