IX

That stolid practicality which had made Blake a successful operative

asserted itself in the matter of his approach to the Luiz Camoes house,

the house which had been pointed out to him as holding Binhart.

He circled promptly about to the front of that house, pressed a gold

coin in the hand of the half-caste Portuguese servant who opened the

door, and asked to be shown to the room of the English tea merchant.

That servant, had he objected, would have been promptly taken

possession of by the detective, and as promptly put in a condition

where he could do no harm, for Blake felt that he was too near the end

of his trail to be put off by any mere side issue. But the coin and

the curt explanation that the merchant must be seen at once admitted

Blake to the house.

The servant was leading him down the length of the half-lit hall when

Blake caught him by the sleeve.

"You tell my rickshaw boy to wait! Quick, before he gets away!"

Blake knew that the last door would be the one leading to Binhart's

room. The moment he was alone in the hall he tiptoed to this door and

pressed an ear against its panel. Then with his left hand, he slowly

turned the knob, caressing it with his fingers that it might not click

when the latch was released. As he had feared, it was locked.

He stood for a second or two, thinking. Then with the knuckle of one

finger he tapped on the door, lightly, almost timidly.

A man's voice from within, cried out, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute!"

But Blake, who had been examining the woodwork of the door-frame, did

not choose to wait a minute. Any such wait, he felt, would involve too

much risk. In one minute, he knew, a fugitive could either be off and

away, or could at least prepare himself for any one intercepting that

flight. So Blake took two quick steps back, and brought his massive

shoulder against the door. It swung back, as though nothing more than

a parlor match had held it shut. Blake, as he stepped into the room,

dropped his right hand to his coat pocket.

Facing him, at the far side of the room, he saw Binhart.

The fugitive sat in a short-legged reed chair, with a grip-sack open on

his knees. His coat and vest were off, and the light from the oil lamp

at his side made his linen shirt a blotch of white.

He had thrown his head up, at the sound of the opening door, and he

still sat, leaning forward in the low chair in an attitude of startled

expectancy. There was no outward and apparent change on his face as

his eyes fell on Blake's figure. He showed neither fear nor

bewilderment. His career had equipped him with histrionic powers that

were exceptional. As a bank-sneak and confidence-man he had long since

learned perfect control of his features, perfect composure even under

the most discomforting circumstances.

"Hello, Connie!" said the detective facing him. He spoke quietly, and

his attitude seemed one of unconcern. Yet a careful observer might

have noticed that the pulse of his beefy neck was beating faster than

usual. And over that great body, under its clothing, were rippling

tremors strangely like those that shake the body of a leashed bulldog

at the sight of a street cat.

"Hello, Jim!" answered Binhart, with equal composure. He had aged

since Blake had last seen him, aged incredibly. His face was thin now,

with plum-colored circles under the faded eyes.

He made a move as though to lift down the valise that rested on his

knees. But Blake stopped him with a sharp movement of his right hand.

"That's all right," he said. "Don't get up!"

Binhart eyed him. During that few seconds of silent tableau each man

was appraising, weighing, estimating the strength of the other.

"What do you want, Jim?" asked Binhart, almost querulously.

"I want that gun you 've got up there under your liver pad," was

Blake's impassive answer.

"Is that all?" asked Binhart. But he made no move to produce the gun.

"Then I want you," calmly announced Blake.

A look of gentle expostulation crept over Binhart's gaunt face.

"You can't do it, Jim," he announced. "You can't take me away from

here."

"But I'm going to," retorted Blake.

"How?"

"I 'm just going to take you."

He crossed the room as he spoke.

"Give me the gun," he commanded.

Binhart still sat in the low reed chair. He made no movement in

response to Blake's command.

"What's the good of getting rough-house," he complained.

"Gi' me the gun," repeated Blake.

"Jim, I hate to see you act this way," but as Binhart spoke he slowly

drew the revolver from its flapped pocket. Blake's revolver barrel was

touching the white shirt-front as the movement was made. It remained

there until he had possession of Binhart's gun. Then he backed away,

putting his own revolver back in his pocket.

"Now, get your clothes on," commanded Blake.

"What for?" temporized Binhart.

"You 're coming with me!"

"You can't do it, Jim," persisted the other. "You could n't get me

down to the waterfront, in this town. They 'd get you before you were

two hundred yards away from that door."

"I 'll risk it," announced the detective.

"And I 'd fight you myself, every move. This ain't Manhattan Borough,

you know, Jim; you can't kidnap a white man. I 'd have you in irons

for abduction the first ship we struck. And at the first port of call

I 'd have the best law sharps money could get. You can't do it, Jim.

It ain't law!"

"What t' hell do I care for law," was Blake's retort. "I want you and

you 're going to come with me."

"Where am I going?"

"Back to New York."

Binhart laughed. It was a laugh without any mirth in it.

"Jim, you 're foolish. You could n't get me back to New York alive,

any more than you could take Victoria Peak to New York!"

"All right, then, I 'll take you along the other way, if I ain't going

to take you alive. I 've followed you a good many thousand miles,

Connie, and a little loose talk ain't going to make me lie down at this

stage of the game."

Binhart sat studying the other man for a moment or two.

"Then how about a little real talk, the kind of talk that money makes?"

"Nothing doing!" declared Blake, folding his arms.

Binhart flickered a glance at him as he thrust his own right hand down

into the hand-bag on his knees.

"I want to show you what you could get out of this," he said, leaning

forward a little as he looked up at Blake.

When his exploring right hand was lifted again above the top of the bag

Blake firmly expected to see papers of some sort between its fingers.

He was astonished to see something metallic, something which glittered

bright in the light from the wall lamp. The record of this discovery

had scarcely been carried back to his brain, when the silence of the

room seemed to explode into a white sting, a puff of noise that felt

like a whip lash curling about Blake's leg. It seemed to roll off in a

shifting and drifting cloud of smoke.

It so amazed Blake that he fell back against the wall, trying to

comprehend it, to decipher the source and meaning of it all. He was

still huddled back against the wall when a second surprise came to him.

It was the discovery that Binhart had caught up a hat and a coat, and

was running away, running out through the door while his captor stared

after him.

It was only then Blake realized that his huddled position was not a

thing of his own volition. Some impact had thrown him against the wall

like a toppled nine-pin. The truth came to him, in a sudden flash;

Binhart had shot at him. There had been a second revolver hidden away

in the hand bag, and Binhart had attempted to make use of it.

A great rage against Binhart swept through him. A still greater rage

at the thought that his enemy was running away brought Blake lurching

and scrambling to his feet. He was a little startled to find that it

hurt him to run. But it hurt him more to think of losing Binhart.

He dove for the door, hurling his great bulk through it, tossing aside

the startled Portuguese servant who stood at the outer entrance. He

ran frenziedly out into the night, knowing by the staring faces of the

street-corner group that Binhart had made the first turning and was

running towards the water-front. He could see the fugitive, as he came

to the corner; and like an unpenned bull he swung about and made after

him. His one thought was to capture his man. His one obsession was to

haul down Binhart.

Then, as he ran, a small trouble insinuated itself into his mind. He

could not understand the swishing of his right boot, at every hurrying

stride. But he did not stop, for he could already smell the odorous

coolness of the waterfront and he knew he must close in on his man

before that forest of floating sampans and native house-boats swallowed

him up.

A lightheadedness crept over him as he came panting down to the water's

edge. The faces of the coolies about him, as he bargained for a

sampan, seemed far away and misty. The voices, as the flat-bottomed

little skiff was pushed off in pursuit of the boat which was hurrying

Binhart out into the night, seemed remote and thin, as though coming

from across foggy water. He was bewildered by a sense of dampness in

his right leg. He patted it with his hand, inquisitively, and found it

wet.

He stooped down and felt his boot. It was full of blood. It was

overrunning with blood. He remembered then. Binhart had shot him,

after all.

He could never say whether it was this discovery, or the actual loss of

blood, that filled him with a sudden giddiness. He fell forward on his

face, on the bottom of the rocking sampan.

He must have been unconscious for some time, for when he awakened he

was dimly aware that he was being carried up the landing-ladder of a

steamer. He heard English voices about him. A very youthful-looking

ship's surgeon came and bent over him, cut away his trouser-leg, and

whistled.

"Why, he 's been bleeding like a stuck pig!" he heard a startled voice,

very close to him, suddenly exclaim. And a few minutes later, after

being moved again, he opened his eyes to find himself in a berth and

the boyish-looking surgeon assuring him it was all right.

"Where's Binhart?" asked Blake.

"That's all right, old chap, you just rest up a bit," said the

placatory youth.

At nine the next morning Blake was taken ashore at Hong Kong.

After eleven days in the English hospital he was on his feet again. He

was quite strong by that time. But for several weeks after that his

leg was painfully stiff.

X

Twelve days later Blake began just where he had left off. He sent out

his feelers, he canvassed the offices from which some echo might come,

he had Macao searched and all westbound steamers which he could reach

by wireless were duly warned. But more than ever, now, he found, he

had to depend on his own initiative, his own personal efforts. The

more official the quarters to which he looked for coöperation, the less

response he seemed to elicit. In some circles, he saw, his story was

even doubted. It was listened to with indifference; it was dismissed

with shrugs. There were times when he himself was smiled at, pityingly.

He concluded, after much thought on the matter, that Binhart would

continue to work his way westward. That the fugitive would strike

inland and try to reach Europe by means of the Trans-Siberian Railway

seemed out of the question. On that route he would be too easily

traced. The carefully guarded frontiers of Russia, too, would offer

obstacles which he dare not meet. He would stick to the ragged and

restless sea-fringes, concluded the detective. But before acting on

that conclusion he caught a _Toyo Kisen Kaisha_ steamer for Shanghai,

and went over that city from the Bund and the Maloo to the narrowest

street in the native quarter. In all this second search, however, he

found nothing to reward his efforts. So he started doggedly southward

again, stopping at Saigon and Bangkok and Singapore.

At each of these ports he went through the same rounds, canvassed the

same set of officials, and made the same inquiries. Then he would go

to the native quarters, to the gambling houses, to the water-front and

the rickshaw coolies and half-naked Malay wharf-rats, holding the

departmental photograph of Binhart in his hand and inquiring of

stranger after stranger: "You know? You savvy him?" And time after

time the curious yellow faces would bend over the picture, the

inscrutable slant eyes would study the face, sometimes silently,

sometimes with a disheartening jabber of heathen tongues. But not one

trace of Binhart could he pick up.

Then he went on to Penang. There he went doggedly through the same

manoeuvers, canvassing the same rounds and putting the same questions.

And it was at Penang that a sharp-eyed young water-front coolie

squinted at the well-thumbed photograph, squinted back at Blake, and

shook his head in affirmation. A tip of a few English shillings

loosened his tongue, but as Blake understood neither Malay nor Chinese

he was in the dark until he led his coolie to a Cook's agent, who in

turn called in the local officers, who in turn consulted with the

booking-agents of the P. & O. Line. It was then Blake discovered that

Binhart had booked passage under the name of Blaisdell, twelve days

before, for Brindisi.

Blake studied the map, cashed a draft, and waited for the next steamer.

While marking time he purchased copies of "French Self-Taught" and

"Italian Self-Taught," hoping to school himself in a speaking knowledge

of these two tongues. But the effort was futile. Pore as he might

over those small volumes, he could glean nothing from their laboriously

pondered pages. His mind was no longer receptive. It seemed

indurated, hard-shelled. He had to acknowledge to his own soul that it

was beyond him. He was too old a dog to learn new tricks.

The trip to Brindisi seemed an endless one. He seemed to have lost his

earlier tendency to be a "mixer." He became more morose, more

self-immured. He found himself without the desire to make new friends,

and his Celtic ancestry equipped him with a mute and sullen antipathy

for his aggressively English fellow travelers. He spent much of his

time in the smoking-room, playing solitaire. When they stopped at

Madras and Bombay he merely emerged from his shell to make sure if no

trace of Binhart were about. He was no more interested in these

heathen cities of a heathen East than in an ash-pile through which he

might have to rake for a hidden coin.

By the time he reached Brindisi he had recovered his lost weight, and

added to it, by many pounds. He had also returned to his earlier habit

of chewing "fine-cut." He gave less thought to his personal

appearance, becoming more and more indifferent as to the impression he

made on those about him. His face, for all his increase in flesh, lost

its ruddiness. It was plain that during the last few months he had

aged, that his hound-like eye had grown more haggard, that his always

ponderous step had lost the last of its resilience.

Yet one hour after he had landed at Brindisi his listlessness seemed a

thing of the past. For there he was able to pick up the trail again,

with clear proof that a man answering to Binhart's description had

sailed for Corfu. From Corfu the scent was followed northward to

Ragusa, and from Ragusa, on to Trieste, where it was lost again.

Two days of hard work, however, convinced Blake that Binhart had sailed

from Fiume to Naples. He started southward by train, at once, vaguely

surprised at the length of Italy, vaguely disconcerted by the unknown

tongue and the unknown country which he had to face.

It was not until he arrived at Naples that he seemed to touch solid

ground again. That city, he felt, stood much nearer home. In it were

many persons not averse to curry favor with a New York official, and

many persons indirectly in touch with the home Department. These

persons he assiduously sought out, one by one, and in twelve hours'

time his net had been woven completely about the city. And, so far as

he could learn, Binhart was still somewhere in that city.

Two days later, when least expecting it, he stepped into the wine-room

of an obscure little pension hotel on the Via Margellina and saw

Binhart before him. Binhart left the room as the other man stepped

into it. He left by way of the window, carrying the casement with him.

Blake followed, but the lighter and younger man out-ran him and was

swallowed up by one of the unknown streets of an unknown quarter. An

hour later Blake had his hired agents raking that quarter from cellar

to garret. It was not until the evening of the following day that

these agents learned Binhart had made his way to the Marina, bribed a

water-front boatman to row him across the bay, and had been put aboard

a freighter weighing anchor for Marseilles.

For the second time Blake traversed Italy by train, hurrying

self-immured and preoccupied through Rome and Florence and Genoa, and

then on along the Riviera to Marseilles.

In that brawling and turbulent French port, after the usual rounds and

the usual inquiries down in the midst of the harbor-front forestry of

masts, he found a boatman who claimed to have knowledge of Binhart's

whereabouts. This piratical-looking boatman promptly took Blake

several miles down the coast, parleyed in the _lingua Franca_ of the

Mediterranean, argued in broken English, and insisted on going further.

Blake, scenting imposture, demanded to be put ashore. This the boatman

refused to do. It was then and only then that the detective suspected

he was the victim of a "plant," of a carefully planned shanghaing

movement, the object of which, apparently, was to gain time for the

fugitive.

It was only at the point of a revolver that Blake brought the boat

ashore, and there he was promptly arrested and accused of attempted

murder. He found it expedient to call in the aid of the American

Consul, who, in turn, suggested the retaining of a local advocate.

Everything, it is true, was at last made clear and in the end Blake was

honorably released.

But Binhart, in the meantime, had caught a Lloyd Brazileiro steamer for

Rio de Janeiro, and was once more on the high seas.

Blake, when he learned of this, sat staring about him, like a man

facing news which he could not assimilate. He shut himself up in his

hotel room, for an hour, communing with his own dark soul. He emerged

from that self-communion freshly shaved and smoking a cigar. He found

that he could catch a steamer for Barcelona, and from that port take a

Campania Transatlantic boat for Kingston, Jamaica.

From the American consulate he carried away with him a bundle of New

York newspapers. When out on the Atlantic he arranged these according

to date and went over them diligently, page by page. They seemed like

echoes out of another life. He read listlessly on, going over the

belated news from his old-time home with the melancholy indifference of

the alien, with the poignant impersonality of the exile. He read of

fires and crimes and calamities, of investigations and elections. He

read of a rumored Police Department shake up, and he could afford to

smile at the vitality of that hellbender-like report. Then, as he

turned the worn pages, the smile died from his heavy lips, for his own

name leaped up like a snake from the text and seemed to strike him in

the face. He spelled through the paragraphs carefully, word by word,

as though it were in a language with which he was only half familiar.

He even went back and read the entire column for a second time. For

there it told of his removal from the Police Department. The

Commissioner and Copeland had saved their necks, but Blake was no

longer Second Deputy. They spoke of him as being somewhere in the

Philippines, on the trail of the bank-robber Binhart. They went on to

describe him as a sleuth of the older school, as an advocate of the now

obsolete "third-degree" methods, and as a product of the "machine"

which had so long and so flagrantly placed politics before efficiency.

Blake put down the papers, lighted a cigar, sat back, and let the truth

of what he had read percolate into his actual consciousness. He was

startled, at first, that no great outburst of rage swept through him.

All he felt, in fact, was a slow and dull resentment, a resentment

which he could not articulate. Yet dull as it was, hour by hour and

day by idle day it grew more virulent. About him stood nothing against

which this resentment could be marshaled. His pride lay as helpless as

a whale washed ashore, too massive to turn and face the tides of

treachery that had wrecked it. All he asked for was time. Let them

wait, he kept telling himself; let them wait until he got back with

Binhart! Then they would all eat crow, every last man of them!

For Blake did not intend to give up the trail. To do so would have

been beyond him. His mental fangs were already fixed in Binhart. To

withdraw them was not in his power. He could no more surrender his

quarry than the python's head, having once closed on the rabbit, could

release its meal. With Blake, every instinct sloped inward, just as

every python-fang sloped backward. The actual reason for the chase was

no longer clear to his own vision. It was something no longer to be

reckoned with. The only thing that counted was the fact that he had

decided to "get" Binhart, that he was the pursuer and Binhart was the

fugitive. It had long since resolved itself into a personal issue

between him and his enemy.