The Art of Disappearing Part 27

"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, wis.h.i.+ng 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 k.n.o.b 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 pa.s.sionate 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 k.n.o.b 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 G.o.d----" 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 pa.s.s. But a rat like you must be destroyed. Very soon too.