"I have it," said Ronicky, "and that's the same thing."
"I'll take no charity," declared Jerry Smith.
"You'll do what I tell you," said Ronicky Doone. "You been bothering enough, son. Go tell Caroline what I've said," he went on to the girl. "Let her know that they's no chain on anybody, and, if she wants to find Bill Gregg, all she's got to do is go across the street. You understand?"
"But, even if I were to tell her, how could she go, Ronicky Doone, when she's watched?"
"If she can't make a start and get to a man that loves her and is waiting for her, right across the street, she ain't worth worrying about," said Ronicky sternly. "Do we go this way?"
She hurried before them. "You've waited too long--you've waited too long!" she kept whispering in her terror, as she led them through the door, paused to turn out the light behind her, and then conducted them down a passage like that on the other side of the treasure chamber.
It was all deadly black and deadly silent, but the rustling of the girl's dress, as she hurried before them, was their guide. And always her whisper came back: "Hurry! Hurry! I fear it is too late!"
Suddenly they were climbing up a narrow flight of steps. They stood under the starlight in a back yard, with houses about them on all sides.
"Go down that alley, and you will be on the street," said the girl. "Down that alley, and then hurry--run--find the first taxi. Will you do that?"
"We'll sure go, and we'll wait for Caroline Smith--and you, too!"
"Don't talk madness! Why will you stay? You risk everything for yourselves and for me!"
Jerry Smith was already tugging at Ronicky's arm to draw him away, but the Westerner was stubbornly pressing back to the girl. He had her hand and would not leave it.
"If you don't show up, lady," he said, "I'll come to find you. You hear?"
"Bless you, but never venture near again. But, oh, Ronicky Doone, I wish ten other men in the whole world could be half so generous and wild as you!" Suddenly her hand was slipped from his, and she was gone into the shadows.
Down the alley went Jerry Smith, but he returned in an agony of dread to find that Ronicky Doone was still running here and there, in a blind confusion, probing the shadowy corners of the yard in search of the girl.