"How long will it last? What is doing against it?" said Arthur.

"Ask me easier questions. Anyway, I'm only consoling the Senator for the hard knocks he's getting for the sake of old Ireland. Cheer up, Senator."

"Even when Fritters made his bow," said the mournful Senator, "they made game of me," and the tears rose to his eyes. Arthur felt a secret rage at this grief.

"You heard of Fritters?" and Arthur nodded. "He arrived, and the Columbia College crowd started him off with a grand banquet. He's an Oxford historian with a new recipe for cooking history. The Columbia professor who stood sponsor for him at the banquet told the world that Fritters would show how English government worked among the Irish, and how impossible is the Anglo-Saxon idea among peoples in whom barbarism does not die with the appearance and advance of civilization. He touched up the elegant parades and genial shindys of St. Patrick's Day as 'inexplicable dumb shows and noise,'—see Hamlet's address to the players—and hoped the banks of our glorious Hudson would never witness the bloody rows peculiar to the banks of the immortal Boyne. Then he dragged in the Senator."

"What's his little game?" Arthur asked.

"Scientific ridicule ... the press plays to the galleries, and Fritters to the boxes ... it's a part of the general scheme ... I tell you there's going to be fun galore this winter ... and the man in London is at the root of the deviltry."

"What's to be done?"

"If we only knew," the Senator groaned. "If we could only get them under our fists, in a fair and square tussle!"

"I think the hinge of the Livingstone plan is Sister Claire, the escaped nun," Grahame said thoughtfully. "She's the star of the combination, appeals to the true blue church-member with descriptions of the horrors of convents. Her book is out, and you'll find a copy waiting for you at home. Dime novels are prayer-books beside it. French novels are virtuous compared with it. It is raising an awful row. On the strength of it McMeeter has begun an enterprise for the relief of imprisoned nuns—to rescue them—house them for a time, and see them safely married. Sister Claire is to be matron of the house of escaped nuns. No one doubts her experience. Now isn't that McMeeter all over? But see the book, the Confessions of an Escaped Nun."

"You think she's the hinge of the great scheme?"

"She has the public eye and ear," said Grahame, thinking out his own theory as he talked. "Her book is the book of the hour ... reviewed by the press ... the theme of pulpits ... the text of speeches galore ... common workmen thump one another over it at the bench. Now all the others, Bradford, Fritters, the Columbia professors, Bitterkin and his followers, seem to play second to her book. They keep away from her society, yet her strongest backing is from them. You know what I mean. It has occurred to me that if we got her history ... it must be pretty savory ... and printed it ... traced her connection with the Livingstone crowd ... it would be quite a black eye for the Honorable Quincy."

"By George, but you've struck it," cried Arthur waking up to the situation. "If she's the hinge, she's the party to strike at. Tell me, what became of Curran?"

"Lucky thought," shouted Grahame. "He's in town yet. The very man for us."

"I'm going to have it out with Livingstone," said Arthur, with a clear vision of an English prison and the patient woman who watched its walls from a window in the town. "In fact, I must have it out with Livingstone. He's good game, and I'd like to bring him back from England in a bag. Perhaps Sister Claire may be able to provide the bag."

"Hands on it," said Grahame, and they touched palms over the table, while the Senator broke into smiles. He had unlimited faith in his nephew.

"Lord Conny gave me an outline of Livingstone's program before I left. He's worried over the effect it's going to have on his alliance scheme, and he cursed the Minister sincerely. He'll help us. Let's begin with Sister Claire in the hope of bagging the whole crowd. Let Curran hunt up her history. Above all let him get evidence that Livingstone provides the money for her enterprise."

Having come to a conclusion on this important matter, they dropped into more personal topics.

"Strangely enough," said Grahame cheerfully, "my own destiny is mixed up with this whole business. The bulwark of Livingstone in one quarter is John Everard. I am wooing, in the hope of winning, my future father-in-law."

"He's very dead," the Senator thought.

"The art of wooing a father-in-law!—what an art!" murmured Grahame. "The mother-in-law is easy. She wishes her daughter married. Papa doesn't. At least in this case, with a girl like Mona."

"Has Everard anything against you?"

"A whole litany of crimes."

"What's wrong with Everard?"

"He was born the night of the first big wind, and he has had it in for the whole world ever since. He's perverse. Nothing but another big wind will turn him round."

Seeing Arthur puzzled over these allusions, Grahame explained.

"Think of such a man having children like the twins, little lumps of sweetness ... like Louis ... heavens! if I live to be the father of such a boy, life will be complete ... like my Mona ... oh!"

He stalked about the room throwing himself into poses of ecstasy and adoration before an imaginary goddess to the delight of the Senator.

"I've been there myself," Arthur commented unmoved. "To the question: how do you hope to woo and win Everard?"

"First, by my book. It's the story of just such a fool as he: a chap who wears the American flag in bed and waves it at his meals, as a nightgown and a napkin; then, he is a religious man of the kind that finds no religion to his liking, and would start one of his own if he thought it would pay; finally, he is a purist in politics, believes in blue glass, drinks ten glasses of filtered water a day, which makes him as blue as the glass, wears paper collars, and won't let his son be a monk because there are too many in the world. Now, Everard will laugh himself weak over this character. He's so perverse that he will never see himself in the mirror which I have provided."

"Rather risky, I should think."

"But that's not all," Grahame went on, "since you are kind enough to listen. I'm going to wave the American flag, eat it, sing it, for the next year, myself. Attend: the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers are going to sit on what is left of Plymouth Rock next spring, and make speeches and read poems, and eat banquets. I am to be invited to sing, to read the poem. Vandervelt is to see to that. Think of it, a wild Irishman, an exile, a conspirator against the British Crown, a subject of the Pope, reading or singing the praises of the pilgrims, the grim pilgrims. Turn in your grave, Cotton Mather, as my melodious verses harrow your ears."

"Will that impress John Everard?"

"Or give him a fatal fit. The book and the poem ought to do the business. He can't resist. 'Never was Everard in this humor wooed, never was Everard in this humor won.' Oh, that Shakespeare had known an Everard, and embalmed him like a fly in the everlasting amber of his verse. But should these things fail, I have another matter. While Everard rips up Church and priest and doctrine at his pleasure, he has one devotion which none may take liberties with. He swears by the nuns. He is foaming at the mouth over the injury and insult offered them by the Confessions of Sister Claire. We expose this clever woman. Picture me, then, the despised suitor, after having pleased him by my book, and astounded him with my poem, and mesmerized him with the exposure of Claire, standing before him with silent lips but eyes speaking: I want your daughter. Can even this perverse man deny me? Don't you think I have a chance?"

"Not with Everard," said the Senator solemnly. "He's simply coke."

"You should write a book, Doyle, on the art of wooing a father-in-law, and explain what you have left out here: how to get away with the dog."

"Before marriage," said the ready wit, "the girl looks after the dog; after marriage the dog can be trained to bite the father-in-law."

Arthur found the Confessions of an Escaped Nun interesting reading from many points of view, and spent the next three days analyzing the book of the hour. His sympathy for convent life equaled his understanding of it. He had come to understand and like Sister Mary Magdalene, in spite of a prejudice against her costume; but the motive and spirit of the life she led were as yet beyond him. Nevertheless, he could see how earnestly the Confessions lied about what it pretended to expose. The smell of the indecent and venal informer exhaled from the pages. The vital feature, however, lay in the revelation of Sister Claire's character, between the lines. Beneath the vulgarity and obscenity, poorly veiled in a mock-modest verbiage, pulsated a burning sensuality reaching the horror of mania. A well-set trap would have easy work in catching the feet of a woman related to the nymphs. Small wonder that the Livingstone party kept her afar off from their perfumed and reputable society while she did her nasty work. The book must have been oil to that conflagration raging among the Irish. The abuse of the press, the criticism of their friends, the reproaches of their own, the hostility of the government, the rage and grief at the failure of their hopes, the plans to annoy and cripple them, scorched indeed their sensitive natures; but the book of the Escaped Nun, defiling their holy ones so shamelessly, ate like acid into their hearts. Louis came in, when he had completed his analysis of the volume, and begun to think up a plan of action. The lad fingered the book gingerly, and said timidly:

"I'm going to see ... I have an appointment with this terrible woman for to-morrow afternoon. In fact, I saw her this morning. I went to her office with Sister Mary Magdalen."

"Of course the good Sister has a scheme to convert the poor thing!" Arthur said lightly, concealing his delight and surprise under a pretense of indifference.

"Well, yes," and the lad laughed and blushed. "And she may succeed too. The greater the sin the deeper the repentance. The unfortunate woman——"

"Who is making a fortune on her book by the way——"

"——received us very kindly. Sister Magdalen had been corresponding with her. She wept in admitting that her fall seemed beyond hope. She felt so tangled in her own sins that she knew no way to get out of them. Really, she was so sincere. When we were leaving she begged me to call again, and as I have to return to the seminary Monday I named to-morrow afternoon."

"You may then have the honor of converting her."

"It would be an honor," Louis replied stoutly.

"Try it," said Arthur after thinking the matter over. "I know what force your arguments will have with her. And if you don't object I'll stay ... by the way, where is her office?"

"In a quiet business building on Bleecker Street, near Broadway."

"If you don't mind I'll stay outside in the hall, and rush in to act as altar-boy, when she agrees to 'vert."

"I'm going for all your ridicule, Arthur."

"No objection, but keep a cool head, and bear in mind that I am in the hall outside."

He suspected the motive of Sister Claire, both in making this appointment, and in playing at conversion with Sister Magdalen. Perhaps it might prove the right sort of trap for her cunning feet. He doubted the propriety of exposing Louis to the fangs of the beast, and for a moment he thought to warn him of the danger. But he had no right to interfere in Sister Magdalen's affair, and if a beginning had to be made this adventure could be used effectively. He forgot the affair within the hour, in the business of hunting up Curran.

He had a double reason for seeking the detective. Besides the task of ferreting out the record of Sister Claire, he wished to get news of the Endicotts. Aunt Lois had slipped out of life two days after her return from Europe. The one heart that loved him truly beat for him no more. By this time her vengeance must have fallen, and Sonia, learning the full extent of her punishment, must now be writhing under a second humiliation and disappointment. He did not care to see her anguish, but he did care to hear of the new effort that would undoubtedly be made to find the lost husband. Curran would know. He met him that afternoon on the street near his own house.

"Yes, I'm back in the old business," he said proudly; "the trip home so freshened me that I feel like myself again. Besides, I have my own home, here it is, and my wife lives with me. Perhaps you have heard of her, La Belle Colette."

"And seen her too ... a beautiful and artistic dancer."

"You must come in now and meet her. She is a trifle wild, you know, and once she took to drink; but she's a fine girl, a real good fellow, and worth twenty like me. Come right in, and we'll talk business later."

La Belle Colette! The dancer at a cheap seaside resort! The wild creature who drank and did things! This shrewd, hard fellow, who faced death as others faced a wind, was deeply in love and happy in her companionship. What standard of womanhood and wifehood remained to such men? However, his wonder ceased when he had bowed to La Belle Colette in her own parlor, heard her sweet voice, and looked into the most entrancing eyes ever owned by a woman, soft, fiery, tender, glad, candid eyes. He recalled the dancer, leaping like a flame about the stage. In the plainer home garments he recognized the grace, quickness, and gaiety of the artist. Her charm won him at once, the spell which her rare kind have ever been able to cast about the hearts of men. He understood why the flinty detective should be in love with his wife at times, but not why he should continue in that state. She served them with wine and cigars, rolled a cigarette for herself, chatted with the ease and chumminess of a good fellow, and treated Arthur with tenderness.

"Richard has told me so much of you," she explained.

"I have so admired your exquisite art," he replied, "that we are already friends."

"Que vous etes bien gentil," she murmured, and her tone would have caressed the wrinkles out of the heart of old age.

"Yes, I'm back at the old game," said Curran, when they got away from pleasantry. "I'm chasing after Tom Jones. It's more desperate than ever. His old aunt died some days back, and left Tom's wife a dollar, and Tom's son another dollar."

"I can fancy her," said Colette with a laugh, "repeating to herself that magic phrase, two dollars, for hours and hours. Hereafter she will get weak at sight of the figure two, and things that go in twos, like married people, she will hate."

"How easy to see that you are French, Colette," said Arthur, as a compliment. She threw him a kiss from her pretty fingers, and gave a sidelong look at Curran.

"There's a devil in her," Arthur thought.

"The will was very correct and very sound," resumed the detective. "No hope in a contest if they thought of such a thing among the West ... the Jones'. The heirs took pity on her, and gave her a lump for consolation. She took it and cursed them for their kindness. Her rage was something to see. She is going to use that lump, somewhere about twenty-five thousand, I think, to find her accursed Tom. How do I know? That's part of the prize for me if I catch up with Tom Jones within three years. And I draw a salary and expenses all the time. You should have seen Mrs. Tom the day I went to see her. Colette," with a smile for his wife, "your worst trouble with a manager was a summer breeze to it. You're a white-winged angel in your tempers compared with Mrs. Tom Jones. Her language concerning the aunt and the vanished nephew was wonderful. I tried to remember it, and I couldn't."

"I can see her, I can feel with her," cried La Belle Colette, jumping to her feet, and rushing through a pantomime of fiendish rage, which made the men laugh to exhaustion. As she sat down she said with emphasis, "She must find him, and through you. I shall help, and so will our friend Dillon. It's an outrage for any man to leave a woman in such a scrape ... for a mere trifle."

"She has her consolations," said the detective; "but the devil in her is not good-natured like the devil in you, Colette. She wants to get hold of Tom and cut him in little bits for what he has made her suffer."

"Did you get out any plans?" said Arthur.

"One. Look for him between here and Boston. That's my wife's idea. Tom Jones was not clever, but she says ... Say it yourself, my dear."

"Rage and disappointment, or any other strong feeling," said the woman sharply, with strong puffs at her cigarette, "turns a fool into a wise man for a minute. It would be just like this fool to have a brilliant interval while he dreamed of murdering his clever wife. Then he hit upon a scheme to cheat the detectives. It's easy, if you know how stupid they are, except Dick. Tom Jones is here, on his own soil. He was not going to run away with a million and try to spend it in the desert of Sahara. He's here, or in Boston, enjoying the sight of his wife stewing in poverty. It would be just like the sneak to do her that turn."

She looked wickedly at Arthur. What a face! Thin, broad, yet finely proportioned, with short, flaxen locks framing it, delicate eyebrows marking the brow and emphasizing the beautiful eyes. A woman to be feared, an evil spirit in some of her moods.

"You tried the same plan," Arthur began——

"But he had no partner to sharpen his wits," she interrupted. Arthur bowed.

"That makes all the difference in the world," he said sincerely. "Let me hope that you will give your husband some hints in a case which I am going to give him."

He described the career of Sister Claire briefly, and expressed the wish to learn as much as possible of her earlier history. The Currans laughed.

"I had that job before," said the detective. "If the Jones case were only half a hundred times harder I might be happy. Her past is unknown except that she has been put out of many convents. I never looked up her birthplace or her relatives. Her name is Kate Kerrigan along with ten other names. She drinks a little, and just now holds a fine stake in New York ... There's the whole of it."

"Not much to build upon, if one wished to worry Claire, or other people."

"Depend upon it," Colette broke in, "that Kate Kerrigan has a pretty history behind her. I'll bet she was an actress once. I've seen her stage poses ... then her name, catchy ... and the way she rolls her eyes and looks at that congregation of elders, and deacons and female saints, when she sets them shivering over the nastiness that's coming."

Curran glanced at her with a look of inquiry. She sat on the window-sill like a bird, watching the street without, half listening to the men within. Arthur made a close study of the weird creature, sure that a strain of madness ran in her blood. Her looks and acts had the grace of a wild nature, which purrs, and kills, and purrs again. Quiet and dreamy this hour, in her dances she seemed half mad with vitality.

"Tell him what you learned about her," said Curran, and then to Arthur, "She can do a little work herself, and likes it."

"To hunt a poor soul down, never!" she cried. "But when a mean thing is hiding what every one has a right to know, I like to tear the truth out of her ... like your case of Tom Jones. Sister Claire is downright mean. Maybe she can't help it. But I know the nuns, and they're God's own children. She knows it too, but, just for the sake of money, she's lying night and day against them, and against her own conscience. There's a devil in her. I could do a thing like that for deviltry, and I could pull a load of money out of her backers, not for the money, but for deviltry too, to skin a miser like McMeeter, and a dandy like Bradford. And she's just skinning them, to the last cent."

She took a fit of laughing, then, over the embarrassment of Sister Claire's chief supporters.

"Here's what I know about her," she went on. "The museum fakirs are worshiping her as a wonderful success. They seem to feel by instinct that she's one of themselves, but a genius. They have a lot of fairy stories about her, but here's the truth: Bishop Bradford and Erastus McMeeter are her backers. The Bishop plays high society for her, and the bawler looks after the mob. She gets fifty per cent. of everything, and they take all the risks. Her book, I know you read it, chock-full of lies, thrilling lies, for the brothers and the sisters who can't read French novels in public—well, she owns the whole thing and gets all the receipts except a beggar's ten per cent., thrown to the publishers ... and they're the crack publishers of the town, the Hoppertons ... but all the same they dassent let their names go on the title-page ... they had that much shame ... so old Johnson, whom nobody knows, is printer and publisher. The book is selling like peanuts. There's more than one way of selling your soul to the devil."

After this surprising remark, uttered without a smile, she looked out of the window sadly, while Curran chuckled with delight.

"It takes the woman to measure the woman," he said. Arthur was delighted at this information.

"I wish you would learn some more about her, Mrs. Curran."

She mimicked the formal name in dumb show.

"Well, La Belle Colette, then," he said laughing. She came over to him and sat on the arm of his chair, her beautiful eyes fixed on his with an expression well understood by both the men.

"You are going to hunt that dreadful creature down," said she. "I won't help you. What do you know about her motives? She may have good reason for playing the part ... she may have suffered?"

"One must protect his own," replied Arthur grimly.

"What are we all but wolves that eat one another?—lambs by day, wolves in the night. We all play our part——"

"All the world's a stage, of course——"

"Even you are playing a part," with sudden violence. "I have studied you, young man, since you came in. Lemme read your palm, and tell you."

She held his hand long, then tossed it aside with petulance, parted his hair and peered into his face, passed her hands lightly over his head for the prominences, dashed unexpected tears from her eyes, and then said with decision:

"There are two of you in there," tapping his chest. "I can't tell why, but I can read, or feel one man, and outside I see another."

"Your instinct is correct," said Arthur seriously. "I have long been aware of the same fact, peculiar and painful. But for a long time the outside man has had the advantage. Now with regard to this Sister Claire, not to change the subject too suddenly——"

Colette deserted his chair, and went to her husband. She had lost interest in the matter and would not open her lips again. The men discussed the search for Endicott, and the inquiry into the history of Sister Claire, while the dancer grew drowsy after the fashion of a child, her eyes became misty, her red lips pouted, her voice drawled faint and complaining music in whispers, and Curran looked often and long at her while he talked. Arthur went away debating with himself. His mind had developed the habit of reminiscence. Colette reminded him of a face, which he had seen ... no, not a face but a voice ... or was it a manner?... or was it her look, which seemed intimate, as of earlier acquaintance?... what was it? It eluded him however. He felt happy and satisfied, now that he had set Curran on the track of the unclean beast.



CHAPTER XX.

THE ESCAPED NUN.

Sister Claire sat in her office the next afternoon awaiting Louis as the gorged spider awaits the fly, with desire indeed, but without anxiety. Her office consisted of three rooms, opening into one another within, each connected by doors with the hall without. A solemn youth kept guard in the antechamber, a bilious lad whose feverish imagination enshrined Sister Claire and McMeeter on the same altar, and fed its fires on the promises of the worthy pair some day to send him on a mission as glorious as their own. The furnishings had the severe simplicity of the convent. The brilliant costume of the woman riveted the eye by the very dulness of her surroundings. At close view her beauty seemed more spiritual than in her public appearances. The heavy eyebrows were a blemish indeed, but like a beauty-spot emphasized the melting eyes and the peachy skin.

The creamy habit of the nun and the white coif about her head left only her oval face and her lovely hands visible; but what a revelation were these of loveliness and grace! One glance at her tender face and the little hands would have scattered to the winds the slanders of Colette. Success had thrilled but not coarsened the escaped nun. As Grahame had surmised, she was now the hinge of Livingstone's scheme. The success of her book and the popularity of her lectures, together with her discreet behavior, had given her immense influence with her supporters and with the leaders. Their money poured into her lap. She did not need it while her book sold and her lectures were crowded.

The office saw come and go the most distinguished visitors. Even the English historian did not begin to compare with her in glory, and so far his lectures had not been well attended. Thinking of many things with deep pride, she remembered that adversity had divided the leisure of her table with prosperity. Hence, she could not help wondering how long this fine success would last. Her peculiar fate demanded an end to it sometime. As if in answer to her question, the solemn youth in the antechamber knocked at her door, and announced with decorum Mr. Richard Curran.

"I have made the inquiries you wanted," Curran said, as he took a chair at her bidding. "Young Everard is a special pet of Dillon. This boy is the apple of his eye. And Everard, the father, is an ardent supporter of Livingstone. I think you had better drop this affair, if you would escape a tangle—a nasty tangle."

"If the boy is willing, where's the tangle, Mr. Curran?" she answered placidly.

"Well, you know more about the thing than I can tell you," he said, as if worried. "You know them all. But I can't help warning you against this Dillon. If you lay your hand on anything of his, I'm of opinion that this country will not be big enough for you and him at the same time."

"I shall get him also, and that'll put an end to his enmity. He's a fine fellow. He's on my track, but you'll see how enchantment will put him off it. Now, don't grumble. I'll be as tender and sweet with the boy as a siren. You will come in only when I feel that the spell doesn't work. Rely on me to do the prudent thing."

That he did not rely on her his expression showed clearly.

"You have made a great hit in this city, Sister Claire," he began——

"And you think I am about to ruin my chances of a fortune?" she interrupted. "Well, I am willing to take the risk, and you have nothing to say about it. You know your part. Go into the next room, and wait for your cue. I'll bet any sum that you'll never get the cue. If you do, be sure to make a quick entrance."

He looked long at her and sighed, but made no pretense to move. She rose, and pointed to the third room of the suite. Sheepishly, moodily, in silent protest, he obeyed the gesture and went out humbly. Before that look the brave detective surrendered like a slave to his chains. The door had hardly closed behind him, when the office-boy solemnly announced Louis, and at a sign from Sister Claire ushered in the friend of Arthur Dillon. She received him with downcast eyes, standing at a little distance. With a whispered welcome and a drooping head, she pointed to a seat. Louis sat down nervous and overawed, wishing that he had never undertaken this impossible and depressing task. Who was he to be dealing with such a character as this dubious and disreputable woman?

"I feared you would not come," she began in a very low tone. "I feared you would misunderstand ... what can one like you understand of sin and misery?... but thank Heaven for your courage ... I may yet owe to you my salvation!"

"I was afraid," said the lad frankly, gladdened by her cunning words. "I don't know of what ... but I suppose it was distrust of myself. If I can be of any service to you how glad I shall be!"

"Oh, you can, you can," she murmured, turning her beautiful eyes on him. Her voice failed her, and she had to struggle with her sobs.

"What do you think I can do for you?" he asked, to relieve the suspense.

"I shall tell you that later," she replied, and almost burst out laughing. "It will be simple and easy for you, but no one else can satisfy me. We are alone. I must tell you my story, that you may be the better able to understand the service which I shall ask of you. It is a short story, but terrible ... especially to one like you ... promise me that you will not shrink, that you will not despise me——"

"I have no right to despise you," said Louis, catching his breath.

She bowed her head to hide a smile, and appeared to be irresolute for a moment. Then with sudden, and even violent, resolve, she drew a chair to his side, and began the history of her wretched career. Her position was such, that to see her face he had to turn his head; but her delicate hands rested on the arm of his chair, clasped now, and again twisted with anguish, and then stretched out with upward palms appealing for pity, or drooping in despair. She could see his profile, and watch the growing uneasiness, the shame of innocence brought face to face with dirt unspeakable, the mortal terror of a pure boy in the presence of Phryne. With this sport Sister Claire had been long familiar.

Her caressing voice and deep sorrow stripped the tale of half its vileness. At times her voice fell to a breath. Then she bent towards him humbly, and a perfume swept over him like a breeze from the tropics. The tale turned him to stone. Sister Claire undoubtedly drew upon her imagination and her reading for the facts, since it rarely falls to the lot of one woman to sound all the depths of depravity. Louis had little nonsense in his character. At first his horror urged him to fly from the place, but whenever the tale aroused this feeling in him, the cunning creature broke forth into a strain of penitence so sweet and touching that he had not the heart to desert her. At the last she fell upon her knees and buried her face in his lap, crying out:

"If you do not hate me now ... after all this ... then take pity on me."

* * * * *

Arthur sauntered into the hall outside the office of Sister Claire about half-past four. He had forgotten the momentous interview which bid so fair to end in the conversion of the escaped nun; also his declaration to be within hailing distance in case of necessity. In a lucky moment, however, the thought of Sister Mary Magdalen and her rainbow enterprise, so foolish, so incredible, came to his mind, and sent him in haste to the rescue of his friend. Had Louis kept his engagement and received the vows and the confession of the audacious tool of Livingstone? No sound came from the office. It would hardly do for him to make inquiry.

He observed that Sister Claire's office formed a suite of three rooms. The door of the first looked like the main entrance. It had the appearance of use, and within he heard the cough of the solemn office-boy. A faint murmur came from the second room. This must be the private sanctum of the spider; this murmur might be the spider's enchantment over the fly. What should the third room be? The trap? He turned the knob and entered swiftly and silently, much to the 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 struggling for life against hopeless odds—mingled despair and pain. Arthur remained quietly in the entrance, and the detective glared over his shoulder warningly at Claire. At sight of the man who stood there, she would have shrieked in her horror and fright, but that sound died away in her throat. She loosened her grip, and stood staring a moment, then swiftly and meaningly began to arrange her disordered clothing. Louis made a dash for the door, seeing only a way of escape and not recognizing his friend. Arthur shook him.

"Ah, you will go converting before your time," he said gayly.

"Oh, Arthur, thank God——" the lad stammered.

"Seize him," Claire began to shriek, very cautiously however. "Hold him, gentlemen. Get the police. He is an emissary of the papists——"

"Let me go," Louis cried in anguish.

"Steady all round," Arthur answered with a laugh. "Sister Claire, if you want the police raise your voice. One harlot more on the Island will not matter. Louis, get your nerve, man. Did I not tell you I would be in the hall? Go home, and leave me to deal with this perfect lady. Look after him," he flung at Curran, and closed the door on them, quite happy at the result of Sister Magdalen's scheme of conversion.

He did not see the gesture from Curran which warned Sister Claire to make terms in a hurry with this dangerous young man. The fury stood at the far end of the office, burning with rage and uncertainty. Having fallen into her own trap, she knew not what to do. The situation had found its master. Arthur Dillon evidently took great pleasure in this climax of her making. He looked at her for a moment as one might at a wild animal of a new species. The room had been darkened so that one could not see distinctly. He knew that trick too. Her beauty improved upon acquaintance. For the second time her face reminded him that they had met before, and he considered the point for an instant. What did it matter just then? She had fallen into his hands, and must be disposed of. Pointing to a chair he sat down affably, his manner making his thought quite plain. She remained standing.

"You may be very tired before our little talk is concluded——"

"Am I to receive your insults as well as your agent's?" she interrupted.

"Now, now, Sister Claire, this will never do. You have been acting" ... he looked at his watch ... "since four o'clock. The play is over. We are in real life again. Talk sense. Since Everard failed to convert you, and you to convert Everard, try the arts of Cleopatra on me. Or, let me convince you that you have made a blunder——"

"I do not wish to listen you," she snapped. "I will not be insulted a second time."

"Who could insult the author of the Confessions? You are beyond insult, Claire. I have read your book with the deepest interest. I have read you between every line, which cannot be said of most of your readers. I am not going to waste any words on you. I am going to give you an alternative, which will do duty until I find rope enough to hang you as high as Jack Sheppard. You know what you are, and so do I. The friends of this young man who fell so nicely into your claws will be anxious to keep his adventure with you very quiet."

A light leaped into her eyes. She had feared that outside, in the hall, this man might have his hirelings ready to do her mischief, that some dreadful plot had come to a head which meant her ruin. Light began to dawn upon her. He laughed at her thoughts.

"One does not care to make public an adventure with such a woman as you," said he affably. "A young man like that too. It would be fatal for him. Therefore, you are to say nothing about it. You are not eager to talk about your failure ... Cleopatra blushes for your failure ... but a heedless tongue and a bitter feeling often get the better of sense. If you remain silent, so shall I."

"Very generous," she answered calmly, coming back to her natural coolness and audacity. "As you have all to lose, and I have all to gain by a description of the trap set for me by your unclean emissary, your proposition won't go. I shall place the matter before my friends, and before the public, when I find it agreeable."

"When!" he mocked. "You know by this time that you are playing a losing game, Claire. If you don't know it, then you are not smart enough for the game. Apart from that, remember one thing: when you speak I shall whisper the truth to the excitable people whom your dirty book is harrying now."

"I am not afraid of whispers, quite used to them in fact," she drawled, as if mimicking him.

"I see you are not smart enough for the game," and the remark startled her. "You can see no possible results from that whisper. Did you ever hear of Jezebel and her fate? Oh, you recall how the dogs worried her bones, do you? So far your evil work has been confined to glittering generalities. To-day you took a new tack. Now you must answer to me. Let it once become known that you tried to defile the innocent, to work harm to one of mine, and you may suffer the fate of the unclean things to which you belong by nature. The mob kills without delicacy. It will tear you as the dogs tore the painted Jezebel."

"You are threatening me," she stammered with a show of pride.

"No. That would be a waste of time. I am warning you. You have still the form of a woman, therefore I give you a chance. You are at the end of your rope. Stretch it further, and it may become the noose to hang you. You have defiled with your touch one whom I love. He kept his innocence, so I let it pass. But a rat like you must be destroyed. Very soon too. We are not going to stand your abominations, even if men like Livingstone and Bradford encourage you. I am giving you a chance. What do you say? Have I your promise to be silent?"

"You have," she replied brokenly.

He looked at her surprised. The mask of her brazen audacity remained, but some feeling had overpowered her, and she began to weep like any woman in silent humiliation. He left her without a word, knowing enough of her sex to respect this inexplicable grief, and to wait for a more favorable time to improve his acquaintance. "Sonia's mate," he said to himself as he reached the street. The phrase never left him from that day, and became a prophecy of woe afterwards. He writhed as he saw how nearly the honor and happiness of Louis had fallen into the hands of this wretch. Protected by the great, she could fling her dirt upon the clean, and go unpunished. Sonia's mate! He had punished one creature of her kind, and with God's help he would yet lash the backs of Sister Claire and her supporters.



CHAPTER XXI.

AN ANXIOUS NIGHT.

Curran caught up with him as he turned into Broadway. He had waited to learn if Arthur had any instructions, as he was now to return to Sister Claire's office and explain as he might the astounding appearance of Dillon at a critical moment.

"She's a ripe one," Arthur said, smiling at thought of her collapse, but the next moment he frowned. "She's a devil, Curran, a handsome devil, and we must deal with her accordingly—stamp her out like a snake. Did you notice her?"

"No doubt she's a bad one," Curran answered thickly, but Arthur's bitter words gave him a shiver, and he seemed to choke in his utterance.

"Make any explanation you like, Curran. She will accuse you of letting me in perhaps. It looks like a trap, doesn't it? By the way, what became of the boy?"

"He seemed pretty well broken up," the detective answered, "and sent me off as soon as he learned that I had him in charge. I told him that you had the whole business nicely in hand, and not to worry. He muttered something about going home. Anyway, he would have no more of me, and he went off quite steady, but looking rather queer, I thought."

Arthur, with sudden anxiety, recalled that pitiful, hopeless look of the terrified child in Louis' face. Perhaps he had been too dazed to understand how completely Arthur had rescued him in the nick of time. To the lad's inexperience this cheap attempt of Claire to overcome his innocence by a modified badger game might have the aspect of a tragedy. Moreover, he remained ignorant of the farce into which it had been turned.

"I am sorry you left him," he said, thoughtfully weighing the circumstances. "This creature threatened him, of course, with publicity, an attack on her honor by a papist emissary. He doesn't know how little she would dare such adventure now. He may run away in his fright, thinking that his shame may be printed in the papers, and that the police may be watching for him. Public disgrace means ruin for him, for, as you know, he is studying to be a priest."

"I didn't know," Curran answered stupidly, a greenish pallor spreading over his face. "That kind of work won't bring her much luck."

"It occurs to me now that he was too frightened to understand what my appearance meant, and what your words meant," Arthur resumed. "He may feel an added shame that we know about it. I must find him. Do you go at once to Sister Claire and settle your business with her. Then ride over to the Everards, and tell the lad, if he be there, that I wish to see him at once. If he has not yet got back, leave word with his mother ... keep a straight face while you talk with her ... to send him over to me as soon as he gets home. And tell her that if I meet him before he does get home, that I shall keep him with me all night. Do you see the point? If he has gone off in his fright, we have sixteen hours to find him. No one must know of his trouble, in that house at least, until he is safe. Do you think we can get on his trail right away, Curran?"

"We must," Curran said harshly, "we must. Has he any money?"

"Not enough to carry him far."

"Then ten hours' search ought to capture him."

"Report then to me at my residence within an hour. I have hopes that this search will not be needed, that you will find him at home. But be quicker than ever you were in your life, Curran. I'd go over to Cherry Street myself, but my inquiries would frighten the Everards. There must be no scandal."

Strange that he had not foreseen this possibility. For him the escapade with the escaped nun would have been a joke, and he had not thought how differently Louis must have regarded it. If the lad had really fled, and his friends must learn of it, Sister Claire's share in the matter would have to remain a profound secret. With all their great love for this boy, his clan would rather have seen him borne to the grave than living under the shadow of scandal in connection with this vicious woman. Her perfidy would add disgrace to grief, and deepen their woe beyond time's power to heal.

For with this people the prejudice against impurity was so nobly unreasonable that mere suspicion became equal to crime. This feeling intensified itself in regard to the priesthood. The innocence of Louis would not save him from lifelong reproach should his recent adventure finds its way into the sneering journals. Within the hour Curran, more anxious than Arthur himself, brought word that the lad had not yet reached home. His people were not worried, and promised to send him with speed to Arthur.

"Begin your search then," said Arthur, "and report here every hour. I have an idea he may have gone to see an aunt of his, and I'll go there to find out. What is your plan?"

"He has no money, and he'll want to go as far as he can, and where he won't be easily got at. He'll ship on an Indiaman. I'll set a few men to look after the outgoing ships as a beginning."

"Secrecy above all things, understand," was the last admonition.

Darkness had come on, and the clocks struck the hour of seven as Arthur set out for a visit to Sister Mary Magdalen. Possibly Louis had sought her to tell the story of failure and shame, the sad result of her foolish enterprise; and she had kept him to console him, to put him in shape before his return home, so that none might mark the traces of his frightful emotion. Alas, the good nun had not seen him since their visit to Claire's office in Bleecker Street the day before. He concealed from her the situation.

"How in the name of Heaven," said he, "did you conceive this scheme of converting this woman?"

"She has a soul to be saved, and it's quite saveable," answered the nun tartly. "The more hopeless from man's view, the more likely from God's. I have a taste for hopeless enterprises."

"I wish you had left Louis out of this one," Arthur thought. "But to deal with a wretch like her, so notorious, so fallen," he said aloud, "you must have risked too much. Suppose, after you had entered her office, she had sent for a reporter to see you there, to see you leaving after kissing her, to hear a pretty story of an embassy from the archbishop to coax her back to religion; and the next morning a long account of this attempt on her resolution should appear in the papers? What would your superiors say?"

"That could happen," she admitted with a shiver, "but I had her word that my visit was to be kept a secret."

"Her word!" and he raised his hands.

"Oh, I assure you the affair was arranged beforehand to the smallest detail," she declared. "Of course no one can trust a woman like that absolutely. But, as you see, in this case everything went off smoothly."

"I see indeed," said Arthur too worried to smile.

"I arranged the meeting through Miss Conyngham," the nun continued, "a very clever person for such work. I knew the danger of the enterprise, but the woman has a soul, and I thought if some one had the courage to take her by the hand and lead her out of her wicked life, she might do penance, and even become a saint. She received Miss Conyngham quite nicely indeed; and also my message that a helping hand was ready for her at any moment. She was afraid too of a trap; but at the last she begged to see me, and I went, with the consent of my superior."

"And how did you come to mix Louis up in the thing?"

"He happened to drop in as I was going, and I took him along. He was very much edified, we all were."

"And he has been more edified since," observed Arthur, but the good nun missed the sarcasm.

"She made open confession before the three of us," warming up at the memory of that scene. "With tears in her eyes she described her fall, her present remorse, her despair of the future, and her hope in us. Most remarkable scene I ever witnessed. I arranged for her to call at this convent whenever she could to plan for her return. She may be here any time. Oh, yes, I forgot. The most touching moment of all came at the last. When we were leaving she took Louis' hand, pressed it to her heart, kissed it with respect, and cried out: 'You happy soul, oh, keep the grace of God in your heart, hold to your high vocation through any torment: to lose it, to destroy it, as I destroyed mine, is to open wide the soul to devils.' Wasn't that beautiful now? Then she asked him in the name of God to call on her the next day, and he promised. He may be here to-night to tell me about it."

"You say three. Was Edith Conyngham the third?"

"Oh, no, only a sister of our community."

He burst out laughing at the thought of the fox acting so cleverly before the three geese. Claire must have laughed herself into a fit when they had gone. He had now to put the Sister on her guard at the expense of her self-esteem. He tried to do so gently and considerately, fearing hysterics.

"You put the boy in the grasp of the devil, I fear," he said. "Convert Sister Claire! You would better have turned your prayers on Satan! She got him alone this afternoon in her office, as you permitted, and made him a proposition, which she had in her mind from the minute she first saw him. I arrived in time to give her a shock, and to rescue him. Now we are looking for him to tell him he need not fear Sister Claire's threats to publish how he made an attack upon her virtue."

"I do not quite understand," gasped Sister Magdalen stupefied. What Arthur thought considerate others might have named differently. Exasperation at the downright folly of the scheme, and its threatened results, may have actuated him. His explanation satisfied the nun, and her fine nerve resisted hysterics and tears.

"It is horrible," she said at the last word. "But we acted honestly, and God will not desert us. You will find Louis before morning, and I shall spend the night in prayer until you have found him ... for him and you ... and for that poor wretch, that dreadful woman, more to be pitied than any one."

His confidence did not encourage him. Hour by hour the messengers of Curran appeared with the one hopeless phrase: no news. He walked about the park until midnight, and then posted himself in the basement with cigar and journal to while away the long hours. Sinister thoughts troubled him, and painful fancies. He could see the poor lad hiding in the slums, or at the mercy of wretches as vile as Claire; wandering about the city, perhaps, in anguish over his ruined life, horrified at what his friends must read in the morning papers, planning helplessly to escape from a danger which did not exist, except in his own mind. Oh, no doubt Curran would find him! Why, he must find him!

Across the sea in London, Minister Livingstone slept, full fed with the flatteries of a day, dreaming of the pleasures and honors sure to come with the morning. Down in the prison town lived Honora, with her eyes dulled from watching the jail and her heart sore with longing. For Owen the prison, for Louis the pavement, for Honora and himself the sleepless hours of the aching heart; but for the responsible Minister and his responsible tool sweet sleep, gilded comfort, overwhelming honors. Such things could be only because men of his sort were craven idiots. What a wretched twist in all things human! Why not, if nothing else could be done, go and set fire to Claire's office, the bishop's house, and the Livingstone mansion?

However, joy came at the end of the night, for the messenger brought word that the lad had been found, sound as a bell, having just shipped as a common sailor on an Indiaman. Since Curran could not persuade him to leave his ship, the detective had remained on the vessel to await Arthur's arrival. A cab took him down to the wharf, and a man led him along the dock to the gang-plank, thence across the deck to a space near the forecastle, where Curran sat with Louis in the starlight.

"Then it's all true ... what he has been telling me?" Louis cried as he leaped to his feet and took the hearty grasp of his friend.

"As true as gospel," said Arthur, using Judy's phrase. "Let's get out of this without delay. We can talk about it at home. Curran, do you settle with the captain."

They hurried away to the cab in silence. Before entering Arthur wrung the hand of the detective warmly.

"It would take more than I own to pay you for this night's work, Curran. I want you to know how I feel about it, and when the time comes ask your own reward."

"What you have just said is half of it," the man answered in a strange tone. "When the time comes I shall not be bashful."

"It would have been the greatest blunder of your life," Arthur said, as they drove homeward, "if you had succeeded in getting away. It cannot be denied, Louis, that from five o'clock this afternoon till now you made a fool of yourself. Don't reply. Don't worry about it. Just think of this gold-plate fact: no one knows anything about it. You are supposed to be sleeping sweetly at my house. I settled Claire beautifully. And Sister Magdalen, too. By the way, I must send her word by the cabby ... better let her do penance on her knees till sunrise ... she's praying for you ... but the suspense might kill her ... no, I'll send word. As I was saying, everything is as it was at four o'clock this afternoon."

He chattered for the lad's benefit, noting that at times Louis shivered as with ague, and that his hands were cold. He has tasted calamity, Arthur thought with resignation, and life will never be quite the same thing again. In the comfortable room the marks of suffering became painfully evident. Even joy failed to rouse his old self. Pale, wrinkled like age, shrunken, almost lean, he presented a woful spectacle. Arthur mixed a warm punch for him, and spread a substantial lunch.

"The sauce for this feast," said he, "is not appetite, but this fact: that your troubles are over. Now eat."

Louis made a pretense of eating, and later, under the influence of the punch, found a little appetite. By degrees his mind became clearer as his body rested, the wrinkles began to disappear, his body seemed to fill out while the comfort of the situation invaded him. Arthur, puffing his cigar and describing his interview with Claire, looked so stanch and solid, so sure of himself, so at ease with his neighbors, that one could scarcely fail to catch his happy complaint.

"She has begun her descent into hell," he said placidly, "but since you are with us still, I shall give her plenty of time to make it. What I am surprised at is that you did not understand what my entrance meant. She understood it. She thought Curran was due as her witness of the assault. What surprises me still more is that you so completely forgot my advice: no matter what the trouble and the shame, come straight to me. Here was a grand chance to try it."

"I never thought of this kind of trouble," said Louis dully. "Anyway, I got such a fright that I understood nothing rightly up to midnight. The terrible feeling of public disgrace eat into me. I saw and heard people crying over me as at a funeral, you know that hopeless crying. The road ahead looked to be full of black clouds. I wanted to die. Then I wanted to get away. When I found a ship they took me for a half-drunk sailor, and hustled me into the forecastle in lively shape. When Curran found me and hauled me out of the bunk, I had been asleep enjoying the awfullest dreams. I took him for a trickster, who wanted to get me ashore and jail me. I feel better. I think I can sleep now."

"Experience maybe has given you a better grip on the meaning of that wise advice which I repeat now: no matter what the trouble, come to me."

"I shall come," said the lad with a show of spirit that delighted Arthur. "Even if you should see me hanged the next day."

"That's a fine sentiment to sleep on, so we'll go to bed. However, remind yourself that a little good sense when you resume business ... by the way, it's morning ... no super-sensitiveness, no grieving, for you were straight all through ... go right on as if nothing had happened ... and in fact nothing has happened yet ... I can see that you understand."

They went to bed, and slept comfortably until noon. After breakfast Louis looked passably well, yet miserable enough to make explanations necessary for his alarmed parents. Arthur undertook the disagreeable office, which seemed to him delightful by comparison with that other story of a runaway son en route in fancied disgrace for India. All's well that ends well. Mary Everard wept with grief, joy, and gratitude, and took her jewel to her arms without complaint or question. The crotchety father was disposed to have it out with either the knaves or the fools in the game, did not Arthur reduce him to quiet by his little indictment.

"There is only one to quarrel with about this sad affair, John Everard," said he smoothly, "and that only one is your friend and well wisher, Quincy Livingstone. I want you to remember that, when we set out to take his scalp. It's a judgment on you that you are the first to suffer directly by this man's plotting. You needn't talk back. The boy is going to be ill, and you'll need all your epithets for your chief and yourself before you see comfort again."

Recalling his son's appearance the father remained silent. Arthur's prevision came true. The physician ordered Louis to bed for an indefinite time, having found him suffering from shock, and threatened with some form of fever. The danger did not daunt his mother. Whatever of suffering yet remained, her boy would endure it in the shelter of her arms.

"If he died this night," she said to Arthur, "I would still thank God that sent him back to die among his own; and after God, you, son dear, who have been more than a brother to him."

Thus the items in his account with kinsman Livingstone kept mounting daily.



CHAPTER XXII.

THE END OF A MELODRAMA.

Louis kept his bed for some weeks, and suffered a slow convalescence. Private grief must give way to public necessity. In this case the private grief developed a public necessity. Arthur took pains to tell his story to the leaders. It gave point to the general onslaught now being made on the Irish by the hired journals, the escaped nun, and, as some named him, the escaped historian. A plan was formulated to deal with all three. Grahame entered the lists against Bitterkin and Smallish, Vandervelt denounced the Confessions and its author at a banquet vis-a-vis with Bradford, and Monsignor pursued the escaped historian by lecturing in the same cities, and often on the same platform. Arthur held to Sister Claire as his specialty, as the hinge of the Livingstone scheme, a very rotten hinge on which to depend. Nevertheless, she kept her footing for months after her interview with him.

Curran had laid bare her life and exposed her present methods nicely; but neither afforded a grip which might shake her, except inasmuch as it gave him an unexpected clue to the Claire labyrinth. Her history showed that she had often played two parts in the same drama. Without doubt a similar trick served her now, not only to indulge her riotous passions, but to glean advantages from her enemies and useful criticism from her friends. He cast about among his casual acquaintance for characters that Claire might play. Edith Conyngham? Not impossible! The Brand who held forth at the gospel hall? Here was a find indeed! Comparing the impressions left upon him by these women, as a result he gave Curran the commission to watch and study the daily living of Edith Conyngham. Even this man's nerve shook at a stroke so luckily apt.

"I don't know much about the ways of escaped nuns," said Arthur, "but I am going to study them. I'll wager you find Claire behind the rusty garments of this obscure, muddy, slimy little woman. They have the same appetite anyway."

This choice bit of news, carried at once to the escaped nun, sounded in Sister Claire's ear like the crack of doom, and she stared at Curran, standing humbly in her office, with distorted face.

"Is this the result of your clever story-telling, Dick Curran?" she gasped.

"It's the result of your affair with young Everard," he replied sadly. "That was a mistake altogether. It waked up Arthur Dillon."

"The mistake was to wake that man," she said sourly. "I fear him. There's something hiding in him, something terrible, that looks out of his eyes like a ghost in hell. The dogs ... Jezebel ... that was his threat ... ugh!"

"He has waked up the whole crowd against you and frightened your friends. If ever he tells the Clan-na-Gael about young Everard, your life won't be worth a pin."

"With you to defend me?" ironically.

"I could only die with you ... against that crowd."

"And you would," she said with conviction, tears in her eyes. "My one friend."

His cheeks flushed and his eyes sparkled at the fervent praise of his fidelity.

"Well, it's all up with me," changing to a mood of gaiety. "The Escaped Nun must escape once more. They will all turn their coldest shoulders to me, absolutely frightened by this Irish crowd, to which we belong after all, Dick. I'm not sorry they can stand up for themselves, are you? So, there's nothing to do but take up the play, and begin work on it in dead earnest."

"It's a bad time," Curran ventured, as she took a manuscript from a desk. "But you know how to manage such things, you are so clever," he hastened to add, catching a fiery glance from her eye. "Only you must go with caution."

"It's a fine play," she said, turning the pages of the manuscript. "Dick, you are little short of a genius. If I had not liked the real play so well, playing to the big world this role of escaped nun, I would have taken it up long ago. The little stage of the theater is nothing to the grand stage of the world, where a whole nation applauds; and men like the Bishop take it for the real thing, this impersonation of mine. But since I am shut out ... and my curse on this Arthur Dillon ... no, no, I take that back ... he's a fine fellow, working according to his nature ... since he will shut me out I must take to the imitation stage. Ah, but the part is fine! First act: the convent garden, the novice reading her love in the flowers, the hateful old mother superior choking her to get her lover's note from her, the reading of the note, and the dragging of the novice to her prison cell, down in the depths of the earth. How that will draw the tears from the old maids of Methodism all over the country!"

She burst into hearty laughter.

"Second act: the dungeon, the tortures, old superior again, and the hateful hag who is in love with the hero and would like to wreak her jealousy on me, poor thing, all tears and determination. I loathe the two women. I denounce the creed which invents such tortures. I lie down to die in the dungeon while the music moans and the deacons and their families in the audience groan. Don't you think, Dicky dear, I can do the dying act to perfection?"

"On the stage perfectly."

"You're a wretch," she shrieked with sudden rage. "You hint at the night I took a colic and howled for the priest, when you know it was only the whisky and the delirium. How dare you!"

"It slipped on me," he said humbly.

"The third act is simply beautiful: chapel of the convent, a fat priest at the altar, all the nuns gathered about to hear the charges against me, I am brought in bound, pale, starved, but determined; the trial, the sentence, the curse ... oh, that scene is sublime, I can see Booth in it ... pity we can't have him ... then the inrush of my lover, the terror, the shrieks, the confusion, as I am carried off the stage with the curtain going down. At last the serene fourth act: another garden, the villains all punished, my lover's arms about me, and we two reading the flowers as the curtain descends. Well," with a sigh of pleasure, "if that doesn't take among the Methodists and the general public out West and down South, what will?"

"I can see the fire with which you will act it," said Curran eagerly. "You are a born actress. Who but you could play so many parts at once?"

"And yet," she answered dreamily, giving an expressive kick with unconscious grace, "this is what I like best. If it could be introduced into the last act ... but of course the audiences wouldn't tolerate it, dancing. Well," waking up suddenly to business, "are you all ready for the grand coup—press, manager, all details?"

"Ready long ago."

"Here then is the program, Dicky dear. To-morrow I seek the seclusion of the convent at Park Square—isn't seclusion good? To-night letters go out to all my friends, warning them of my utter loneliness, and dread of impending abduction. In two or three days you get a notice in the papers about these letters, and secure interviews with the Bishop if possible, with McMeeter anyway ... oh, he'll begin to howl as soon as he gets his letter. Whenever you think the public interest, or excitement, is at its height, then you bring your little ladder to the convent, and wait outside for a racket which will wake the neighborhood. In the midst of it, as the people are gathering, up with the ladder, and down with me in your triumphant arms. Pity we can't have a calcium light for that scene. If there should be any failure ... of course there can't be ... then a note of warning will reach me, with any instructions you may wish to give me ... to the old address of course."

Both laughed heartily at this allusion.

"It has been great fun," she said, "fooling them all right and left. That Dillon is suspicious though ... fine fellow ... I like him. Dicky, ... you're not jealous. What a wonder you are, dear old faithful Dicky, my playwright, manager, lover, detective, everything to me. Well, run along to your work. We strike for fortune this time—for fortune and for fame. You will not see me again until you carry me down the ladder from the convent window. What a lark! And there's money in it for you and me."

He dared not discourage her, being too completely her slave, like wax in her hands; and he believed, too, that her scheme of advertising the drama of The Escaped Nun would lead to splendid and profitable notoriety. A real escape, from a city convent, before the very eyes of respectable citizens, would ring through the country like an alarm, and set the entire Protestant community in motion. While he feared, he was also dazzled by the brilliancy of the scheme.

It began very well. The journals one morning announced the disappearance of Sister Claire, and described the alarm of her friends at her failure to return. Thereupon McMeeter raised his wonderful voice over the letter sent him on the eve of her flight, and printed the pathetic epistle along with his denunciation of the cowardice which had given her over to her enemies. Later Bishop Bradford, expressing his sympathy in a speech to the Dorcas' Society, referred to the walling up of escaped nuns during the dark ages. A little tide of paragraphs flowed from the papers, plaintively murmuring the one sad strain: the dear sister could not be far distant; she might be in the city, deep in a convent dungeon; she had belonged to the community of the Good Shepherd, whose convent stood in Morris Street, large enough, sufficiently barred with iron to suggest dungeons; the escaped one had often expressed her dread of abduction; the convents ought to be examined suddenly and secretly; and so on without end.

"What is the meaning of it?" said Monsignor. "I thought you had extinguished her, Arthur."

"Another scheme of course. I was too merciful with her, I imagine. All this noise seems to have one aim: to direct attention to these convents. Now if she were hidden in any of them, and a committee should visit that convent and find her forcibly detained, as she would call it; or if she could sound a fire alarm and make a spectacular escape at two in the morning, before the whole world, what could be said about it?"

"Isn't it rather late in history for such things?" said Monsignor.

"A good trick is as good to-day as a thousand years ago. I can picture you explaining to the American citizen, amid the howls of McMeeter and the purring speeches of the Bishop, how Sister Claire came to be in the convent from which her friends rescued her."

"It would be awkward enough I admit. You think, then, that she ... but what could be her motive?"

"Notoriety, and the sympathy of the people. I would like to trip her up in this scheme, and hurl her once for all into the hell which she seems anxious to prepare for other people. You Catholics are altogether too easy with the Claires and the McMeeters. Hence the tears of the Everards."

"We are so used to it," said the priest in apology. "It would be foolish, however, not to heed your warning. Go to the convents of the city from me, and put them on their guard. Let them dismiss all strangers and keep out newcomers until the danger appears to be over."

The most careful search failed to reveal a trace of Sister Claire's hiding-place among the various communities, who were thrown into a fever of dread by the warning. The journals kept up their crescendo of inquiry and information. One must look for that snake, Arthur thought, not with the eyes, but through inspiration. She hid neither in the clouds nor in Arizona, but in the grass at their feet. Seeking for inspiration, he went over the ground a second time with Sister Magdalen, who had lost flesh over the shame of her dealings with Claire, the Everard troubles, and the dread of what was still to come. She burned to atone for her holy indiscretions. The Park Square convent, however, held no strangers. In the home attached to it were many poor women, but all of them known. Edith Conyngham the obscure, the mute, the humble, was just then occupying a room in the place, making a retreat of ten days in charge of Sister Magdalen. At this fact Arthur was seized by his inspiration.

"She must give up her retreat and leave the place," he said quietly, though his pulse was bounding. "Make no objection. It's only a case of being too careful. Leave the whole matter to me. Say nothing to her about it. To-night the good creature will have slipped away without noise, and she can finish her retreat later. It's absurd, but better be absurd than sorry."

And Sister Magdalen, thinking of the long penance she must undergo for her folly, made only a polite objection. He wrote out a note at once in a disguised hand, giving it no signature:

"The game is up. You cannot get out of the convent too quick or too soon. At ten o'clock a cab will be at the southwest corner of Park Square. Take it and drive to the office. Before ten I shall be with you. Don't delay an instant. State prison is in sight. Dillon is on your track."

"At eight o'clock this evening where will Miss Conyngham be, Sister?"

"In her room," said the nun, unhappy over the treatment intended for her client, "preparing her meditation for the morning. She has a great love for meditation on the profound mysteries of religion."

"Glad to know it," he said dryly. "Well, slip this note under her door, make no noise, let no one see you, give her no hint of your presence. Then go to bed and pray for us poor sinners out in the wicked world."

One must do a crazy thing now and then, under cover of the proprieties, if only to test one's sanity. Edith and Claire, as he had suggested to Curran, might be the same person. What if Claire appeared tall, portly, resonant, youthful, abounding in life, while Edith seemed mute, old, thin, feeble? The art of the actor can work miracles in personal appearance. A dual life provided perfect security in carrying out Claire's plans, and it matched the daring of the Escaped Nun to live as Edith in the very hearts of the people she sought to destroy. Good sense opposed his theory of course, but he made out a satisfactory argument for himself. How often had Sister Claire puzzled him by her resemblance to some one whom he could not force out of the shadows of memory! Even now, with the key of the mystery in his hands, he could see no likeness between them. Yet no doubt remained in his mind that a dual life would explain and expose Sister Claire.

That night he sat on the seat of a cab in proper costume, at the southwest corner of Park Square. The convent, diagonally opposite, was dark and silent at nine o'clock; and far in the rear, facing the side street, stood the home of the indigent, whose door would open for the exit of a clever actress at ten o'clock, or, well closed, reproach him for his stupidity. The great front of the convent, dominating the Square, would have been a fine stage for the scene contemplated by Sister Claire, and he laughed at the spectacle of the escaped one leaping from a window into her lover's arms, or sliding down a rope amid the cheers of the mob and the shrieks of the disgraced poor souls within. Then he gritted his teeth at the thought of Louis, and Mary his mother, and Mona his sister. His breath came short. Claire was a woman, but some women are not dishonored by the fate of Jezebel.

Shortly after ten o'clock a small, well-wrapped figure turned the remote corner of the Home, came out to the Square, saw the cab, and coming forward with confidence opened the door and stepped in. As Arthur drove off the blood surged to his head and his heart in a way that made his ears sing. It seemed impossible that the absurd should turn out wisdom at the first jump. As he drove along he wondered over the capacities of art. No two individuals could have been more unlike in essentials than Edith Conyngham and Sister Claire. Now it would appear that high-heeled shoes, padded clothes, heavy eyebrows, paint, a loud and confident voice, a bold manner, and her beautiful costume had made Sister Claire; while shoes without heels, rusty clothes, a gray wig, a weak voice, and timid manner, had given form to Edith Conyngham.

A soul is betrayed by its sins. The common feature of the two characters was the sensuality which, neither in the nun nor in her double, would be repressed or disguised. Looking back, Arthur could see some points of resemblance which might have betrayed the wretch to a clever detective. Well, he would settle all accounts with her presently, and he debated only one point, the flinging of her to the dogs. In twenty minutes they reached the office of the Escaped Nun. He opened the door of the cab and she stepped out nervously, but walked with decision into the building, for which she had the keys.

"Anything more, mum?" he said respectfully.

"Come right in, and light up for me," she said ungraciously, in a towering rage. He found his way to the gas jets and flooded the office with the light from four. She pulled down the curtains, and flung aside her rusty shawl. At the same moment he flung an arm about her, and with his free hand tore the gray wig from her head, and shook free the mass of yellow hair which lay beneath it. Then he flung her limp into the nearest chair, and stood gazing at her, frozen with amaze. She cowered, pale with the sudden fright of the attack. It was not Sister Claire who stood revealed, but the charming and lovely La Belle Colette. The next instant he laughed like a hysterical woman.

"By heavens, but that was an inspiration!" he exclaimed. "Don't be frightened, beautiful Colette. I was prepared for a tragedy, but this discovery reveals a farce."

Her terror gave way to stupefaction when she recognized him.

"So it's three instead of two," he went on. "The lovely dancer is also the Escaped Nun and the late Edith Conyngham. And Curran knew it of course, who was our detective. That's bad. But Judy Haskell claims you as a goddaughter. You are Curran's wife. You are Sister Magdalen's poor friend. You are Katharine Kerrigan. You are Sister Claire. You are Messalina. La Belle Colette, you are the very devil."

She recovered from her fright at his laugh, in which some amusement tinkled, and also something terrible. They were in a lonely place, he had made the situation, and she felt miserably helpless.

"You need not blame Curran," she said decisively. "He knew the game, but he has no control over me. I want to go home, and I want to know right away your terms. It's all up with me. I confess. But let me know what you are going to do with me."

"Take you home to your husband," said Arthur. "Come."

They drove to the little apartment where Curran lay peacefully sleeping, and where he received his erratic wife with stupor. The three sat down in the parlor to discuss the situation, which was serious enough, though Arthur now professed to take it lightly. Colette stared at him like a fascinated bird and answered his questions humbly.

"It's all very simple," said she. "I am truly Edith Conyngham, and Judy Haskell is my godmother, and I was in a convent out West. I was expelled for a love caper, and came back to my friends much older in appearance than I had need to be. The Escaped-Nun-racket was a money-maker. What I really am, you see. I am the dancer, La Belle Colette. All the rest is disguise."

Curran asked no questions and accepted the situation composedly.

"She is in your hands," he said.

"I place her in yours for the present," Arthur replied, glowering as he thought of Louis. "Detectives will shadow you both until I come to a decision what to do with you. Any move to escape and you will be nipped. Then the law takes its course. As for you, La Belle Colette, say your prayers. I am still tempted to send you after Jezebel."

"You are a terrible man," she whimpered, as he walked out and left them to their sins.



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FIRST BLOW.

Mayor Birmingham and Grahame, summoned by messengers, met him in the forever-deserted offices of Sister Claire. He made ready for them by turning on all the lights, setting forth a cheerful bottle and some soda from Claire's hidden ice-box, and lighting a cigar. Delight ran through his blood like fire. At last he had his man on the hip, and the vision of that toss which he meant to give him made his body tingle from the roots of his hair to the points of his toes. However, the case was not for him to deal with alone. Birmingham, the man of weight, prudence, fairness, the true leader, really owned the situation. Grahame, experienced journalist, had the right to manage the publicity department of this delicious scandal. His own task would be to hold Claire in the traces, and drive her round the track, show the world her paces, past the judge's stand. Ah, to see the face of the Minister as he read the story of exposure—her exposure and his own shame!

The two men stared at his comfortable attitude in that strange inn, and fairly gasped at the climax of his story.

"The devil's in you. No one but you would have thought out such a scheme," said Grahame, recalling the audacity, the cleverness, the surprises of his friend's career from the California episode to the invasion of Ireland. "Great heavens! but you have the knack of seizing the hinge of things."

"I think we have Livingstone and his enterprise in the proper sort of hole," Arthur answered. "The question is how to use our advantage?"

The young men turned to Birmingham with deference.

"The most thorough way," said the Mayor, after complimenting Arthur on his astonishing success, "would be to hale Claire before the courts for fraud, and subpoena all our distinguished enemies. That course has some disagreeable consequences, however."

"I think we had better keep out of court," Arthur said quickly.

His companions looked surprised at his hesitation. He did not understand it himself. For Edith Conyngham he felt only disgust, and for Sister Claire an amused contempt; but sparkling Colette, so clever, bright, and amiable, so charmingly conscienceless, so gracefully wicked, inspired him with pity almost. He could not crush the pretty reptile, or thrust her into prison.

"Of course I want publicity," he hastened to add, "the very widest, to reach as far as London, and strike the Minister. How can that be got, and keep away from the courts?"

"An investigating committee is what you are thinking of," said the Mayor. "I can call such a body together at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, our most distinguished citizens. They could receive the confession of this woman, and report to the public on her character."

"That's the plan," Arthur interrupted with joy. "That must be carried out. I'll see that Claire appears before that committee and confesses her frauds. But mark this: on that committee you should have the agents of Livingstone: Bradford, Bitterkin ... I owe him one for his meanness to the Senator ... Smallish in particular, and McMeeter for the fun of the thing."

"Wild horses wouldn't drag them to it," Grahame thought.

"I have something better than wild horses, the proofs of their conspiracy, of their league with this woman," and Arthur pointed to the locked drawers of the office. "How will our minister to England like to have his name connected with this scandal openly. Now, if these people refuse to serve, by heavens, I'll take the whole case to court, and give it an exposure as wide as the earth. If they're agreeable, I'll keep away from the courts, and the rougher part of the scandal."

"There's your weapon," said the Mayor, "the alternative of committee or court. I'll see to that part of the business. Do you get the escaped nun ready for her confession, and I'll guarantee the committee, let us say inside of ten days. Your part, Grahame, will be to write up a story for the morning papers, covering dramatically the details of this very remarkable episode."

They sat long discussing the various features of the scheme.

Next morning Curran and Arthur sat down to talk over the terms of surrender in the detective's house. Colette still kept her bed, distracted with grief, and wild with apprehension over the sensational articles in the morning papers. Curran saw little hope for himself and his wife in the stern face of Dillon.

"At the start I would like to hear your explanation," Arthur began coldly. "You were in my employ and in hers."

"In hers only to hinder what evil I could, and to protect her from herself," the detective answered steadily and frankly. "I make no excuse, because there isn't any to make. But if I didn't live up to my contract with you, I can say honestly that I never betrayed your interest. You can guess the helplessness of a man in my fix. I have no influence over Colette. She played her game against my wish and prayer. Most particular did I warn her against annoying you and yours. I was going to break up her designs on young Everard, when you did it yourself. I hope you——"

In his nervous apprehension for Colette's fate the strong-willed man broke down. He remained silent, struggling for his vanishing self-control.

"I understand, and I excuse you. The position was nasty. I have always trusted you without knowing why exactly," and he reflected a moment on that interesting fact. "You did me unforgettable service in saving Louis Everard."

"How glad I am you remember that service," Curran gasped, like one who grasping at a straw finds it a plank. "I foresaw this moment when I said to you that night, 'I shall not be bashful about reminding you of it and asking a reward at the right time.' I ask it now. For the boy's sake be merciful with her. Don't hand her over to the courts. Deal with her yourself, and I'll help you."

For the boy's sake, for that service so aptly rendered, for the joy it brought and the grief it averted, he could forget justice and crown Colette with diamonds! Curran trembled with eagerness and suspense. He loved her,—this wretch, witch, fiend of a woman!

"The question is, can I deal with her myself? She is intractable."

"You ought to know by this time that she will do anything for you ... and still more when she has to choose between your wish and jail."

"I shall require a good deal of her, not for my own sake, but to undo the evil work——"

"How I have tried to keep her out of that evil work," Curran cried fiercely. "We are bad enough as it is without playing traitors to our own, and throwing mud on holy things. There can be no luck in it, and she knows it. When one gets as low as she has, it's time for the funeral. Hell is more respectable."

Arthur did not understand this feeling in Curran. The man's degradation seemed so complete to him that not even sacrilege could intensify it; yet clearly the hardened sinner saw some depths below his own which excited his horror and loathing.

"If you think I can deal with her, I shall not invoke the aid of the law."

The detective thanked him in a breaking voice. He had enjoyed a very bad night speculating on the probable course of events. Colette came in shortly, and greeted Arthur as brazenly as usual, but with extreme sadness, which became her well; so sweet, so delicate, so fragile, that he felt pleased to have forgiven her so early in the struggle. He had persecuted her, treated her with violence, and printed her history for the scornful pleasure of the world; he had come to offer her the alternative of public shame or public trial and jail; yet she had a patient smile for him, a dignified submission that touched him. After all, he thought with emotion, she is of the same nature with myself; a poor castaway from conventional life playing one part or another by caprice, for gain or sport or notoriety; only the devil has entered into her, while I have been lucky enough to cast my lot with the exorcists of the race. He almost regretted his duty.

"I have taken possession of your office and papers, Colette," said he with the dignity of the master. "I dismissed the office-boy with his wages, and notified the owner that you would need the rooms no more after the end of the month."

"Thanks," she murmured with downcast eyes.

"I am ready now to lay before you the conditions——"

"Are you going to send me to jail?"

"I leave that to you," he answered softly. "You must withdraw your book from circulation. You must get an injunction from the courts to restrain the publishers, if they won't stop printing at your request, and you must bring suit against them for your share of the profits. I want them to be exposed. My lawyer is at your service for such work."

"This for the beginning?" she said in despair.

"You must write for me a confession next, describing your career, and the parts which you played in this city; also naming your accomplices, your supporters, and what money they put up for your enterprise."

"You will find all that in my papers."

"Is Mr. Livingstone's name among your papers?"

"He was the ringleader. Of course."

"Finally you must appear before a committee of gentlemen at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and show how you disguised yourself for the three parts of Edith Conyngham, Sister Claire, and the Brand of the gospel-hall."