hand, and the spectacles were off, the gray-streaked hair a tangled wig upon the pillow—and Rhoda Gray found herself staring in a numbed sort of way at a dark-haired woman who could not have been more than thirty, but whose face, with its streaks of grime and dirt, looked grotesquely and incongruously old.
II. SEVEN—THREE—NINE
For a moment neither spoke, then Gypsy Nan broke the silence with a bitter laugh. She threw back the bedclothes, and, gripping at the edge of the bed, sat up.
“The White Moll!” The words rattled in her throat. A fleck of blood showed on her lips. “Well, you know now! You're going to help me, aren't you? I—I've got to get out of here—get to a hospital.”
Rhoda Gray laid her hands firmly on the other's shoulders.
“Get back into bed,” she said steadily. “Do you want to make yourself worse? You'll kill yourself!”
Gypsy Nan pushed her away.
“Don't make me use up what little strength I've got left in talking,” she cried out piteously, and suddenly wrung her hands together. “I'm wanted by the police. If I'm caught, it's—it's that 'chair.' I couldn't have a doctor brought here, could I? How long would it be before he saw that Gypsy Nan was a fake? I can't let you go and have an ambulance, say, come and get me, can I, even with the disguise hidden away? They'd say this is where Gypsy Nan lives. There's something queer here. Where is Gypsy Nan? I've got to get away from here—away from Gypsy Nan—don't you understand? It's death one way; maybe it is the other, maybe it'll finish me to get out of here, but it's the only thing left to do. I thought some one, some one that I could trust, never mind who, would have come to-day, but-but no one came, and—and maybe now it s too late, but there's just the one chance, and I've got to take it.” Gypsy Nan tore at the shawl around her throat as though it choked her, and flung it from her shoulders. Her eyes were gleaming with an unhealthy, feverish light. “Don't you see? We get out on the street. I collapse there. You find me. I tell you my name is Charlotte Green. That's all you know. There isn't much chance that anybody at the hospital would recognize me. I've got money. I take a private room. Don't you understand?”
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