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.