nerves till his hand shook when he reached out to the receiver—­and his voice betrayed him in his denials.  They were closing on him, with hints of an ultimatum.  He dared not trust himself.  He left the house to the detectives and went down to the offices, where he could work and no one could get at him.  Every message from the outside world came to him sifted, and he breathed more freely as he took up the telephone.  The routine of business steadied him.  In a week he should be himself—­he could return to the attack.

Then a message got through to him—­up through the offices.  The man who delivered it spoke in a clear, straight voice that did not rise or fall.  He had agreed to give the message, he said—­a hundred thousand paid to-day, or no communication for three months.  The child would be taken out of the country.  The men behind the deal were getting tired and would drop the whole business.  They had been more than fair in the chances they had offered for compromise....  There was a little pause in the message—­then the voice went on, “I am one of your own men, Harris, inside the works—­a man that you killed—­in the way of business.  I agreed to give you the message—­for quits.  Good-bye.”  The voice rang off and Philip Harris sat alone.

A man that he had killed—­in the way of business—!  Hundreds of them—­at work for him—­New York—­Cincinnati—­St. Louis.  It would not be easy—­to trace a man that he had killed in business.

So he sat with bent head, in the circle of his own works... the network he had spread over the land—­and somewhere, outside that circle, his child, the very heart, was held as hostage—­three months.  Little Betty!  He shivered a little and got op and reached for a flask of brandy and poured it out, gulping it down.  He looked about the room ... inside now.  He had shut himself in his citadel... and they were inside.  The brandy stayed his hand from shaking—­but he knew that he had weakened.  His mind went back to the man he had “killed in business”—­the straight, clear voice sounding over the ’phone—­he had not wanted to ruin him—­them, hundreds of them.  It was the System—­kill or be killed.  He took his chance and they took theirs—­and they had gone down.

XVI

A CLUE GOES TO SLEEP

The morning was alive in the hospital.  The sun glinted in.  Pale faces, lifted on their pillows, turned toward it; and Achilles, passing with light step between the rows, smiled at them.  Alcibiades was better.  They had told him, in the office, that he might talk to him to-day—­a little while—­and his face glowed with the joy of it.

The boy hailed him, from far down the ward, his weak voice filled with gladness, and Achilles hurried.  He dropped into the chair beside him and took the thin hand in his strong, dark one, holding it while he talked—­gentle words, full of the morning and of going home.  The boy’s eyes brightened, watching his father’s face.