He was far from satisfied with it; it was very different from the schemes he had had in his head before he measured his resourcefulness against theirs. He dropped into a chair, sunk in moody contemplation of its deficiencies. The men he had to rely on were not the right kind, loyal and willing enough, but without the boldness and initiative necessary to such an enterprise. He wanted a lieutenant, some one he could look to for quick, independent action if the affair took an unexpected turn. You couldn’t tell how it might develop, and he, pledged to his ungrateful rôle, would be powerless to meet new demands, might not know they had arisen. He was roused by a knock on the door. It surprised him for his presence in the city was unknown except to his own household and the Janney family. Then he thought of Suzanne coming down to him to pour out her fears, and his "Come in" was harsh and unwelcoming. In answer to it the door opened and Chapman Price entered. Ferguson rose, looking at his visitor, startled and silent. His surprise was caused by the man’s appearance, by a fierce disturbance in the handsome face, pale under its swarthy tan, by the eyes, agate-black and gleaming in a bovine glare. He had seen Chapman angry but never just like this, and from a state, keyed to anticipate any new shock from any direction, said: "What’s happened now?" Price had closed the door and backing up, leaned against it. His answer came, hoarse and broken: "I’ve been to those hounds, the Whitneys." It illuminated the ignorance of his listener, who was readjusting his mind for a reply when the other burst into a storm of invective against the lawyers and the Janneys. It broke like a released torrent, sentences stumbling on one another, curses mingled with wild accusations, its cause revealed in a final cry of: "Stolen—my child—kidnaped—gone!" Through Ferguson’s head, full of weightier matters, flashed a vision of Chapman raging at the Whitneys and a wonder as to what effect his rage had had. Kicking a chair forward he spoke with a dry quietness: "That’s all right—you needn’t bother to go over it. Pull yourself together and sit down." But he might as well have counseled self-control to an angry lion. The man, still standing against the door, jerked out: "I can get nothing from any of them. They know nothing. They’ve let all this time pass—following _me_, suspecting _me_. I don’t know why I didn’t kill them!" "Probably because you’ve sense enough left not to complicate what’s complicated enough already. What brought you here?" He seemed unable to answer any direct question, staring with dilated eyes, his thoughts fastened on the subject of his pain: "Spent a week—lost a week! Good God, Dick, they ought to be held responsible. Where is she? Not one of them knows—not an effort made. She’s gone, lost, been stolen, spirited away, while they’ve been sitting in their office, turning their d——d detectives loose on me."