tterly dark, but she had no need for light.
It was a matter of perhaps three minutes; and then, the revolver
transferred to the pocket of her jacket, the stains removed from her
face by the aid of the damp cloth, her hands neatly gloved in black
kid, the skirt, boots, stockings, shawl, spectacles and wig of Gypsy Nan
carefully piled together and hidden in a hole under the rotting boards
of the floor, behind the door, she emerged as the White Moll, and went
on again.

But at the end of the lane, where it met a cross street, and the street
lamp flung out an ominous challenge, and, dim though it was, seemed to
glare with the brightness of daylight, she faltered for a moment and
drew back. She knew where Shluker's place was, because she knew, as few
knew it, every nook and cranny in the East Side, and it was a long way
to that old junk shop, almost over to the East River, and--and there
would be lights like this one here that barred her exit from the lane,
thousands of them, lights all the way, and--and out there they were
searching everywhere, pitilessly, for the White Moll.

And then, with her lips tightened, the straight little shoulders thrown
resolutely back, she slipped from the lane to the sidewalk, and, hugging
the shadows of the buildings, started forward.

She was alert now in mind and body, every faculty strained and in
tension. It was a long way, and it would take a great while--by wide
detours, by lanes and alleyways, for only on those streets that were
relatively deserted and poorly lighted would she dare trust herself to
the open. And as she went along, now skirting the side of a street, now
through some black courtyard, now forced to take a fence, and taking it
with the agility born of the open, athletic life she had led with her
father in the mining camps of South America, now hiding at the mouth
of a lane waiting her chance to cross an intersecting street when
some receding footstep should have died away, the terror of delay
came gripping at her heart with an icy clutch, submerging the fear of
personal peril in the agony of dread that, with her progress so slow,
she would, after all, be too late. And at times she almost cried out in
her vexation and despair, as once, when crouched behind a door-stoop,
a policeman, not two yards from her, stood and twirled his night stick
under the street lamp while the minutes sped and raced themselves away.

When she could run, she ran until it seemed her lungs must bu