VI
The moment Blake arrived in New Orleans he shut himself in a telephonebooth, called up six somewhat startled acquaintances, learned nothing tohis advantage, and went quickly but quietly to the St. Charles. There hecloseted himself with two dependable "elbows," started his detectives ona round of the hotels, and himself repaired to the Levee district, wherehe held off-handed and ponderously facetious conversations with certainunsavory characters. Then came a visit to certain equally unsavorywharf-rats and a call or two on South Rampart Street. But still noinkling of Binhart or his intended movements came to the detective'sears.
It was not until the next morning, as he stepped into Antoine's, on St.Louis Street just off the Rue Royal, that anything of importanceoccurred. The moment he entered that bare and cloistral restaurant whereMonsieur Jules could dish up such startling uncloistral dishes, his eyesfell on Abe Sheiner, a drum snuffer with whom he had had previous andsomewhat painful encounters. Sheiner, it was plain to see, was in clover,for he was breakfasting regally, on squares of toast covered with shrimpand picked crab meat creamed, with a bisque of cray-fish and_papa-bottes_ in ribbons of bacon, to say nothing of fruit and_bruilleau_.
Blake insisted on joining his old friend Sheiner, much to the latter'ssecret discomfiture. It was obvious that the drum snuffer, having made arecent haul, would be amenable to persuasion. And, like all yeggs, he wasan upholder of the "moccasin telegraph," a wanderer and a carrier ofstray tidings as to the movements of others along the undergrooves of theworld. So while Blake breakfasted on shrimp and crab meat and Frenchartichokes stuffed with caviar and anchovies, he intimated to theuneasy-minded Sheiner certain knowledge as to a certain recent coup. Inthe face of this charge Sheiner indignantly claimed that he had only beenplaying the ponies and having a run of greenhorn's luck.
"Abe, I've come down to gather you in," announced the calmly mendaciousdetective. He continued to sip his bruilleau with fraternal unconcern.
"You got nothing _on_ me, Jim," protested the other, losing his taste forthe delicacies arrayed about him.
"Well, we got 'o go down to Headquarters and talk that over," calmlypersisted Blake.
"What's the use of pounding me, when I'm on the square again?" persistedthe ex-drum snuffer.
"That's the line o' talk they all hand out. That's what Connie Binhartsaid when we had it out up in St. Louis."
"Did you bump into Binhart in St. Louis?"
"We had a talk, three days ago."
"Then why'd he blow through this town as though he had a regiment o'bulls and singed cats behind him!"
Blake's heart went down like an elevator with a broken cable. But he gaveno outward sign of this inward commotion.
"Because he wants to get down to Colon before the Hamburg-American boathits the port," ventured Blake. "His moll's aboard!"
"But he blew out for 'Frisco this morning," contended the puzzledSheiner. "Shot through as though he'd just had a rumble!"
"Oh, he _said_ that, but he went south, all right."
"Then he went in an oyster sloop. There's nothing sailing from this portto-day."
"Well, what's Binhart got to do with our trouble anyway? What I want--"
"But I saw him start," persisted the other. "He ducked for a day coachand said he was traveling for his health. And he sure looked like a manin a hurry!"
Blake sipped his bruilleau, glanced casually at his watch, and took out acigar and lighted it. He blinked contentedly across the table at the manhe was "buzzing." The trick had been turned. The word had been given. Heknew that Binhart was headed westward again. He also knew that Binharthad awakened to the fact that he was being followed, that his feverishmovements were born of a stampeding fear of capture.
Yet Binhart was not a coward. Flight, in fact, was his only resource. Itwas only the low-brow criminal, Blake knew, who ran for a hole and hid init until he was dragged out. The more intellectual type of offenderpreferred the open. And Binhart was of this type. He was suave andartful; he was active bodied and experienced in the ways of the world.What counted still more, he was well heeled with money. Just how much hehad planted away after the Newcomb coup no one knew. But no one deniedthat it was a fortune. It was ten to one that Binhart would now try toget out of the country. He would make his way to some territory withoutan extradition treaty. He would look for a land where he could live inpeace, where his ill-gotten wealth would make exile endurable.
Blake, as he smoked his cigar and turned these thoughts over in his mind,could afford to smile. There would be no peace and no rest for ConnieBinhart; he himself would see to that. And he would "get" his man;whether it was in a week's time or a month's time, he would "get" his manand take him back in triumph to New York. He would show Copeland and theCommissioner and the world in general that there was still a little lifein the old dog, that there was still a haul or two he could make.
So engrossing were these thoughts that Blake scarcely heard the drumsnuffer across the table from him, protesting the innocence of his waysand the purity of his intentions. Then for the second time that morningBlake completely bewildered him, by suddenly accepting thoseprotestations and agreeing to let everything drop. It was necessary, ofcourse, to warn Sheiner, to exact a promise of better living. But Blake'sinterest in the man had already departed. He dropped him from his schemeof things, once he had yielded up his data. He tossed him aside like asucked orange, a smoked cigar, a burnt-out match. Binhart, in all themovements of all the stellar system, was the one name and the one manthat interested him.
Loony Sheiner was still sitting at that table in Antoine's when Blake,having wired his messages to San Pedro and San Francisco, caught thefirst train out of New Orleans. As he sped across the face of the world,crawling nearer and nearer the Pacific Coast, no thought of the magnitudeof that journey oppressed him. His imagination remained untouched. Heneither fretted nor fumed at the time this travel was taking. In spite ofthe electric fans at each end of his Pullman, it is true, he sufferedgreatly from the heat, especially during the ride across the ArizonaDesert. He accepted it without complaint, stolidly thanking his luckystars that men weren't still traveling across America's deserts byox-team. He was glad when he reached the Colorado River and wound up intoCalifornia, leaving the alkali and sage brush and yucca palms of theMojave well behind him. He was glad in his placid way when he reached hishotel in San Francisco and washed the grit and grime from hisheat-nettled body.
But once that body had been bathed and fed, he started on his rounds ofthe underworld, seined the entire harbor-front without effect, and thenset out his night-lines as cautiously as a fisherman in forbidden waters.He did not overlook the shipping offices and railway stations, neitherdid he neglect the hotels and ferries. Then he quietly lunched atMartenelli's with the much-honored but most-uncomfortable Wolf Yonkholm,who promptly suspended his "dip" operations at the Beaches out of respectto Blake's sudden call.
Nothing of moment, however, was learned from the startled Wolf, and atCoppa's six hours later, Blake dined with a Chink-smuggler named GoldieHopper. Goldie, after his fifth glass of wine and an adroit decoying ofthe talk along the channels which most interested his portly host,casually announced that an Eastern crook named Blanchard had got away,the day before, on the Pacific mail steamer _Manchuria_. He was cleanshaven and traveled as a clergyman. That struck Goldie as the height ofhumor, a bank sneak having the nerve to deck himself out as agospel-spieler.
His elucidation of it, however, brought no answering smile from thediffident-eyed Blake, who confessed that he was rounding up a couple ofnickel-coiners and would be going East in a day or two.
Instead of going East, however, he hurriedly consulted maps andtimetables, found a train that would land him in Portland in twenty-sixhours, and started north. He could eventually save time, he found, byhastening on to Seattle and catching a Great Northern steamer from thatport. When a hot-box held his train up for over half an hour, Blake stoodwith his timepiece in his hand, watching t
he train crew in their effortsto "freeze the hub." They continued to lose time, during the night. AtSeattle, when he reached the Great Northern docks, he found that hissteamer had sailed two hours before he stepped from his sleeper.
His one remaining resource was a Canadian Pacific steamer from Victoria.This, he figured out, would get him to Hong Kong even earlier than thesteamer which he had already missed. He had a hunch that Hong Kong wasthe port he wanted. Just why, he could not explain. But he felt sure thatBinhart would not drop off at Manila. Once on the run, he would keep outof American quarters. It was a gamble; it was a rough guess. But then alllife was that. And Blake had a dogged and inarticulate faith in his"hunches."
Crossing the Sound, he reached Victoria in time to see the _Empress ofChina_ under way, and heading out to sea. Blake hired a tug and overtookher. He reached the steamer's deck by means of a Jacob's ladder thatswung along her side plates like a mason's plumbline along a factorywall.
Binhart, he told himself, was by this time in mid-Pacific, untold milesaway, heading for that vast and mysterious East into which a man could soeasily disappear. He was approaching gloomy and tangled waterways thatthreaded between islands which could not even be counted. He was fleeingtowards dark rivers which led off through barbaric and mysterioussilence, into the heart of darkness. He was drawing nearer and nearer tothose regions of mystery where a white man might be swallowed up aseasily as a rice grain is lost in a shore lagoon. He would soon be inthose teeming alien cities as under-burrowed as a gopher village.
But Blake did not despair. Their whole barbaric East, he told himself,was only a Chinatown slum on a large scale. And he had never yet seen theslum that remained forever impervious to the right dragnet. He did notknow how or where the end would be. But he knew there would be an end. Hestill hugged to his bosom the placid conviction that the world was small,that somewhere along the frontiers of watchfulness the impact would berecorded and the alarm would be given. A man of Binhart's type, with themoney Binhart had, would never divorce himself completely fromcivilization. He would always crave a white man's world; he would alwayshunger for what that world stood for and represented. He would alwayscreep back to it. He might hide in his heathen burrow, for a time; butthere would be a limit to that exile. A power stronger than his own willwould drive him back to his own land, back to civilization. Andcivilization, to Blake, was merely a rather large and rambling houseequipped with a rather efficient burglar-alarm system, so that each timeit was entered, early or late, the tell-tale summons would eventually goto the right quarter. And when the summons came Blake would be waitingfor it.
The Shadow Page 6