V (b)
The moment Blake arrived in New Orleans he shut himself in a telephonebooth, called up six somewhat startled acquaintances, learned nothingto his advantage, and went quickly but quietly to the St. Charles.There he closeted himself with two dependable "elbows," started hisdetectives on a round of the hotels, and himself repaired to the Leveedistrict, where he held off-handed and ponderously facetiousconversations with certain unsavory characters. Then came a visit tocertain equally unsavory wharf-rats and a call or two on South RampartStreet. But still no inkling of Binhart or his intended movements cameto the detective's ears.
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 restaurantwhere Monsieur Jules could dish up such startling uncloistral dishes,his eyes fell on Abe Sheiner, a drum snuffer with whom he had hadprevious and somewhat painful encounters. Sheiner, it was plain tosee, was in clover, for he was breakfasting regally, on squares oftoast covered with shrimp and picked crab meat creamed, with a bisqueof cray-fish and _papa-bottes_ in ribbons of bacon, to say nothing offruit and _bruilleau_.
Blake insisted on joining his old friend Sheiner, much to the tatter'ssecret discomfiture. It was obvious that the drum snuffer, having madea recent haul, would be amenable to persuasion. And, like all yeggs,he was an upholder of the "moccasin telegraph," a wanderer and acarrier of stray tidings as to the movements of others along theundergrooves of the world. So while Blake breakfasted on shrimp andcrab meat and French artichokes stuffed with caviar and anchovies, heintimated to the uneasy-minded Sheiner certain knowledge as to acertain recent coup. In the face of this charge Sheiner indignantlyclaimed that he had only been playing the ponies and having a run ofgreenhorn's luck.
"Abe, I 've come down to gather you in," announced the calmlymendacious detective. He continued to sip his _bruilleau_ withfraternal unconcern.
"You got nothing _on_ me, Jim," protested the other, losing his tastefor the 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?"persisted the 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 hegave no 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 thisport to-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 aman in a hurry!"
Blake sipped his bruilleau, glanced casually at his watch, and took outa cigar and lighted it. He blinked contentedly across the table at theman he was "buzzing." The trick had been turned. The word had beengiven. He knew that Binhart was headed westward again. He also knewthat Binhart had awakened to the fact that he was being followed, thathis feverish movements were born of a stampeding fear of capture.
Yet Binhart was not a coward. Flight, in fact, was his only resource.It was only the low-brow criminal, Blake knew, who ran for a hole andhid in it until he was dragged out. The more intellectual type ofoffender preferred the open. And Binhart was of this type. He wassuave and artful; he was active bodied and experienced in the ways ofthe world. What counted still more, he was well heeled with money.Just how much he had planted away after the Newcomb coup no one knew.But no one denied that it was a fortune. It was ten to one thatBinhart would now try to get out of the country. He would make his wayto some territory without an extradition treaty. He would look for aland where he could live in peace, where his ill-gotten wealth wouldmake exile endurable.
Blake, as he smoked his cigar and turned these thoughts over in hismind, could afford to smile. There would be no peace and no rest forConnie Binhart; he himself would see to that. And he would "get" hisman; whether it was in a week's time or a month's time, he would "get"his man and take him back in triumph to New York. He would showCopeland and the Commissioner and the world in general that there wasstill a little life in the old dog, that there was still a haul or twohe 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 thatmorning Blake completely bewildered him, by suddenly accepting thoseprotestations and agreeing to let everything drop. It was necessary,of course, to warn Sheiner, to exact a promise of better living. ButBlake's interest in the man had already departed. He dropped him fromhis scheme of things, once he had yielded up his data. He tossed himaside like a sucked orange, a smoked cigar, a burnt-out match.Binhart, in all the movements of all the stellar system, was the onename and the one man that 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 theworld, crawling nearer and nearer the Pacific Coast, no thought of themagnitude of that journey oppressed him. His imagination remaineduntouched. He neither fretted nor fumed at the time this travel wastaking. In spite of the electric fans at each end of his Pullman, itis true, he suffered greatly from the heat, especially during the rideacross the Arizona Desert. He accepted it without complaint, stolidlythanking his lucky stars that men were n't still traveling acrossAmerica's deserts by ox-team. He was glad when he reached the ColoradoRiver and wound up into California, leaving the alkali and sage brushand yucca palms of the Mojave well behind him. He was glad in hisplacid way when he reached his hotel in San Francisco and washed thegrit and grime from his heat-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 forbiddenwaters. He did not overlook the shipping offices and railway stations,neither did he neglect the hotels and ferries. Then he quietly lunchedat Martenelli's with the much-honored but most-uncomfortable WolfYonkholm, who promptly suspended his "dip" operations at the Beachesout of respect to 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 decoyingof the 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 heightof humor, 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, Blakestood with his timepiece
in his hand, watching the train crew in theirefforts to "freeze the hub." They continued to lose time, during thenight. At Seattle, when he reached the Great Northern docks, he foundthat his steamer had sailed two hours before he stepped from hissleeper.
His one remaining resource was a Canadian Pacific steamer fromVictoria. This, he figured out, would get him to Hong Kong evenearlier than the steamer which he had already missed. He had a hunchthat Hong Kong was the port he wanted. Just why, he could not explain.But he felt sure that Binhart would not drop off at Manila. Once onthe run, he would keep out of American quarters. It was a gamble; itwas a rough guess. But then all life was that. And Blake had a doggedand 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 andovertook her. He reached the steamer's deck by means of a Jacob'sladder that swung along her side plates like a mason's plumbline alonga factory wall.
Binhart, he told himself, was by this time in mid-Pacific, untold milesaway, heading for that vast and mysterious East into which a man couldso easily disappear. He was approaching gloomy and tangled waterwaysthat threaded between islands which could not even be counted. He wasfleeing towards dark rivers which led off through barbaric andmysterious silence, into the heart of darkness. He was drawing nearerand nearer to those regions of mystery where a white man might beswallowed up as easily as a rice grain is lost in a shore lagoon. Hewould soon be in those teeming alien cities as under-burrowed as agopher 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 seenthe slum that remained forever impervious to the right dragnet. He didnot know how or where the end would be. But he knew there would be anend. He still hugged to his bosom the placid conviction that the worldwas small, that somewhere along the frontiers of watchfulness theimpact would be recorded and the alarm would be given. A man ofBinhart's type, with the money Binhart had, would never divorce himselfcompletely from civilization. He would always crave a white man'sworld; he would always hunger for what that world stood for andrepresented. He would always creep back to it. He might hide in hisheathen burrow, for a time; but there would be a limit to that exile.A power stronger than his own will would drive him back to his ownland, back to civilization. And civilization, to Blake, was merely arather large and rambling house equipped with a rather efficientburglar-alarm system, so that each time it was entered, early or late,the tell-tale summons would eventually go to the right quarter. Andwhen the summons came Blake would be waiting for it.
Never-Fail Blake Page 6