detective's surprise and his own.

"I had no idea that door was unlocked," said Curran helplessly.

"Nor I. Who's within? My friend, young Everard?"

"Don't know. She shoved me in here to wait until some visitor departed.
Then we are to consider a proposition I made her," said the calm
detective.

"So you have made a beginning? That's good. Don't stir. Perhaps it is as
well that you are here. Let me discover who is in here with the good
sister."

"I can go to the first room, the front office, and inquire," said
Curran.

"Never mind."

He could hear no words, only the low tones of the woman speaking; until
of a sudden the strong, manly voice of Louis, but subdued by emotion,
husky and uncertain, rose in answer to her passionate outburst.

"He's inside ... my young man ... hopes to convert her," Arthur
whispered to Curran, and they laughed together in silence. "Now I have
my own suspicion as to her motive in luring the boy here. If he goes as
he came, why I'm wrong perhaps. If there's a rumpus, I may have her
little feet in the right sort of a trap, and so save you labor, and the
rest of us money. If anything happens, Curran, leave the situation to
me. I'm anxious for a close acquaintance with Sister Claire."

Curran sat as comfortably, to the eye, as if in his own house
entertaining his friend Dillon. The latter occasionally made the very
natural reflection that this brave and skilful man lay in the trap of
just such a creature as Sister Claire. Suddenly there came a burst of
sound from the next room, exclamations, the hurrying of feet, the crash
of a chair, and the trying of the doors. A frenzied hand shook the knob
of the door at which Arthur was looking with a satisfied smile.

"Locked in?" he said to Curran, who nodded in a dazed way.

Then some kind of a struggle began on the other side of that door.
Arthur stood there like a cat ready to pounce on the foolish mouse, and
the detective glared at him like a surly dog eager to rend him, but
afraid. They could hear smothered calls for help in a woman's voice.

"If she knew how near the cat is," Arthur remarked patiently.

At last the key clicked in the lock, the door half opened, and as Arthur
pushed it inwards Sister Claire flung herself away from it, and gasped
feebly for help. She was hanging like a tiger to Louis, who in a gentle
way tried to shake her hands and arms from his neck. The young fellow's
face bore the frightful look of a terrified child s