"Guidance?" I faltered.
"Yes—from on high."
"You depend on that—only?"
"Only!—Well, yes and no. I pray, Mr. Byrd—I pray."
"You have no other means?" I queried, with a sinking heart.
"What other means are there," he demanded with glowing eyes, "that the Lord can't supply? What detective in the world can equal the Lord—tell me that, Mr. Byrd."
I saw that I was in the presence of a fanatic and I stood abashed.
"The best man in the Department," Dibdin put in encouragingly. "Sergeant Cullum is the bureau of missing persons."
"Give me a little time," he urged again, with the fervid intensity of prayer—Time! And it was Alicia who was missing!
I shook his hand and gave him time and parted from him with a hope that I should not have to wait for his ecstatic visions to restore her.