XI
Twelve days later Blake began just where he had left off. He sent out hisfeelers, he canvassed the offices from which some echo might come, he hadMacao searched, and all westbound steamers which he could reach bywireless were duly warned. But more than ever, now, he found, he had todepend on his own initiative, his own personal efforts. The more officialthe quarters to which he looked for cooperation, the less response heseemed to elicit. In some circles, he saw, his story was even doubted. Itwas listened to with indifference; it was dismissed with shrugs. Therewere 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 strike inlandand try to reach Europe by means of the Trans-Siberian Railway seemed outof the question. On that route he would be too easily traced. Thecarefully guarded frontiers of Russia, too, would offer obstacles whichhe dare not meet. He would stick to the ragged and restless sea-fringes,concluded the detective. But before acting on that conclusion he caught a_Toyo Kisen Kaisha_ steamer for Shanghai, and went over that city fromthe Bund and the Maloo to the narrowest street in the native quarter. Inall this second search, however, he found nothing to reward his efforts.So he started doggedly southward again, stopping at Saigon and Bangkokand 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 go tothe native quarters, to the gambling houses, to the water-front and therickshaw coolies and half-naked Malay wharf-rats, holding thedepartmental photograph of Binhart in his hand and inquiring of strangerafter stranger: "You know? You savvy him?" And time after time thecurious yellow faces would bend over the picture, the inscrutable slanteyes would study the face, sometimes silently, sometimes with adisheartening jabber of heathen tongues. But not one trace of Binhartcould 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 coolie squintedat the well-thumbed photograph, squinted back at Blake, and shook hishead in affirmation. A tip of a few English shillings loosened histongue, but as Blake understood neither Malay nor Chinese he was in thedark until he led his coolie to a Cook's agent, who in turn called in thelocal officers, who in turn consulted with the booking-agents of the P. &O. Line. It was then Blake discovered that Binhart had booked passageunder the name of Blaisdell, twelve days before, 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 might overthose small volumes, he could glean nothing from their laboriouslypondered pages. His mind was no longer receptive. It seemed indurated,hard-shelled. He had to acknowledge to his own soul that it was beyondhim. 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 antipathy forhis aggressively English fellow travelers. He spent much of his time inthe smoking-room, playing solitaire. When they stopped at Madras andBombay he merely emerged from his shell to make sure if no trace ofBinhart were about. He was no more interested in these heathen cities ofa heathen East than in an ash-pile through which he might have to rakefor 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 habit ofchewing "fine-cut." He gave less thought to his personal appearance,becoming more and more indifferent as to the impression he made on thoseabout him. His face, for all his increase in flesh, lost its ruddiness.It was plain that during the last few months he had aged, that hishound-like eye had grown more haggard, that his always ponderous step hadlost 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, withclear proof that a man answering to Binhart's description had sailed forCorfu. From Corfu the scent was followed northward to Ragusa, and fromRagusa, 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 were manypersons not averse to curry favor with a New York official, and manypersons indirectly in touch with the home Department. These persons heassiduously sought out, one by one, and in twelve hours' time his net hadbeen woven completely about the city. And, so far as he could learn,Binhart was still somewhere in that city.
Two days later, when least expecting it, he stepped into the wine-room ofan obscure little pension hotel on the Via Margellina and saw Binhartbefore him. Binhart left the room as the other man stepped into it. Heleft by way of the window, carrying the casement with him. Blakefollowed, but the lighter and younger man out-ran him and was swallowedup by one of the unknown streets of an unknown quarter. An hour laterBlake had his hired agents raking that quarter from cellar to garret. Itwas not until the evening of the following day that these agents learnedBinhart had made his way to the Marina, bribed a water-front boatman torow him across the bay, and had been put aboard a freighter weighinganchor for Marseilles.
For the second time Blake traversed Italy by train, hurrying self-immuredand preoccupied through Rome and Florence and Genoa, and then on alongthe 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 Blake severalmiles 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 suspected hewas the victim of a "plant," of a carefully planned shanghaing movement,the object of which, apparently, was to gain time for the fugitive.
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 American Consul,who, in turn, suggested the retaining of a local advocate. Everything, itis true, was at last made clear and in the end Blake was honorablyreleased.
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 man facingnews which he could not assimilate. He shut himself up in his hotel room,for an hour, communing with his own dark soul. He emerged from thatself-communion freshly shaved and smoking a cigar. He found that he couldcatch a steamer for Barcelona, and from that port take a CampaniaTransatlantic boat for Kingston, Jamaica.
From the American consulate he carried away with him a bundle of New Yorknewspapers. When out on the Atlantic he arranged these according to dateand went over them diligently, page by page. They seemed like echoes outof another life. He read listlessly on, going over the belated news fromhis old-time home with the melancholy indifference of the alien, with thepoignant impersonality of the exile. He read of fires and crimes andcalamities, of investigations and elections. He read of a rumored PoliceDepartment shake up, and he could afford to smile at the vitality of thathellbender-like report. Then, as he turned the worn pages, the smile diedfrom his heavy lips, for his ow
n name leaped up like a snake from thetext and seemed to strike him in the face. He spelled through theparagraphs carefully, word by word, as though it were in a language withwhich he was only half familiar. He even went back and read the entirecolumn for a second time. For there it told of his removal from thePolice Department. The Commissioner and Copeland had saved their necks,but Blake was no longer Second Deputy. They spoke of him as beingsomewhere in the Philippines, on the trail of the bank-robber Binhart.They went on to describe him as a sleuth of the older school, as anadvocate of the now obsolete "third-degree" methods, and as a product ofthe "machine" which had so long and so flagrantly placed politics beforeefficiency.
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. Allhe felt, in fact, was a slow and dull resentment, a resentment which hecould not articulate. Yet dull as it was, hour by hour and day by idleday it grew more virulent. About him stood nothing against which thisresentment could be marshaled. His pride lay as helpless as a whalewashed ashore, too massive to turn and face the tides of treachery thathad wrecked it. All he asked for was time. Let them wait, he kept tellinghimself; let them wait until he got back with Binhart! Then they wouldall eat crow, every last man of them!
For Blake did not intend to give up the trail. To do so would have beenbeyond him. His mental fangs were already fixed in Binhart. To withdrawthem was not in his power. He could no more surrender his quarry than thepython's head, having once closed on the rabbit, could release its meal.With Blake, every instinct sloped inward, just as every python-fangsloped backward. The actual reason for the chase was no longer clear tohis own vision. It was something no longer to be reckoned with. The onlything that counted was the fact that he had decided to "get" Binhart,that he was the pursuer and Binhart was the fugitive. It had long sinceresolved itself into a personal issue between him and his enemy.