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Updated: May 13, 2025
A lightheadedness crept over him as he came panting down to the water's edge. The faces of the coolies about him, as he bargained for a sampan, seemed far away and misty. The voices, as the flat-bottomed little skiff was pushed off in pursuit of the boat which was hurrying Binhart out into the night, seemed remote and thin, as though coming from across foggy water.
He knew that he was getting within striking distance of Binhart, at last. The zest of the chase took possession of him. The trail was no longer a "cold" one. He knew which way Binhart was headed. And he knew he was not more than a day behind his man.
That dark and silent hull at which he stared seemed to house untold possibilities of evil. Yet Blake remembered that it also housed Binhart. And with that thought in his mind he no longer cared to hesitate. He rowed in under the shadowy counter, bumping about the rudder-post. Then he worked his way forward, feeling quietly along her side-plates, foot by foot.
"This Steinert check 'll do the trick. Take a closer look at the signature. Do you get it?" "What about it?" she asked, without a tremor. He restored the check to his wallet and the wallet to his pocket. She would find it impossible to outdo him in the matter of impassivity. "I may or I may not know who forged that check. I don't want to know. And when you tell me where Binhart is, I won't know."
He felt that he would like to sleep for days, for weeks, without any thought of where to-morrow would find him or the next day would bring him. It was late that day as they climbed up out of a steaming valley into higher ground that Binhart pulled up and studied Blake's face. "Jim, you look like a sick man to me!" he declared.
In some circles, he saw, his story was even doubted. It was listened to with indifference; it was dismissed with shrugs. There were times when he himself was smiled at, pityingly. He concluded, after much thought on the matter, that Binhart would continue to work his way westward.
His face was thin now, with plum-colored circles under the faded eyes. He made a move as though to lift down the valise that rested on his knees. But Blake stopped him with a sharp movement of his right hand. "That's all right," he said. "Don't get up!" Binhart eyed him. During that few seconds of silent tableau each man was appraising, weighing, estimating the strength of the other.
It was the Commissioner who did the talking. Copeland, as usual, lapsed into the background, cracking his dry knuckles and blinking his pale-blue eyes about the room as the voices of the two larger men boomed back and forth. "We 've been going over this Binhart case," began the Commissioner. "It's seven months now and nothing done!" Blake looked sideways at Copeland.
"What for?" temporized Binhart. "You 're coming with me!" "You can't do it, Jim," persisted the other. "You could n't get me down to the waterfront, in this town. They 'd get you before you were two hundred yards away from that door." "I 'll risk it," announced the detective. "And I 'd fight you myself, every move. This ain't Manhattan Borough, you know, Jim; you can't kidnap a white man.
Blake, on his part, kept it well muffled, for he intended that his capture of Binhart should be not only a personal triumph for the Second Deputy, but a vindication of that Second Deputy's methods. So when the Commissioner called him and Copeland into conference, the day after his talk with Elsie Verriner, Blake prided himself on being secretly prepared for any advances that might be made.
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