without
inviting undue attention to herself, reached the garret, secured the
articles she sought, hurried out again, and went down the lane in the
rear to the deserted shed. She remained longer here than in the attic,
perhaps ten minutes, working mostly in the darkness, risking the
flashlight only when it was imperative; and then, the metamorphosis
complete, a veiled figure, in her own person, as Rhoda Gray, the White
Moll, she was out on the street again, and hastening back in the same
general direction from which she had just come.

She knew old Jake Luertz's place, and she knew the man himself very
intimately by reputation. There were few such men and such places that
she could have escaped knowing in the years of self-appointed service
that she had given to the worst, and perhaps therefore the most needy,
element in New York. The man ostensibly conducted a little secondhand
store; in reality he probably "shoved" more stolen goods for his
clientele, which at one time or another undoubtedly embraced nearly
every crook in the underworld, than any other "fence" in New York. She
knew him for an oily, cunning old fox who lived alone in the two rooms
over his miserable store--unless, of late, his young henchman, the Crab,
had taken to living with him; though, as far as that was concerned, it
mattered little to-night, since the Crab, for the moment, thanks to the
gang, was eliminated from consideration.

She reached the secondhand store--and walked on past it. There was a
light upstairs in the front window. Old Luertz therefore had not yet
gone out in response to the gang's fake message. She knew old Luertz's
reputation far too well for that; the man would never go out and leave a
gas jet burning--which he would have to pay for!

There was nothing to do but wait. Rhoda Gray sought the shelter of a
doorway across the street. She was nervously impatient now. The
minutes dragged along. Why didn't 'the man hurry and go out? "About ten
o'clock," Danglar had said--but that was very indefinite. Pinkie Bonn
and the Pug might be as late as that; but, equally, they might be
earlier!

It seemed an interminable time. And then, her eyes strained across the
street upon that upper window, she drew still farther back into the
protecting shadows of the doorway. The light had gone out.

A moment more passed. The street door of the house opposite to her--a
door separate from that of the secondhand store-opened, and a bent,
gray-bearded