ause she ain't had none for so long. An' w'en she comes
back she finds de old geezer gagged an' tied in a chair, an' some guy's
hit him a crack on de bean an' flown de coop wid de mazuma. But youse
had better get out of here before youse gets run over! Dis ain't no
place for an old skirt like youse. De bulls'll be down here on de hop in
a minute, an' w'en dis mob starts sprinklin' de street wid deir fleetin'
footsteps, youse are likely to get hurt. See?" The young man started
to force his way through the crowd again. "Youse had better cut loose,
mother!" he warned over his shoulder.

It was good advice. Rhoda Gray took it. She had scarcely reached the
next block when the crowd behind her was being scattered pell-mell and
without ceremony in all directions by the police, as the young man had
predicted. She went on. There was nothing that she could do. The man's
face and the woman's face haunted her. They had seemed stamped with such
abject misery and despair. But there was nothing that she could do. It
was one of those sore and grievous cross-sections out of the lives
of the swarming thousands down here in this quarter which she knew
so intimately and so well. And there were so many, many of those
cross-sections! Once, in a small, pitifully meager and restricted way,
she had been able to help some of these hurt lives, but now--Her lips
tightened a little. She was going to Shluker's junk shop.

Her forehead gathered in little furrows as she walked along. She had
weighed the pros and cons of this visit a hundred times already during
the day; but even so, instinctively to reassure herself lest some
apparently minor, but nevertheless fatally vital, point might have been
overlooked, her mind reverted to it again. From Shluker's viewpoint,
whether Gypsy Nan was in the habit of mingling with or visiting the
other members of the gang or not--a matter upon which she could not even
hazard a guess--her visit to-night must appear entirely logical. There
was last night--and, a natural corollary, her equally natural anxiety on
her supposed husband's account, providing, of course, that Shluker was
aware that Gypsy Nan was Danglar's wife. But even if Shluker did not
know that, he knew at least that Gypsy Nan was one of the gang, and, as
such, he must equally accept it as natural that she should be anxious
and disturbed over what had happened. She would be on safe ground either
way. She would pretend to know only what had appeared in the