atience was
circling the crystal with his thumb.

"Are you all through, Matty?" he inquired monotonously. "I think you
said something a little while ago about wasting time. Bertha's looking
bored; and, besides, she's got a little job of her own on for to-night."
He jerked his watch back into his pocket, and turned to Rhoda Gray
again. "The only one who knew all the details Angel Jack, and he'll
never tell now because he's dead. Whether he came down from the West
with Deemer or not, or how he got wise to the stones, I don't know. But
he got the stones, all right. And then he tumbled to the fact that the
police were pushing him hard for another job he was 'wanted' for, and
he had to get those stones out of sight in a hurry. He made a package
of them and slipped them to old Luertz, who had always done his business
for him, to keep for him; and before he could duck, the bulls had him
for that other job. Angel Jack went up the river. See? Old Jake didn't
know what was in that package; but he knew better than to monkey with
it, because he always thought something of his own skin. He knew Angel
Jack, and he knew what would happen if he didn't have that package ready
to hand back the day Angel Jack got out of Sing Sing. Understand? But
yesterday Angel Jack died-without a will; and old Jake appointed himself
sole executor-without bonds! He opened that package, figured he'd begin
turning it into money--and that's how we get our own back again. Old
Jake will get a fake message to-night calling him out of the house on an
errand uptown; and about ten o'clock Pinkie Bonn and the Pug will pay a
visit there in his absence, and--well, it looks good, don't it, Bertha,
after two years?"

Rhoda Gray was crouched down in her chair. She shrugged her shoulders
now, and infused a sullen note into her voice.

"Yes, it's fine!" she sniffed. "I'll be rolling in wealth in my
garret--which will do me a lot of good! That doesn't separate me from
these rags, and the hell I've lived, does it--after two years?"

"I'm coming to that," said Danglar, with his short, grating laugh.
"We've as good as got the stones now, and we're going through to-night
for a clean-up of all that old mess. We stake the whole thing. Get
me, Bertha--the whole thing! I'm showing my hand for the first time.
Cloran's the man that's making you wear those clothes; Cloran's the only
one who could go into the witness box and swear that you were the woman
who murdered Deemer; and