Gangsters -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction; Mystery fiction
“Show the candle at the window, Rhoda! The Sparrow is waiting for it in
the yard below. Then open the door for them.”
A sudden terror and fear seized her. The Adventurer was not fit, after
what he had been through to-night to cope with Danglar. He had been
limping badly even a few minutes ago. It seemed to her, as she rushed
across the garret and snatched up the candle, that Danglar was getting
the best of it even now. And the Adventurer could have shot him down,
and been warranted in doing it! She reached the window, waved the candle
frantically several times across the pane, then setting the candle down
on the window ledge, she ran for the door.
She looked back again, as she turned the key in the lock. With a crash,
pitching over the chair, both men went to the floor--and the Adventurer
was underneath. She cried out in alarm, and wrenched the door open--and
stood for an instant there on the threshold in a startled way.
They couldn't be coming already! The Sparrow hadn't had time even to
get out of the yard. But there were footsteps in the hall below, many of
them. She stepped out on the landing; it was too dark to see, but...
A sudden yell as she showed even in the faint light of the open garret
door, the quicker rush of feet, reached her from below.
“The White Moll! That's her! The White Moll!” She flung herself flat
down, wrenching both the automatic and the revolver from her pocket. She
understood now! That was Pinkie Bonn's voice. It was the gang arriving
to divide up the spoils, not the Sparrow and the police. Her mind was
racing now with lightning speed. If they got her, they would get the
Adventurer in there, too, before the police could intervene. She
must hold this little landing where she lay now, hold those short,
ladder-like steps that the oncoming footsteps from below there had
almost reached.
She fired once--twice--again; but high, over their heads, to check the
rush.
Yells answered her. A vicious tongue-flame from a revolver, another
and another, leaped out at her from the black below; the spat, spat of
bullets sounded from behind her as they struck the walls.
Again she fired. They were at least more cautious now in their rush--no
one seemed anxious to be first upon the stairs. She cast a wild glance
through the open door into the garret at her side. The two forms in
there, on their feet again, were spinning around and around with
the strange, lurching gyrations of automatons--and then she saw the
Adventurer whip a terrific blow to Danglar's face--and Danglar fall and
lie still--and the Adventurer come leaping toward her.
But faces were showing now above the level of the floor, and there was
suddenly an increased uproar from further back in the rear until it
seemed that pandemonium itself were loosed.
“It's the police! The police behind us!” she heard Shluker's voice
shriek out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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