and their faces turned to meet it. And with every gesture of the boy,
Achilles's eyes were on him, studying his face, its quick colour running
beneath the tan, and the clear light of his eyes. Indoors or out, he was
testing him; and with every gesture his heart sang. His boy was well...
and he held a key that should open the dark door that baffled them
all. When he spoke, that door would open for them--a little way,
perhaps--only a little way--but the rest would be clear. And soon the
boy would speak.

In the house Philip Harris waited; and with him the chief of police,
detectives and plain-clothes men--summoned hastily--waited what should
develop. They watched the boy and his father, from a distance, and
speculated and made guesses on what he would know; for weeks they had
been waiting on a sick boy's whim--held back by the doctor's orders.
They watched him moving across the garden--his quick, supple gestures,
his live face--the boy was well enough! They smoked innumerable cigars
and strolled out through the grounds and sat by the river, and threw
stones into its sluggish current, waiting while hours went by. Since the
ultimatum--a hundred thousand for three months--not a line had reached
them, no message over the whispering wires--the child might be in
the city, hidden in some safe corner; she might be in Europe, or in
Timbuctoo. There had been time enough to smuggle her away. Every port
had been watched, but there was the Canadian line stretching to the
north, and the men who were "on the deal" would stop at nothing. They
had been approached, tentatively, in the beginning, for a share of
profits; but they had scorned the overture. "Catch me--if you can!" the
voice laughed and rang off. The police were hot against them. Just one
clue--the merest clue--and they would run it to earth--like bloodhounds.
They chewed the ends of their cigars and waited... and in the garden
the boy and his father watched the clouds go by and talked of Athens and