It was by wireless that Blake made what efforts he could to confirm his
suspicions that Binhart had not dropped off at any port of call between
San Francisco and Hong Kong. In due time the reply came back to
"Bishop MacKishnie," on board the westbound _Empress of China_ that the
Reverend Caleb Simpson had safely landed from the _Manchuria_ at Hong
Kong, and was about to leave for the mission field in the interior.
The so-called bishop, sitting in the wireless-room of the _Empress of
China_, with a lacerated black cigar between his teeth, received this
much relayed message with mixed feelings. He proceeded to send out
three Secret Service code-despatches to Shanghai, Amoy and Hong Kong,
which, being picked up by a German cruiser, were worried over and
argued over and finally referred back to an intelligence bureau for
explanation.
But at Yokohama, Blake hurried ashore in a sampan, met an agent who
seemed to be awaiting him, and caught a train for Kobe. He hurried on,
indifferent to the beauties of the country through which he wound,
unimpressed by the oddities of the civilization with which he found
himself confronted. His mind, intent on one thing, seemed unable to
react to the stimuli of side-issues. From Kobe he caught a _Toyo Kisen
Kaisha_ steamer for Nagasaki and Shanghai. This steamer, he found, lay
over at the former port for thirteen hours, so he shifted again to an
outbound boat headed for Woosung.
It was not until he was on the tender, making the hour-long run from
Woosung up the Whangpoo to Shanghai itself, that he seemed to emerge
from his half-cataleptic indifference to his environment. He began to
realize that he was at last in the Orient.
As they wound up the river past sharp-nosed and round-hooded sampans,
and archaic Chinese battle-ships and sea-going junks and gunboats
flying their unknown foreign flags, Blake at last began to realize that
he was in a new world. The very air smelt exotic; the very colors, the
tints of the sails, the hues of clothing, the forms of things, land and
sky itself--all were different. This depressed him only vaguely. He
was too intent on the future, on the task before him, to give his
surroundings much thought.
Blake had entirely shaken off this vague uneasiness, in fact, when
twenty minutes after landing he found himself in a red-brick hotel
known as The Astor, and guardedly shaking hands with an incredulously
thin and sallow-faced man of about forty. Although this man spoke with
an English accent and exile seemed to have foreigneered him in both
appearance and outlook, his knowledge of America was active and
intimate. He passed over to the detective two despatches in cipher,
handed him a confidential list of Hong Kong addresses, gave him certain
information as to Macao, and an hour later conducted him down the river
to the steamer which started that night for Hong Kong.
As Blake trod that steamer's deck and plowed on through strange seas,
surrounded by strange faces, intent on his strange chase, no sense of
vast adventure entered his soul. No appreciation of a great hazard
bewildered his emotions. The kingdom of romance dwells in the heart,
in the heart roomy enough to house it. And Blake's heart was taken up
with more material things. He was preoccupied with his new list of
addresses, with his new lines of procedure, with the men he must
interview and the dives and clubs and bazars he must visit. He had his
day's work to do, and he intended to do it.
The result was that of Hong Kong he carried away no immediate personal
impression, beyond a vague jumble, in the background of consciousness,
of Buddhist temples and British red-jackets, of stately parks and
granite buildings, of mixed nationalities and native theaters, of
anchored warships and a floating city of houseboats. For it was the
same hour that he landed in this orderly and strangely English city
that the discovery he was drawing close to Binhart again swept clean
the slate of his emotions. The response had come from a consulate
secretary. One wire in all his sentinel network had proved a live one.
Binhart was not in Hong Kong, but he had been seen in Macao; he was
known to be still there. And beyond that there was little that
Never-Fail Blake cared to know.
His one side-movement in Hong Kong was to purchase an American
revolver, for it began to percolate even through his indurated
sensibilities that he was at last in a land where his name might not be
sufficiently respected and his office sufficiently honored. For the
first time in seven long years he packed a gun, he condescended to go
heeled. Yet no minutest tingle of excitement spread through his
lethargic body as he examined this gun, carefully loaded it, and stowed
it away in his wallet-pocket. It meant no more to him than the stowing
away of a sandwich against the emergency of a possible lost meal.