THE POLICE MOVE

Life was busy for Achilles. There were visits to the hospital--where he
must not speak to his boy, but only look at him and catch little silent
smiles from the bandaged face--and visits to the great house on the
lake, where he came and went freely. The doors swung open of themselves,
it seemed, as Achilles mounted the steps between the lions. All the
pretty life and flutter of the place had changed. Detectives went in and
out; and instead of the Halcyon Club, the Chief of Police and assistants
held conferences in the big library. But there was no clue to the
child!... She had withdrawn, it seemed, into a clear sky. James had
been summoned to the library many times, and questioned sharply; but his
wooden countenance held no light and the tale did not change by a hair.
He had held the horses. Yes--there wa'n't nobody--but little Miss Harris
and him.... She was in the carriage--he held the horses. The horses?
They had frisked a bit, maybe, the way horses will--at one o' them
autos that squirted by, and he had quieted 'em down--but there wa'n't
nobody.... And he was the last link between little Betty Harris and the
world--all the bustling, wrestling, interested world of Chicago--that
shouted extras and stared at the house on the lake and peered in at
its life--at the rising and eating and sleeping that went on behind the
red-stone walls. The red-stone walls had thinned to a veil and the whole
world might look in--because a child had been snatched away; and the
heart of a city understood. But no one but James could have told what
had happened to the child sitting with her little red cherries in the
light; and James was stupid--and in the bottomless abyss of James's face
the clue was lost.

Achilles had come in for his share of questioning. The child had been
to his shop it seemed... and the papers took it up and made much of