“Better not talk any more,” she said.
Achilles got to his feet. He bent over the boy, his heart beating fast. “Good-bye, Alcie. To-morrow you tell me more—all about the little girl.” The words dropped quietly into the sleeping ear and the boy turned his face.
“To-morrow—tell—about—little girl...” he murmured—and was asleep.
Achilles passed swiftly out of the hospital—through the sun-glinting wards, out to the free air—his heart choking him. At the corner, he caught a car bound for the South side and boarded it.
And at the same moment Philip Harris, in his office in the works, was summoning the Chief of Police to instruct him to open negotiations with the kidnappers.
But Achilles reached the office first and before noon every member of the force knew that a clue had been found—a clue light as a child’s breath between sleep and waking, but none the less a clue—and to-morrow more would be known.
So Philip Harris stayed his hand—because of the muttered, half-incoherent word of a Greek boy, drowsing in a great sunny ward, the millionaire waited—and little children were safer that night.