ry, of
course--but the story was the result of having been caught in the act
of stealing twenty thousand dollars in cash! What was there to say--and,
above all, to this man, whose reputation for callous brutality in the
handling of those who fell into his hands had earned him the sobriquet
of "Rough" Rorke? Sick at heart, desperate, but with her hands clenched
now, she stood there, while the man felt unceremoniously over her
clothing for a concealed weapon.

Finding none, he stooped, picked up the flashlight, tested it, and found
it broken from its fall.

"Too bad you bust this, we'll have to go out in the dark after I switch
off the light," he said with unpleasant facetiousness. "I didn't
have one with me, or time to get one, when I got tipped off there was
something doing here to-night." He caught her ungently by the arm.
"Well, come along, my pretty lady! This'll make a stir, this will! The
White Moll!" He led her to the electric-light switch, turned off the
light, and, with his grasp tight upon her, made for the front door. He
chuckled in a sinister manner. "Say, you're a prize, you are! And pretty
clever, too, aren't you? I wasn't looking for a woman to pull this. The
White Moll! Some saint!"

Rhoda Gray shivered. Disgrace, ruin, stared her in the face. A sea of
faces in a courtroom, morbid faces, hideous faces, leered at her. Gray
walls rose before her, walls that shut out sunshine and hope, pitiless,
cold things that seemed to freeze the blood in her veins. And to-night,
in just a few minutes more--a cell!

From the street outside came the sound of some one making a cheery, but
evidently a somewhat inebriated, attempt to whistle some ragtime air.
It seemed to enhance her misery, to enhance by contrast in its care-free
cheeriness the despair and misery that were eating into her soul.
Her hands clenched and unclenched. If there were only a
chance--somewhere--somehow! If only she were not a woman! If she could
only fight this hulking form that gripped so brutally at her arm!

Rough Rorke opened the door, and pulled her out to the street. She
shrank back instinctively. It was quite light here from a nearby street
lamp, and the owner of the whistle, a young man, fashionably dressed,
decidedly unsteady on his legs, and just opposite the door as they came
out, had stopped both his whistle and his progress along the street to
stare at them owlishly.

"'Ullo!" said the young man thickly. "What'sh all this about--eh