"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.