Gangsters -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction; Mystery fiction
The revolver was gone! Its loss, pregnant with a hundred ominous
possibilities, seemed to bring a panic fear upon her, holding her for a
moment inert--and then she rushed frantically to the cot. Perhaps it had
fallen out of her pocket during the hours she had lain there asleep.
She searched the folds of the soiled and crumpled blanket, that was the
cot's sole covering, then snatched the blanket completely off the cot
and shook it; and then, down on her knees, she searched the floor under
the cot. There was no sign of the revolver.
Rhoda Gray stood up, and stared in a stunned way about her. Was this,
then, the explanation of her having seemingly been left undisturbed
here all through the day? Had some one, after all, been here, and--? She
shook her head suddenly with a quick, emphatic gesture of dissent.
The door was still locked, she could see the key on the inside; and,
besides, as a theory, it wasn't logical. They wouldn't have taken her
revolver and left her placidly asleep!
The loss of the revolver was a vital matter. It was her one safeguard;
the one means by which she could first gain and afterwards hold the
whip-hand over Danglar in the interview she proposed to have with him;
the one means of escape, the last resort, if she herself were cornered
and fell into his power. It had sustained her more than once, that
resolution to turn it against herself if she were in extremity. It meant
everything to her, that weapon, and it was gone now; but the panic that
had seized upon her was gone too, and she could think rationally and
collectively again.
Last night, or rather this morning, when she had made her way back to
the shed out there in the lane behind the garret, she had been in a
state of almost utter exhaustion. She had changed from the clothes of
the White Moll to those of Gypsy Nan, but she must have done so almost
mechanically for she had no concrete recollection of it. It was quite
likely then, even more than probable, that she had left the revolver in
the pocket of her other clothes; for she had certainly had, not only her
revolver, but her flashlight and her skeleton keys with her when she had
visited old Luertz's place last night, and later on too, when she had
jumped into that automobile in front of the Silver Sphinx, she had had
her revolver, for she had used it to force the chauffeur out of the
car--and she had no one of those articles now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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