impulse urged her to run with frantic haste, she reached the
corner and the waiting taxicab. She gave the chauffeur an address that
would bring her to the street in the rear of Gypsy Nan's and within
reach of the lane where she had left her clothes, and, with an
injunction to hurry, sprang into the cab.

And then for a long time she sat there with her hands tightly clasped in
her lap. Her mind, her brain, her very soul itself seemed in chaos and
turmoil. There was the Sparrow, who was safe; and Danglar, who would
move heaven and hell to get her now; and the Adventurer, who--Her mind
seemed to grope around in cycles; it seemed to moil on and on and arrive
at nothing. The Adventurer had played the game--perhaps because he had
had to; but he had not risked that revolver shot in her stead because
he had had to. Who was he? How had he come there? How had he found her
there? How had he known that she had entered by that rear door behind
the portiere? She remembered how that he had offered not a single
explanation.

Almost mechanically she dismissed the taxi when at last it stopped;
and almost mechanically, as Gypsy Nan, some ten minutes later, she let
herself into the garret, and lighted the candle. She was conscious, as
she hid the White Moll's clothes away, that she was thankful she had
regained in safety even the questionable sanctuary of this wretched
place; but, strangely, thoughts of her own peril seemed somehow to be
temporarily relegated to the background.

She flung herself down on the bed--it was not Gypsy Nan's habit to
undress--and blew out the light. But she could not sleep. And hour after
hour in the darkness she tossed unrestfully. It was very strange! It
was not as it had been last night. It was not the impotent, frantic
rebellion against the horrors of her own situation, nor the fear and
terror of it, that obsessed her to-night. It was the Adventurer who
plagued her.

VIII. THE CODE MESSAGE

It was strange! Most strange! Three days had passed, and to Gypsy Nan's
lodging no one had come. The small crack under the partition that had
been impressed into service as a letter-box had remained empty. There
had been no messages--nothing--only a sinister, brooding isolation.
Since the night Rhoda Gray had left Danglar, balked, almost a madman in
his fury, in the little room over Shluker's junk shop, Danglar had not
been seen--nor the Adventurer--nor even Rough Rorke. Her only visitant
since then had been a