Never-Fail Blake

by Arthur Stringer

  XX

  Several days dragged away before Blake's mental clarity returned tohim. Then block by unstable block he seemed to rebuild a new worldabout him, a new world which was both narrow and empty. But it atleast gave him something on which to plant his bewildered feet.

  That slow return to the substantialities of life was in the nature of aconvalescence. It came step by languid step; he knew no power to hurryit. And as is so often the case with convalescents, he found himselfin a world from which time seemed to have detached him. Yet as heemerged from that earlier state of coma, his old-time instincts andcharacteristics began to assert themselves. Some deep-seated innerspirit of dubiety began to grope about and question and challenge. Hisinnate skepticism once more became active. That tendency to cynicalunbelief which his profession had imposed upon him stubbornlyreasserted itself. His career had crowned him with a surlysuspiciousness. And about the one thing that remained vital to thatcareer, or what was left of it, these wayward suspicions arrayedthemselves like wolves, about a wounded stag.

  His unquiet soul felt the need of some final and personal proof ofBinhart's death. He asked for more data than had been given him. Hewanted more information than the fact that Binhart, on his flightnorth, had fallen ill of pneumonia in New Orleans, had wandered on tothe dry air of Arizona with a "spot" on his lungs, and had theresuccumbed to the tubercular invasion for which his earlier sickness hadlaid him open. Blake's slowly awakening and ever-wary mind kepttelling him that after all there might be some possibility of trickery,that a fugitive with the devilish ingenuity of Binhart would resort toany means to escape being further harassed by the Law.

  Blake even recalled, a few days later, the incident of the Shattuckjewel-robbery, during the first weeks of his regime as a DeputyCommissioner. This diamond-thief named Shattuck had been arrested andreleased under heavy bail. Seven months later Shattuck's attorney hadappeared before the District Attorney's office with a duly executedcertificate of death, officially establishing the fact that his clienthad died two weeks before in the city of Baltimore. On this he hadbased a demand for the dismissal of the case. He had succeeded inhaving all action stopped and the affair became, officially, a closedincident. Yet two months later Shattuck had been seen alive, and thefollowing winter had engaged in an Albany hotel robbery which hadearned for him, under an entirely different name, a nine-year sentencein Sing Sing.

  From the memory of that case Never-Fail Blake wrung a thin and ghostlyconsolation. The more he brooded over it the more morosely disquietedhe became. The thing grew like a upas tree; it spread until itobsessed all his waking hours and invaded even his dreams. Then a timecame when he could endure it no more. He faced the necessity ofpurging his soul of all uncertainty. The whimpering of one of hisunkenneled "hunches" merged into what seemed an actual voice ofinspiration to him.

  He gathered together what money he could; he arranged what few mattersstill remained to engage his attention, going about the task with thatvaledictory solemnity with which the forlornly decrepit execute theirlast will and testament. Then, when everything was prepared, he oncemore started out on the trail.

  * * * * * *

  Two weeks later a rough and heavy-bodied man, garbed in the roughapparel of a mining prospector, made his way into the sun-steeped townof Toluca. There he went quietly to the wooden-fronted hotel, hired apack-mule and a camp-outfit and made purchase, among other things, of apick and shovel. To certain of the men he met he put inquiries as tothe best trail out to the Buenavista Copper Camp. Then, as he waitedfor the camp-partner who was to follow him into Toluca, he drifted withamiable and ponderous restlessness about the town, talking with thetelegraph operator and the barber, swapping yarns at the livery-stablewhere his pack-mule was lodged, handing out cigars in thewooden-fronted hotel, casually interviewing the town officials as tothe health of the locality and the death-rate of Toluca, acquaintinghimself with the local undertaker and the lonely young doctor, and evendropping in on the town officials and making inquiries aboutmain-street building lots and the need of a new hotel.

  To all this amiable and erratic garrulity there seemed to be neitherdirection nor significance. But in one thing the town of Tolucaagreed; the ponderous-bodied old new-comer was a bit "queer" in hishead.

  A time came, however, when the newcomer announced that he could wait nolonger for his belated camp-partner. With his pack-mule and a pick andshovel he set out, late one afternoon, for the Buenavista Camp. Yet bynightfall, for some strange reason, any one traveling that lonely trailmight have seen him returning towards Toluca. He did not enter thetown, however, but skirted the outer fringe of sparsely settled housesand guardedly made his way to a close-fenced area, in which neitherlight nor movement could be detected. This silent place awakened inhim no trace of either fear or repugnance. With him he carried hispick and shovel, and five minutes later the sound of this pick andshovel might have been heard at work as the ponderous-bodied mansweated over his midnight labor. When he had dug for what seemed aninterminable length of time, he tore away a layer of pine boards andreleased a double row of screw-heads. Then he crouched low down in therectangular cavern which he had fashioned with his spade, struck amatch, and peered with a narrow-eyed and breathless intentness at whatfaced him there.

  One glance at that tragic mass of corruption was enough for him. Hereplaced the screw-heads and the pine boards. He took up his shoveland began restoring the earth, stolidly tramping it down, from time totime, with his great weight.

  When his task was completed he saw that everything was orderly and ashe had found it. Then he returned to his tethered packmule and oncemore headed for the Buenavista Camp, carrying with him a discoverywhich made the night air as intoxicating as wine to his weary body.

  Late that night a man might have been heard singing to the stars,singing in the midst of the wilderness, without rhyme or reason. Andin the midst of that wilderness he remained for another long day andanother long night, as though solitude were necessary to him, that hemight adjust himself to some new order of things, that he might digestsome victory which had been too much for his shattered nerves.

  On the third day, as he limped placidly back into the town of Toluca,his soul was torn between a great peace and a great hunger. He huggedto his breast the fact that somewhere in the world ahead of him a manonce known as Binhart still moved and lived. He kept telling himselfthat somewhere about the face of the globe that restless spirit whom hesought still wandered.

  Day by patient day, through the drought and heat and alkali of anArizona summer, he sought some clue, some inkling, of the directionwhich that wanderer had taken. But about Binhart and his movements,Toluca and Phoenix and all Arizona itself seemed to know nothing.

  Nothing, Blake saw in the end, remained to be discovered there. So intime the heavy-bodied man with the haggard hound's eyes took his leave,passing out into the world which in turn swallowed him up as completelyas it had swallowed up his unknown enemy.

  XXI

  Three of the busiest portions of New York, varying with the varioushours of the day, may safely be said to lie in that neighborhood whereNassau Street debouches into Park Row, and also near that point whereTwenty-third Street intercepts Fourth Avenue, and still again not farfrom where Broadway and Fifth Avenue meet at the southeast corner ofMadison Square.

  About these three points, at certain hours of the day and on certaindays of the week, an observant stranger might have noticed thestrangely grotesque figure of an old cement seller. So often had thisold street-peddler duly appeared at his stand, from month to month,that the hurrying public seemed to have become inured to thegrotesqueness of his appearance. Seldom, indeed, did a face turn toinspect him as he blinked out at the lighted street like a Pribiloffseal blinking into an Arctic sun. Yet it was only by a second or evena third glance that the more inquisitive might have detected anythingarresting in that forlornly ruminative figure with the pendulous andwithered throat and c
heek-flaps.

  To the casual observer he was merely a picturesque old street-peddler,standing like a time-stained statue beside a carefully arrayed exhibitof his wares. This exhibit, which invariably proved more interestingthan his own person, consisted of a frame of gas-piping in the form ofan inverted U. From the top bar of this iron frame swung two heavypieces of leather cemented together. Next to this coalesced leatherdangled a large Z made up of three pieces of plate glass stuck togetherat the ends, and amply demonstrating the adhesive power of thecementing mixture to be purchased there.

  Next to the glass Z again were two rows of chipped and serrated platesand saucers, plates and saucers of all kinds and colors, with holesdrilled in their edges, and held together like a suspended chain-gangby small brass links. At some time in its career each one of thesecups and saucers had been broken across or even shattered intofragments. Later, it had been ingeniously and patiently gluedtogether. And there it and its valiant brothers in misfortune swungtogether in a double row, with a cobblestone dangling from the bottomplate, reminding the passing world of remedial beneficences it mighttoo readily forget, attesting to the fact that life's worst fracturesmight in some way still be made whole.

  Yet so impassively, so stolidly statuesque, did this figure standbeside the gas-pipe that to all intents he might have been cemented tothe pavement with his own glue. He seldom moved, once his frame hadbeen set up and his wares laid out. When he did move it was only tore-awaken the equally plethoric motion of his slowly oscillating linksof cemented glass and chinaware. Sometimes, it is true, he disposed ofa phial of his cement, producing his bottle and receiving payment withthe absorbed impassivity of an automaton.

  Huge as his figure must once have been, it now seemed, like hisgibbeted plates, all battered and chipped and over-written with themarks of time. Like his plates, too, he carried some valiant sense ofbeing still intact, still stubbornly united, still oblivious of everyold-time fracture, still bound up into personal compactness by somepower which defied the blows of destiny.

  In all seasons, winter and summer, apparently, he wore a long andloose-fitting overcoat. This overcoat must once have been black, butit had faded to a green so conspicuous that it made him seem like abronze figure touched with the mellowing _patina_ of time.

  It was in the incredibly voluminous pockets of this overcoat that theold peddler carried his stock in trade, paper-wrapped bottles ofdifferent sizes, and the nickels and dimes and quarters of his dailytrafficking. And as the streams of life purled past him, like waterpast a stone, he seemed to ask nothing of the world on which he lookedout with such deep-set and impassive eyes. He seemed content with hislot. He seemed to have achieved a Nirvana-like indifferency towardsall his kind.

  Yet there were times, as he waited beside his stand, as lethargic as alobster in a fish-peddler's window, when his flaccid, exploring fingersdug deeper into one of those capacious side-pockets and there came incontact with two oddly shaped wristlets of polished steel. At suchtimes his intent eyes would film, as the eyes of a caged eaglesometimes do. Sometimes, too, he would smile with the half-pensiveCastilian smile of an uncouth and corpulent Cervantes.

  But as a rule his face was expressionless. About the entire moss-greenfigure seemed something faded and futile, like a street-lamp leftburning after sunrise. At other times, as the patrolman on the beatsauntered by in his authoritative blue stippled with its metal buttons,the old peddler's watching eyes would wander wistfully after thenonchalant figure. At such times a meditative and melancholyintentness would fix itself on the faded old face, and the stooping oldshoulders would even unconsciously heave with a sigh.

  As a rule, however, the great green-clad figure with its fringe ofwhite hair--the fringe that stood blithely out from the faded hat brimlike the halo of some medieval saint on a missal--did not permit hisgaze to wander so far afield.

  For, idle as that figure seemed, the brain behind it was foreveractive, forever vigilant and alert. The deep-set eyes under their lidsthat hung as loose as old parchment were always fixed on the life thatflowed past them. No face, as those eyes opened and closed like thegills of a dying fish, escaped their inspection. Every man who camewithin their range of vision was duly examined and adjudicated. Everyhuman atom of that forever ebbing and flowing tide of life had to passthrough an invisible screen of inspection, had in some intangible wayto justify itself as it proceeded on its unknown movement towards anunknown end. And on the loose-skinned and haggard face, had it beenstudied closely enough, could have been seen a vague and wistful noteof expectancy, a guarded and muffled sense of anticipation.

  Yet to-day, as on all other days, nobody stopped to study the oldcement-seller's face. The pink-cheeked young patrolman, swinging backon his beat, tattooed with his ash night-stick on the gas-pipe frameand peered indifferently down at the battered and gibbeted crockery.

  "Hello, Batty," he said as he set the exhibit oscillating with a pushof the knee. "How 's business?"

  "Pretty good," answered the patient and guttural voice. But the eyesthat seemed as calm as a cow's eyes did not look at the patrolman as hespoke.

  He had nothing to fear. He knew that he had his license. He knew thatunder the faded green of his overcoat was an oval-shapedstreet-peddler's badge. He also knew, which the patrolman did not,that under the lapel of his inner coat was a badge of another shape anddesign, the badge which season by season the indulgent new head of theDetective Bureau extended to him with his further privilege of aspecial officer's license. For this empty honor "Batty" Blake--for as"Batty" he was known to nearly all the cities of America--did anoccasional bit of "stooling" for the Central Office, a tip as to astray yeggman's return, a hint as to a "peterman's" activities in theshopping crowds, a whisper that a till tapper had failed to respect theDepartment's dead-lines.

  Yet nobody took Batty Blake seriously. It was said, indeed, that once,in the old regime, he had been a big man in the Department. But thatDepartment had known many changes, and where life is unduly active,memory is apt to be unduly short.

  The patrolman tapping on the gas-pipe arch with his idle night-stickmerely knew that Batty was placid and inoffensive, that he neverobstructed traffic and always carried a license-badge. He knew that indamp weather Batty limped and confessed that his leg pained him a bit,from an old hurt he 'd had in the East. And he had heard somewherethat Batty was a sort of Wandering Jew, patroling the whole length ofthe continent with his broken plates and his gas-pipe frame and hisglue-bottles, migrating restlessly from city to city, striking out asfar west as San Francisco, swinging round by Denver and New Orleans andthen working his way northward again up to St. Louis and Chicago andPittsburgh.

  Remembering these things the idle young "flatty" turned and looked atthe green-coated and sunken-shouldered figure, touched into some roughpity by the wordless pathos of an existence which seemed without aim orreason.

  "Batty, how long 're yuh going to peddle glue, anyway?" he suddenlyasked.

  The glue-peddler, watching the crowds that drifted by him, did notanswer. He did not even look about at his interrogator.

  "D' yuh _have_ to do this?" asked the wide-shouldered youth in uniform.

  "No," was the peddler's mild yet guttural response.

  The other prodded with his night-stick against the capacious overcoatpockets. Then he laughed.

  "I'll bet yuh 've got about forty dollars stowed away in there," hemocked. "Yuh have now, have n't yuh?"

  "I don' know!" listlessly answered the sunken-shouldered figure.

  "Then what 're yuh sellin' this stuff for, if it ain't for money?"persisted the vaguely piqued youth.

  "I don' know!" was the apathetic answer.

  "Then who does?" inquired the indolent young officer, as he stoodhumming and rocking on his heels and swinging his stick by itswrist-thong.

  The man known as Batty may or may not have been about to answer him.His lips moved, but no sound came from them. His attention,apparently, was suddenly directe
d elsewhere. For approaching him fromthe east his eyes had made out the familiar figure of old McCooey, theoldest plain-clothes man who still came out from Headquarters to "poundthe pavement."

  And at almost the same time, approaching him from the west, he hadcaught sight of another figure.

  It was that of a dapper and thin-faced man who might have been anywherefrom forty to sixty years of age. He walked, however, with a quick andnervous step. Yet the most remarkable thing about him seemed to be hiseyes. They were wide-set and protuberant, like a bird's, as thoughyears of being hunted had equipped him with the animal-like faculty ofdetermining without actually looking back just who might be followinghim.

  Those alert and wide-set eyes, in fact, must have sighted McCooey atthe same time that he fell under the vision of the old cement seller.For the dapper figure wheeled quietly and quickly about and stoopeddown at the very side of the humming patrolman. He stooped andexamined one of the peddler's many-fractured china plates. He squinteddown at it as though it were a thing of intense interest to him.

  As he stooped there the humming patrolman was the witness of aremarkable and inexplicable occurrence. From the throat of thehuge-shouldered peddler, not two paces away from him, he heard come ahoarse and brutish cry, a cry strangely like the bawl and groan of abranded range-cow. At the same moment the gigantic green-draped figureexploded into sudden activity. He seemed to catapult out at thestooping dapper figure, bearing it to the sidewalk with the sheerweight of his unprovoked assault.

  There the struggle continued. There the two strangely diverse bodiestwisted and panted and writhed. There the startlingly agile dapperfigure struggled to throw off his captor. The arch of gas-pipe wentover. Glue-bottles showered amid the shattered glass and crockery.But that once placid-eyed old cement seller struck to the unoffendingman he had so promptly and so gratuitously attacked, stuck to him asthough he had been glued there with his own cement. And before thepatrolman could tug the combatants apart, or even wedge an arm into thefight, the exulting green-coated figure had his enemy on his back alongthe curb, and, reaching down into his capacious pocket, drew out twooddly shaped steel wristlets. Forcing up his captive's arm, hepromptly snapped one steel wring on his own wrist, and one on the wristof the still prostrate man.

  "What 're yuh tryin' to do?" demanded the amazed officer, still tuggingat the great figure holding down the smaller man. In the encounterbetween those two embattled enemies had lurked an intensity of passionwhich he could not understand, which seemed strangely akin to insanityitself.

  It was only when McCooey pushed his way in through the crowd and put ahand on his shoulder that the old cement seller slowly rose to hisfeet. He was still panting and blowing. But as he lifted his face upto the sky his body rumbled with a Jove-like sound that was notaltogether a cough of lungs overtaxed nor altogether a laugh of triumph.

  "I got him!" he gasped.

  About his once placid old eyes, which the hardened tear-ducts no longerseemed able to drain of their moisture, was a look of exultation thatmade the gathering street-crowd take him for a panhandler gone mad withhunger.

  "Yuh got _who_?" cried the indignant young officer, wheeling the biggerman about on his feet. As the cement seller, responding to that tug,pivoted about, it was noticeable that the man to whom his wrist waslocked by the band of steel duly duplicated the movement. He movedwhen the other moved; he drew aside when the other drew aside, asthough they were now two parts of one organism.

  "I got him!" calmly repeated the old street-peddler.

  "Yuh got _who_?" demanded the still puzzled young patrolman, obliviousof the quiescent light in the bewildered eyes of McCooey, close besidehim.

  "Binhart!" answered Never-Fail Blake, with a sob. "_I 've gotBinhart_!"