olve her conscience by staking
another's life on a hazard, on the supposition that the Adventurer might
do this or that. It was not good enough.

She was quick in her movements now. Subconsciously her decision had been
made. There was only one way--only one. She gathered up the jewels from
the bed and thrust them, with the Adventurer's torn piece of paper, into
her pocket. And now she reached for the little notebook that she had
hidden under the blanket. It contained the gang's secret code, and she
had found it in the cash box in Gypsy Nan's strange hiding place that
evening. Half running now, carrying the candle, she started toward the
lower end of the attic, where the roof sloped down to little more
than shoulder high. "Seven-Three-Nine!" Danglar had almost decoded the
message word for word in the course of his conversation. In the little
notebook, set against the figures, were the words: "Danger. The game
is off. Make no further move." It was only one of many, that arbitrary
arrangement of figures, each combination having its own special
significance; but, besides these, there was the key to a complete
cipher into which any message might be coded, and--But why was her brain
swerving off at inconsequential tangents? What did a coder or code book,
matter at the present moment?

She was standing under the narrow trap-door in the low ceiling now, and
now she pushed it up, and lifting the candle through the opening, set it
down on the inner surface of the ceiling, which, like some vast shelf,
Gypsy Nan had metamorphosed into that exhaustive storehouse of edibles,
of plunder--a curious and sinister collection that was eloquent of a
gauntlet long flung down against the law. She emptied the pocket of her
skirt, retaining only the revolver, and substituted the articles she had
removed with the tin box that contained the dark compound Gypsy Nan, and
she herself, as Gypsy Nan, had used to rob her face of youthfulness, and
give it the grimy, dissolute and haggard aspect which was so simple and
yet so efficient a disguise.

She worked rapidly now, changing her clothes. She could not go, or act,
as Gypsy Nan; and so she must go in her own character, go as the White
Moll--because that was the lesser danger, the one that held the only
promise of success. There wasn't any other way. She could not very well
refuse to risk her capture by the police, could she, when by so doing
she might save another's life? She could not balance in c