! She feared the night--and yet she welcomed it. In a little
while, when it grew a little darker, she would steal out again and take
up her work once more. It was only during the night, under the veil of
darkness, that she could hope to make any progress in reaching to the
heart and core of this criminal clique which surrounded her, whose
members accepted her as Gypsy Nan, and, therefore, as one of themselves,
and who would accord to her, if they but even suspected her to be the
White Mall, less mercy than would be shown to a mad dog.

She climbed the stairs. Fear was upon her now, because fear was
always there, and with it was abhorrence and loathing at the frightful
existence fate had thrust upon her; but, somehow, to-night she was not
so depressed, not so hopeless, as she had been the night before. There
had been a little success; she had come a little farther along the way;
she knew a little more than she had known before of the inner workings
of the gang who were at the bottom of the crime of which she herself
was accused. She knew now the Adventurer's secret, that the Pug and the
Adventurer were one; and she knew where the Adventurer lived, now in
one character, now in the other, in those two rooms almost opposite each
other across that tenement hall.

And so it seemed that she had the right to hope, even though there were
still so many things she did not know, that if she allowed her mind to
dwell upon that phase of it, it staggered her--where those code messages
came from, and how; why Rough Rorke of headquarters had never made a
sign since that first night; why the original Gypsy Nan, who was dead
now, had been forced into hiding with the death penalty of the
law hanging over her; why Danglar, though Gypsy Nan's husband, was
comparatively free. These, and a myriad other things! But she counted
now upon her knowledge of the Adventurer's secret to force from him
everything he knew; and, with that to work on, a confession from some of
the gang in corroboration that would prove the authorship of the crime
of which she had seemingly been caught in the act of committing.

Yes, she was beginning to see the way at last--through the Adventurer.
It seemed a sure and certain way. If she presented herself before him as
Gypsy Nan, whom he believed to be not only one of the gang, but actually
Danglar's wife, and let him know that she was aware of the dual role
he was playing, and that the information he thus acquired as the