Pug, and therefore must have believed that I, too, know all about it."

"Yes," she said, and turned her head away to hide the color she felt was
mounting to her cheeks. "I--I thought of that. But I thought you were a
thief, and--and your testimony wouldn't have been much good unless, with
it, I could have handed you, too, over to the police, as I intended to
do with Danglar; and--and--I--I couldn't do that, and--Oh, don't you
see?" she ended desperately.

"Rhoda! Rhoda!" There was a glad, buoyant note in the Adventurer's
voice. "Yes, I see! Well, I can prove it for you now without any of
those fears on my behalf to worry you! I went to Skarbolov's myself,
knowing their plans, to do exactly what you did. I did not know you
then, and, as Rough Rorke, who was there because, as I heard later,
his suspicions had been aroused through seeing some of the gang lurking
around the back door in the lane the night before, had taken the actual
money from you, I contrived to let you get away, because I was afraid
that you were some new factor in the game, some member of the gang that
I did not know about, and that I must watch, too! Don't you understand?
The jewels were still missing. I had not got the general warning that
was sent out to the gang that night to lay low, for at the last moment
it seems that Danglar here found out that Rough Rorke had suspicions
about Skarbolov's place." He came close to her--and with the muzzle of
his revolver he pushed Danglar's huddled figure back a little further
against the washstand. "Rhoda--you are clear. The assistant district
attorney who had your case is the one I spoke of a few minutes ago. That
night at Hayden-Bond's, though I did not understand fully, I knew
that you were the bravest, truest little woman into whom God had ever
breathed the breath of life. I told him the next day there was some
mistake, something strange behind it all. I told him what happened at
Hayden-Bond's. He agreed with me. You have never been indicted. Your
case has never come before the grand jury. And it never will now! Rhoda!
Rhoda! Thank God for you! Thank God it has all come out right, and--"

A peal of laughter, mad, insane, horrible in its perverted mirth, rang
through the garret. Danglar's hands were creeping queerly up to his
temples. And then, oblivious evidently in his frenzy of the revolver in
the Adventurer's hand, and his eye catching the weapons that lay upon
the cot, he made a sudden dash in that dire