Never-Fail Blake

by Arthur Stringer

  X

  Twelve days later Blake began just where he had left off. He sent outhis feelers, he canvassed the offices from which some echo might come,he had Macao searched and all westbound steamers which he could reachby wireless were duly warned. But more than ever, now, he found, hehad to depend on his own initiative, his own personal efforts. Themore official the quarters to which he looked for cooeperation, the lessresponse he seemed to elicit. In some circles, he saw, his story waseven doubted. It was listened to with indifference; it was dismissedwith shrugs. There were times when he himself was smiled at, pityingly.

  He concluded, after much thought on the matter, that Binhart wouldcontinue to work his way westward. That the fugitive would strikeinland and try to reach Europe by means of the Trans-Siberian Railwayseemed out of the question. On that route he would be too easilytraced. The carefully guarded frontiers of Russia, too, would offerobstacles which he dare not meet. He would stick to the ragged andrestless sea-fringes, concluded the detective. But before acting onthat conclusion he caught a _Toyo Kisen Kaisha_ steamer for Shanghai,and went over that city from the Bund and the Maloo to the narroweststreet in the native quarter. In all this second search, however, hefound nothing to reward his efforts. So he started doggedly southwardagain, stopping at Saigon and Bangkok and Singapore.

  At each of these ports he went through the same rounds, canvassed thesame set of officials, and made the same inquiries. Then he would goto the native quarters, to the gambling houses, to the water-front andthe rickshaw coolies and half-naked Malay wharf-rats, holding thedepartmental photograph of Binhart in his hand and inquiring ofstranger after stranger: "You know? You savvy him?" And time aftertime the curious yellow faces would bend over the picture, theinscrutable slant eyes would study the face, sometimes silently,sometimes with a disheartening jabber of heathen tongues. But not onetrace of Binhart could he pick up.

  Then he went on to Penang. There he went doggedly through the samemanoeuvers, canvassing the same rounds and putting the same questions.And it was at Penang that a sharp-eyed young water-front cooliesquinted at the well-thumbed photograph, squinted back at Blake, andshook his head in affirmation. A tip of a few English shillingsloosened his tongue, but as Blake understood neither Malay nor Chinesehe was in the dark until he led his coolie to a Cook's agent, who inturn called in the local officers, who in turn consulted with thebooking-agents of the P. & O. Line. It was then Blake discovered thatBinhart had booked passage under the name of Blaisdell, twelve daysbefore, 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 knowledgeof these two tongues. But the effort was futile. Pore as he mightover those small volumes, he could glean nothing from their laboriouslypondered pages. His mind was no longer receptive. It seemedindurated, hard-shelled. He had to acknowledge to his own soul that itwas 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 hisearlier tendency to be a "mixer." He became more morose, moreself-immured. He found himself without the desire to make new friends,and his Celtic ancestry equipped him with a mute and sullen antipathyfor his aggressively English fellow travelers. He spent much of histime in the smoking-room, playing solitaire. When they stopped atMadras and Bombay he merely emerged from his shell to make sure if notrace of Binhart were about. He was no more interested in theseheathen cities of a heathen East than in an ash-pile through which hemight have to rake for a hidden coin.

  By the time he reached Brindisi he had recovered his lost weight, andadded to it, by many pounds. He had also returned to his earlier habitof chewing "fine-cut." He gave less thought to his personalappearance, becoming more and more indifferent as to the impression hemade on those about him. His face, for all his increase in flesh, lostits ruddiness. It was plain that during the last few months he hadaged, that his hound-like eye had grown more haggard, that his alwaysponderous step had lost the last of its resilience.

  Yet one hour after he had landed at Brindisi his listlessness seemed athing 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 hadsailed for Corfu. From Corfu the scent was followed northward toRagusa, and from Ragusa, on to Trieste, where it was lost again.

  Two days of hard work, however, convinced Blake that Binhart had sailedfrom Fiume to Naples. He started southward by train, at once, vaguelysurprised at the length of Italy, vaguely disconcerted by the unknowntongue and the unknown country which he had to face.

  It was not until he arrived at Naples that he seemed to touch solidground again. That city, he felt, stood much nearer home. In it weremany persons not averse to curry favor with a New York official, andmany persons indirectly in touch with the home Department. Thesepersons he assiduously sought out, one by one, and in twelve hours'time his net had been woven completely about the city. And, so far ashe could learn, Binhart was still somewhere in that city.

  Two days later, when least expecting it, he stepped into the wine-roomof an obscure little pension hotel on the Via Margellina and sawBinhart before him. Binhart left the room as the other man steppedinto 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 wasswallowed up by one of the unknown streets of an unknown quarter. Anhour later Blake had his hired agents raking that quarter from cellarto garret. It was not until the evening of the following day thatthese agents learned Binhart had made his way to the Marina, bribed awater-front boatman to row him across the bay, and had been put aboarda freighter weighing anchor for Marseilles.

  For the second time Blake traversed Italy by train, hurryingself-immured and preoccupied through Rome and Florence and Genoa, andthen on along the Riviera to Marseilles.

  In that brawling and turbulent French port, after the usual rounds andthe usual inquiries down in the midst of the harbor-front forestry ofmasts, he found a boatman who claimed to have knowledge of Binhart'swhereabouts. This piratical-looking boatman promptly took Blakeseveral miles down the coast, parleyed in the _lingua Franca_ of theMediterranean, argued in broken English, and insisted on going further.Blake, scenting imposture, demanded to be put ashore. This the boatmanrefused to do. It was then and only then that the detective suspectedhe was the victim of a "plant," of a carefully planned shanghaingmovement, the object of which, apparently, was to gain time for thefugitive.

  It was only at the point of a revolver that Blake brought the boatashore, and there he was promptly arrested and accused of attemptedmurder. He found it expedient to call in the aid of the AmericanConsul, who, in turn, suggested the retaining of a local advocate.Everything, it is true, was at last made clear and in the end Blake washonorably released.

  But Binhart, in the meantime, had caught a Lloyd Brazileiro steamer forRio de Janeiro, and was once more on the high seas.

  Blake, when he learned of this, sat staring about him, like a manfacing news which he could not assimilate. He shut himself up in hishotel room, for an hour, communing with his own dark soul. He emergedfrom that self-communion freshly shaved and smoking a cigar. He foundthat he could catch a steamer for Barcelona, and from that port take aCampania Transatlantic boat for Kingston, Jamaica.

  From the American consulate he carried away with him a bundle of NewYork newspapers. When out on the Atlantic he arranged these accordingto date and went over them diligently, page by page. They seemed likeechoes out of another life. He read listlessly on, going over thebelated news from his old-time home with the melancholy indifference ofthe alien, with the poignant impersonality of the exile. He read offires and crimes and calamities, of investigations and elections. Heread of a rumored Police Department shake up, and he could afford tosmile at the vitality of that hellbender-like report. Then, as heturned the worn pages, the smile died from his
heavy lips, for his ownname leaped up like a snake from the text and seemed to strike him inthe 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. Forthere it told of his removal from the Police Department. TheCommissioner and Copeland had saved their necks, but Blake was nolonger Second Deputy. They spoke of him as being somewhere in thePhilippines, on the trail of the bank-robber Binhart. They went on todescribe him as a sleuth of the older school, as an advocate of the nowobsolete "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 truthof what he had read percolate into his actual consciousness. He wasstartled, at first, that no great outburst of rage swept through him.All he felt, in fact, was a slow and dull resentment, a resentmentwhich he could not articulate. Yet dull as it was, hour by hour andday by idle day it grew more virulent. About him stood nothing againstwhich this resentment could be marshaled. His pride lay as helpless asa whale washed ashore, too massive to turn and face the tides oftreachery that had wrecked it. All he asked for was time. Let themwait, he kept telling himself; let them wait until he got back withBinhart! 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 havebeen beyond him. His mental fangs were already fixed in Binhart. Towithdraw them was not in his power. He could no more surrender hisquarry than the python's head, having once closed on the rabbit, couldrelease its meal. With Blake, every instinct sloped inward, just asevery python-fang sloped backward. The actual reason for the chase wasno longer clear to his own vision. It was something no longer to bereckoned with. The only thing that counted was the fact that he haddecided to "get" Binhart, that he was the pursuer and Binhart was thefugitive. It had long since resolved itself into a personal issuebetween him and his enemy.