"Now listen," he said slowly and impressively as if he was speaking to a child, "we’ve both got to go very charily. A good deal of the threat-stuff in these letters is bluff, but also men who would undertake an enterprise of this kind are pretty tough customers and we don’t want to take any risks. When I’m gone you drive over to Larkin’s, tell him you have the money for the ransom, and to put in the ad. As soon as either you or he get an answer let me know. I’ll be at Council Oaks; I’ll go back there now. It’s probable you’re watched and if they saw me hanging about here they might think I was in the game and take fright. Do you understand?" She nodded: "Yes, you’ve put some courage into me. I was ready to die when you came in." "Well, that’s over now. What you’ve got to do is to follow my instructions, keep your nerve and have a little patience." He smiled down at her as she sat, a huddled heap of finery, on the edge of the sofa. She tried to return the smile, a grimace of the lips that did not touch her somber eyes. No man, least of all Dick Ferguson, could have been angry with her. "She was crazy," he said to himself as he walked down the hall. "They were all crazy and I guess they had enough to make them so. I’ll get the child back, and when I do, I’ll make them bite the dust before my girl." Several people who knew him saw Dick Ferguson driving his black car down Fifth Avenue late that afternoon. He saw none of them, steering his way through the traffic, his eyes fixed on the vista in front. He stopped at Delmonico’s for an early dinner, telling the waiter to bring him anything that was ready, then sat with frowning brows staring at his plate. Here again were people who knew him and wondered at his gloomy abstraction—not a bit like Ferguson, must have something on his mind. Night was falling as he crossed the Queensborough bridge, a smoldering glow along the west glazing the surface of the river. When he left the straggling outskirts of Brooklyn and reached the open country the dark had come, deep and velvety, a few bright star points pricking through the cope of the sky. He lowered his speed, his glance roving ahead to the road and its edging grasses, startlingly clear under the radiance of his lamps.