n't you get another lamp?" he grumbled--and started
toward the rear of the garret.

Rhoda Gray watched him silently. She did not care to explain that she
had not replaced the lamp for the very simple reason that it gave far
too much light here in the garret to be safe--for her! She watched him,
with her hand in the pocket of her greasy skirt clutched around another
legacy of Gypsy Nan--her revolver. And now she became conscious that
from the moment she had entered the garret, her fingers, hidden in that
pocket, had sought and clung to the weapon. The man filled her with
detestation and fear; and somehow she feared him more now in what he was
trying to make an ingratiating mood, than she had feared him in the full
flood of his rage and anger that other night at Shluker's place.

She drew back a little toward the cot bed against the wall, drew back to
give him free passage to the door when he should return again, her eyes
still holding on the far end of the garret, where, with the slope of the
roof, the ceiling was no more than shoulder high. There seemed something
horribly weird and grotesque in the scene before her. He had pushed the
narrow trap-door in the ceiling upward, and had thrust candle and
head through the opening, and the faint yellow light, seeping back and
downward in flickering, uncertain rays, suggested the impression of
a gruesome, headless figure standing there hazily outlined in the
surrounding murk. It chilled her; she clutched at her shawl, drew it
more closely about her, and edged still nearer to the wall.

And then Danglar closed the trap-door again, and came back with the
candle in one hand, and one of the bulky packages of banknotes from the
hiding place in the other. He set the candle down on the washstand, and
began to distribute the money through his various pockets.

He was smiling with curious complacency.

"It was your job to play the spider to the White Moll if she ever showed
up again here in your parlor," he said. "Maybe somebody tipped her off
to keep away, maybe she was too wily; but, anyway, since you have not
sent out any word, it is evident that our little plans along that
line didn't work, since she has failed to come back to pay a call of
gratitude to you. I don't suppose there's anything to add to that, eh,
Bertha? No report to make?"

"No," said Rhoda Gray shortly. "I haven't any report to make."

"Well, no matter!" said Danglar. He laughed out shortly. "There are
other wa