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 Halcyon¹ Club, the Chief of Police and assistants held conferences in the big library. But there was no clue to the child!... She had withdrawn², it seemed, into a clear sky. James had been summoned to the library many times, and questioned sharply; but his wooden countenance³ 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 bustling⁴, 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 it—there were headlines and pictures... the public was interested. The tale grew to a romance, and fathers and mothers and children in Boston and New York and London heard how Betty had sat in the gay little fruit-shop—and listened to Achilles’s stories of Athens and Greece, and of the Acropolis—and of the studies in Greek history, and her gods and goddesses and the temples and ruins lying packed in their boxes waiting her return. The daily papers were a thrilling tale—with the quick touch of love and human sympathy that brings the world together.
 
To Achilles it was as if the hand of Zeus had reached and touched the child—and she was not. What god sheltered her beneath a magic veil—so that she passed unseen? He lifted his face, seeking in air and sun and cloud, a token. Over the lake came the great breeze, speaking to him, and out of the air a thousand hands reached to him—to tell him of the child. But he could not find the place that held her. In the dusky shop, he held his quiet way. No one, looking, would have guessed—“Two cen’s, yes,” and his swift fingers made change while his eyes searched every face. But the child, in her shining cloud, was not revealed.
 
When he was summoned before the detectives and questioned, with swift sternness, it was his own questions that demanded answer—and got it. The men gathered in the library, baffled by the search, and asking futile⁵, dreary⁶ questions, learned to wait in amusement for the quick, searching gestures flung at them and the eager face that seemed to drink their words. Gradually they came to understand—the Greek was learning the science of kidnapping—its methods and devices and the probable plan of approach. But the Chief shook his head. “You won’t trace these men by any of the old tricks. It’s a new deal. We shall only get them by a fluke.” And to his own men he said, “Try any old chance, boys, run it down—if it takes weeks—Harris won’t compromise—and you may stumble on a clue. The man that finds it makes money.&rd............