The father sat down to rest and smoke. When Joe did not appear, and twenty minutes had passed, his mother went out to the stoop to call him. She could not find him in the street, and he did not respond to her voice. There was another wait for half an hour and another looking up and down the street. Then Salvatore Varotta was forced to yield to his wife’s anxious entreaties and set out after the lad. He visited the stores and houses, inquired of friends and neighbors, questioned the children, circled the blocks, looked into cellars and areaways, visited the kindergarten where the child was a pupil, implored the aid of the policemen on the beats, and finally, late at night, went to the East Fifth Street police station and told his story to the captain, who was sympathetic but busy and inclined to take the matter lightly. The child would turn up. Lots of children strayed away in New York every day. They were almost always found again. It was very seldom that anything happened. So Salvatore Varotta went wearily back to his wife and told her what the “big chief policeman” had said. No doubt, the officer spoke from experience. They had better try to get a little sleep. Joe would turn up in the morning. On the afternoon of the following day the postman brought a letter to Salvatore Varotta. The truck driver read it and trembled with fear and apprehension. His wife glanced at it and moaned. She lighted a candle before the tinseled St. Anthony in her bedroom and began endless prayers and protestations. The letter was written in Italian, evidently by one habited to the Sicilian dialect. It said that the writer was a member of a powerful society, too secret and too strong to be afraid of the police. The society had taken little Joe. He was being held for ransom. The price of his life and restoration was twenty-five hundred dollars. Varotta was to get the money at once in cash and have it ready in his home, so that he could hand it over to a messenger who would call for it. If the money were promptly and quietly paid the boy would be restored safe and sound, but if the police were notified and any attempt were made to catch the kidnappers, the powerful society would destroy the child and take further vengeance upon the family. There was a black hand drawn at the bottom of this forbidding missive with a dripping dagger at its side. Varotta and his wife conferred all day in despair. They did not know whom they might trust, or whether they dared speak of the matter at all. But necessity finally decided their course for them. Varotta did not have twenty-five hundred dollars. He could not have it ready when the fateful footfall of the messenger would sound on the stairs. In his extremity he had to seek aid. He went to the police again and showed the letter to Captain Archibald McNeill.