Binhart was moved that night up into the hills. There he was installed in
a bungalow of an abandoned banana plantation and a doctor was brought to
his bedside. He was delirious by the time this doctor arrived, and his
ravings through the night were a source of vague worry to his enemy. On
the second day the sick man showed signs of improvement.
For three weeks Blake watched over Binhart, saw to his wants, journeyed
to Chalavia for his food and medicines. When the fever was broken and
Binhart began to gain strength the detective no longer made the trip to
Chalavia in person. He preferred to remain with the sick man.
He watched that sick man carefully, jealously, hour by hour and day by
day. A peon servant was paid to keep up the vigil when Blake slept, as
sleep he must.
But the strain was beginning to tell on him. He walked heavily. The
asthmatic wheeze of his breathing became more audible. His earlier touch
of malaria returned to him, and he suffered from intermittent chills and
fever. The day came when Blake suggested it was about time for them to
move on.
“Where to?” asked Binhart. Little had passed between the two men, but
during all those silent nights and days each had been secretly yet
assiduously studying the other.
“Back to New York,” was Blake’s indifferent-noted answer. Yet this
indifference was a pretense, for no soul had ever hungered more for a
white man’s country than did the travel-worn and fever-racked Blake. But
he had his part to play, and he did not intend to shirk it. They went
about their preparations quietly, like two fellow excursionists making
ready for a journey with which they were already over-familiar. It was
while they sat waiting for the guides and mules that Blake addressed
himself to the prisoner.
“Connie,” he said, “I’m taking you back. It doesn’t make much difference
whether I take you back dead or alive. But I’m going to take you back.”
The other man said nothing, but his slight head-movement was one of
comprehension.
“So I just wanted to say there’s no side-stepping, no four-flushing, at
this end of the trip!”
“I understand,” was Binhart’s listless response.
“I’m glad you do,” Blake went on in his dully monotonous voice. “Because
I got where I can’t stand any more breaks.”
“All right, Jim,” answered Binhart. They sat staring at each other. It
was not hate that existed between them. It was something more dormant,
more innate. It was something that had grown ineradicable; as fixed as
the relationship between the hound and the hare. Each wore an air of
careless listlessness, yet each watched the other, every move, every
moment.
It was as they made their way slowly down to the coast that Blake put an
unexpected question to Binhart.
“Connie, where in hell did you plant that haul o’ yours?”
This thing had been worrying Blake. Weeks before he had gone through
every nook and corner, every pocket and crevice in Binhart’s belongings.
The bank thief laughed a little. He had been growing stronger, day by
day, and as his spirits had risen Blake’s had seemed to recede.
“Oh, I left that up in the States, where it’d be safe,” he answered.
“What’ll you do about it?” Blake casually inquired.
“I can’t tell, just yet,” was Binhart’s retort.
He rode on silent and thoughtful for several minutes. “Jim,” he said at
last, “we’re both about done for. There’s not much left for either of us.
We’re going at this thing wrong. There’s a lot o’ money up there, for
somebody. And _you_ ought to get it!”
“What do you mean?” asked Blake. He resented the bodily weakness that was
making burro-riding a torture.
“I mean it’s worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to you just to
let me drop out. I’d hand you over that much to quit the chase.”
“It ain’t me that’s chasing you, Connie. It’s the Law!” was Blake’s
quiet-toned response. And the other man knew he believed it.
“Well, you quit, and I’ll stand for the Law!”
“But, can’t you see, they’d never stand for you!”
“Oh, yes they would. I’d just drop out, and they’d forget about me. And
you’d have that pile to enjoy life with!”
Blake thought it over, ponderously, point by point. For not one fraction
of a second could he countenance the thought of surrendering Binhart. Yet
he wanted both his prisoner and his prisoner’s haul; he wanted his final
accomplishment to be complete.
“But how’d we ever handle the deal?” prompted the tired-bodied man on the
burro.
“You remember a woman called Elsie Verriner?”
“Yes,” acknowledged Blake, with a pang of regret which he could not
fathom, at the mention of the name.
“Well, we could fix it through her.”
“Does Elsie Verriner know where that pile is?” the detective inquired.
His withered hulk of a body was warmed by a slow glow of anticipation.
There was a woman, he remembered, whom he could count on swinging to his
own ends.
“No, but she could get it,” was Binhart’s response.
“And what good would that do _me_?”
“The two of us could go up to New Orleans. We could slip in there without
any one being the wiser. She could meet us. She’d bring the stuff with
her. Then, when you had the pile in your hand, I could just fade off the
map.”
Blake rode on again in silence.
“All right,” he said at last. “I’m willing.”
“Then how’ll you prove it? How’d I know you’d make good?” demanded
Binhart.
“That’s not up to me! You’re the man that’s got to make good!” was
Blake’s retort.
“But you’ll give me the chance?” half pleaded his prisoner.
“Sure!” replied Blake, as they rode on again. He was wondering how many
more miles of hell he would have to ride through before he could rest. He
felt that he would like to sleep for days, for weeks, without any thought
of where to-morrow would find him or the next day would bring him.
It was late that day as they climbed up out of a steaming valley into
higher ground that Binhart pulled up and studied Blake’s face.
“Jim, you look like a sick man to me!” he declared. He said it without
exultation; but there was a new and less passive timber to his voice.
“I’ve been feeling kind o’ mean this last day or two,” confessed Blake.
His own once guttural voice was plaintive, as he spoke. It was almost a
quavering whine.
“Hadn’t we better lay up for a few days?” suggested Binhart.
“Lay up nothing!” cried Blake, and he clenched that determination by an
outburst of blasphemous anger. But he secretly took great doses of quinin
and drank much native liquor. He fought against a mental lassitude which
he could not comprehend. Never before had that ample machinery of the
body failed him in an emergency. Never before had he known an illness
that a swallow or two of brandy and a night’s rest could not scatter to
the four winds. It bewildered him to find his once capable frame
rebelling against its tasks. It left him dazed, as though he had been
confronted by the sudden and gratuitous treachery of a life-long servant.
He grew more irritable, more fanciful. He changed guides at the next
native village, fearing that Binhart might have grown too intimate with
the old ones. He was swayed by an ever-increasing fear of intrigues. He
coerced his flagging will into a feverish watchfulness. He became more
arbitrary in his movements and exactions. When the chance came, he
purchased a repeating Lee-Enfield rifle, which he packed across his
sweating back on the trail and slept with under his arm at night. When a
morning came when he was too weak and ill to get up, he lay back on his
grass couch, with his rifle across his knees, watching Binhart, always
watching Binhart.
He seemed to realize that his power was slipping away, and he brooded on
some plan for holding his prisoner, on any plan, no matter what it might
cost.
He even pretended to sleep, to the end that Binhart might make an effort
to break away—and be brought down with a bullet. He prayed that Binhart
would try to go, would give him an excuse for the last move that would
leave the two of them lying there together. Even to perish there side by
side, foolishly, uselessly, seemed more desirable than the thought that
Binhart might in the end get away. He seemed satisfied that the two of
them should lie there, for all time, each holding the other down, like
two embattled stags with their horns inextricably locked. And he waited
there, nursing his rifle, watching out of sullenly feverish eyes, marking
each movement of the passive-faced Binhart.
But Binhart, knowing what he knew, was content to wait.
He was content to wait until the fever grew, and the poisons of the blood
narcotized the dulled brain into indifference, and then goaded it into
delirium. Then, calmly equipping himself for his journey, he buried the
repeating rifle and slipped away in the night, carrying with him Blake’s
quinin and revolver and pocket-filter. He traveled hurriedly, bearing
southeast towards the San Juan. Four days later he reached the coast,
journeyed by boat to Bluefields, and from that port passed on into the
outer world, where time and distance swallowed him up, and no sign of his
whereabouts was left behind.