As she drew closer to the policeman, she called out to him. He turned and came running toward, and, as he reached her, after a sharp glance into her face, touched his helmet respectfully.
“What's wrong with the White Moll to-night?” he asked pleasantly.
“There's—there's a woman down there”—Rhoda Gray was breathless from her run—“on the sidewalk. She needs help at once.”
“Drunk?” inquired the officer laconically.
“No, I'm sure it's anything but that,” Rhoda Gray answered quickly. “She appears to be very sick. I think you had better summon an ambulance without delay.”
“All right!” agreed the officer. “There's a patrol box down there in the direction you came from. We'll have a look at her on the way.” He started briskly forward with Rhoda Gray beside him. “Who is she d'ye know?” he asked.
“She said her name was Charlotte Green,” Rhoda Gray replied. “That's all she could, or would, say about herself.”
“Then she ain't a regular around here, or I guess you'd know her!” grunted the policeman.
Rhoda Gray made no answer.
They reached Gypsy Nan. The officer bent over her, then picked her up and carried her to the tenement doorway.
“I guess you're right, all right! She's bad! I'll send in a call,” he said, and started on the run down the street.
Gypsy Nan had lost consciousness. Rhoda Gray settled herself on the doorstep, supporting the woman's head in her lap. Her face had set again in grim, hard, perplexed lines. There seemed something unnatural, something menacingly weird, something even uncanny about it all. Perhaps it was because it seemed as though she could so surely foresee the end. Gypsy Nan would not live through the night. Something told her that. The woman's masquerade, for whatever purpose it had been assumed, was over. “You'll play the game, won't you? You'll see me through?” There seemed something pitifully futile in those words now!
The officer returned.
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