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Updated: August 13, 2024
He always made his inquiries after Binhart seem accidental, a case apparently subsidiary to two or three others which he kept always to the foreground. He did not despair over the discovery that no one seemed to know of Binhart or his movements. He merely waited his time, and extended new ramifications into newer territory. His word still carried its weight of official authority.
"But don't you see," she protested, "supposing he gives up Binhart? Supposing he suspects something and hurries back to hold down his place?" "They call him Never-Fail Blake," commented the unmoved and dry-lipped official. He met her wide stare with his gently satiric smile. "I see," she finally said, "you 're not going to shoot him up. You 're merely going to wipe him out."
"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 Binhart said 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!"
He reached the steamer's deck by means of a Jacob's ladder that swung along her side plates like a mason's plumbline along a factory wall. Binhart, he told himself, was by this time in mid-Pacific, untold miles away, heading for that vast and mysterious East into which a man could so easily disappear.
Each wore an air of careless listlessness, yet each watched the other, every move, every moment. It was as they made their way slowly down to the coast that Blake put an unexpected question to Binhart. "Connie, where in hell did you plant that haul o' yours?" This thing had been worrying Blake.
I 'd have you in irons for abduction the first ship we struck. And at the first port of call I 'd have the best law sharps money could get. You can't do it, Jim. It ain't law!" "What t' hell do I care for law," was Blake's retort. "I want you and you 're going to come with me." "Where am I going?" "Back to New York." Binhart laughed. It was a laugh without any mirth in it. "Jim, you 're foolish.
"Why, he 's been bleeding like a stuck pig!" he heard a startled voice, very close to him, suddenly exclaim. And a few minutes later, after being moved again, he opened his eyes to find himself in a berth and the boyish-looking surgeon assuring him it was all right. "Where's Binhart?" asked Blake. "That's all right, old chap, you just rest up a bit," said the placatory youth.
His mental fangs were already fixed in Binhart. To withdraw them was not in his power. He could no more surrender his quarry than the python's head, having once closed on the rabbit, could release its meal. With Blake, every instinct sloped inward, just as every python-fang sloped backward. The actual reason for the chase was no longer clear to his own vision.
"Oh, he said that, but he went south, all right." "Then he went in an oyster sloop. There 's nothing sailing from this port 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 coach and said he was traveling for his health. And he sure looked like a man in a hurry!"
This rebuilding was done thoughtfully and calmly, as though it were a religious rite, as though it were a sacrificial devotion to an ideal in a life tragically forlorn of beauty. He remembered, too, the day when he had first seen her. That was at the time of "The Sick Millionaire" case, when he had first learned of her association with Binhart.
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