Achilles watched him with gentle face, following him from bed to bed and stooping to the plants with courteous gesture.  It was all like home.  They had never been in a garden before—­in this new land... the melons and berries and plums and peaches and pears that came crated into the little fruit-shop had grown in unknown fields—­but here they stretched in the sun; and the two Greeks moved toward them with laughing, gentle words and quick gestures that flitted and stopped, and went on, and gathered in the day.  The new world was gathering its sky about them; and their faces turned to meet it.  And with every gesture of the boy, Achilles’s eyes were on him, studying his face, its quick colour running beneath the tan, and the clear light of his eyes.  Indoors or out, he was testing him; and with every gesture his heart sang.  His boy was well... and he held a key that should open the dark door that baffled them all.  When he spoke, that door would open for them—­a little way, perhaps—­only a little way—­but the rest would be clear.  And soon the boy would speak.

In the house Philip Harris waited; and with him the chief of police, detectives and plain-clothes men—­summoned hastily—­waited what should develop.  They watched the boy and his father, from a distance, and speculated and made guesses on what he would know; for weeks they had been waiting on a sick boy’s whim—­held back by the doctor’s orders.  They watched him moving across the garden—­his quick, supple gestures, his live face—­the boy was well enough!  They smoked innumerable cigars and strolled out through the grounds and sat by the river, and threw stones into its sluggish current, waiting while hours went by.  Since the ultimatum—­a hundred thousand for three months—­not a line had reached them, no message over the whispering wires—­the child might be in the city, hidden in some safe corner; she might be in Europe, or in Timbuctoo.  There had been time enough to smuggle her away.  Every port had been watched, but there was the Canadian line stretching to the north, and the men who were “on the deal” would stop at nothing.  They had been approached, tentatively, in the beginning, for a share of profits; but they had scorned the overture.  “Catch me—­if you can!” the voice laughed and rang off.  The police were hot against them.  Just one clue—­the merest clue—­and they would run it to earth—­like bloodhounds.  They chewed the ends of their cigars and waited... and in the garden the boy and his father watched the clouds go by and talked of Athens and gods and temples and sunny streets.  Back through the past, carefree they went—­and at every turn the boy’s memory rang true.  “Do you remember, Alcie—­the little house below the Temple of the Winds—­” Achilles’s eyes were on his face—­and the boy’s face laughed—­“Yes—­father.  That house—­” quick running words that tripped themselves—­“where I stole—­figs—­three little figs.  You whipped me then!” The boy laughed and turned on his side and watched the clouds and the talk ran on... coming closer at last, across the great Sea, through New York and the long hurrying train, into the grimy city—­on the shore of the lake—­the boy’s eyes grew wistful.  “I go home—­with you—­father—?” he said.  It was a quick question and his eyes flashed from the garden to his father’s face.