"He'll find her!" Dibdin exclaimed reassuringly. "Never fear. If there is one thing I've learned, it's to accept the methods of people so long as they produce the results. Let them use the divining rod if they want to, or incantations with henbane and hellebore, or trances and visions, or prayer. This almost human race of ours is made up of some very odd fish," he added with a laugh, and he looked at me quizzically as though I were the oddest fish of them all.
"But an ecstatic policeman"—I murmured—
"Yes—queer—I know," said Dibdin, "but I don't care. And now, old boy, I've got to run back to the museum and take a squint at the work. Cheer up."
I was alone in my study after a pretense of eating supper with the children, when Jimmie burst in and flung himself upon me.
"I want to know where is Alicia," he demanded with quivering lips, and he burst into a pitiful freshet of bitter weeping. His childish tears fell like scalding lead upon my hands and I hugged the quivering small figure to me in an anguished embrace.
"Don't you want Laura to put you to bed?" I murmured with my lips against his ear.
"Don't want Laura," he sobbed chokingly; "want Alicia to give me my bath and put me to bed. Where is she? Why don't she come?"
It was a cry that tore at my heart as it echoed there and reverberated. I hugged him closer.
"I'll give you your bath, Jimmikins," I endeavored to soothe him, "and we'll float ships."
"'Licia—tells me—stories!" he sobbed out, as one broken with tragedy, and I declare I came very near to joining him in his grief.