XVI
BINHART was moved that night up into the hills. There he was installed in a bungalow of an abandoned banana plantation and a doctor was brought to his bedside. He was delirious by the time this doctor arrived, and his ravings through the night were a source of vague worry to his enemy. On the second day the sick man showed signs of improvement.
For three weeks Blake watched over Binhart, saw to his wants, journeyed to Chalavia for his food and medicines. When the fever was broken and Binhart began to gain strength the detective no longer made the trip to Chalavia in person. He preferred to remain with the sick man.
He watched that sick man carefully, jealously, hour by hour and day by day. A peon servant was paid to keep up the vigil when Blake slept, as sleep he must.
But the strain was beginning to tell on him. He walked heavily. The asthmatic wheeze of his breathing became more audible. His earlier touch of malaria returned to him, and he suffered from intermittent chills and fever. The day came when Blake suggested it was about time for them to move on.
"Where to?" asked Binhart. Little had passed between the two men, but during all those silent nights and days each had been secretly yet assiduously studying the other.
"Back to New York," was Blake's indifferent-noted answer. Yet this indifference was a pretense, for no soul had ever hungered more for a white man's country than did the travel-worn and fever-racked Blake. But he had his part to play, and he did not intend to shirk it. They went about their preparations quietly, like two fellow excursionists making ready for a journey with which they were already over-familiar. It was while they sat waiting for the guides and mules that Blake addressed himself to the prisoner.
"Connie," he said, "I 'm taking you back. It does n't make much difference whether I take you back dead or alive. But I 'm going to take you back."
The other man said nothing, but his slight head-movement was one of comprehension.
"So I just wanted to say there 's no sidestepping, no four-flushing, at this end of the trip!"
"I understand," was Binhart's listless response.
"I 'm glad you do," Blake went on in his dully monotonous voice. "Because I got where I can't stand any more breaks."
"All right, Jim," answered Binhart. They sat staring at each other. It was not hate that existed between them. It was something more dormant, more innate. It was something that had grown ineradicable; as fixed as the relationship between the hound and the hare. 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. Weeks before he had gone through every nook and corner, every pocket and crevice in Binhart's belongings.
The bank thief laughed a little. He had been growing stronger, day by day, and as his spirits had risen Blake's had seemed to recede.
"Oh, I left that up in the States, where it 'd be safe," he answered.
"What 'll you do about it?" Blake casually inquired.
"I can't tell, just yet," was Binhart's retort.
He rode on silent and thoughtful for several minutes. "Jim," he said at last, "we 're both about done for. There 's not much left for either of us. We 're going at this thing wrong. There 's a lot o' money up there, for somebody. And you ought to get it!"
"What do you mean?" asked Blake. He resented the bodily weakness that was making burro-riding a torture.
"I mean it 's worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to you just to let me drop out. I 'd hand you over that much to quit the chase."
"It ain't me that 's chasing you, Connie. It 's the Law!" was Blake's quiet-toned response. And the other man knew he believed it.
"Well, you quit, and I 'll stand for the Law!"
"But, can't you see, they 'd never stand for you!"
"Oh, yes they would. I 'd just drop out, and they 'd forget about me. And you 'd have that pile to enjoy life with!"
Blake thought it over, ponderously, point by point. For not one fraction of a second could he countenance the thought of surrendering Binhart. Yet he wanted both his prisoner and his prisoner's haul; he wanted his final accomplishment to be complete.
"But how 'd we ever handle the deal?" prompted the tired-bodied man on the burro.
"You remember a woman called Elsie Verriner?"
"Yes," acknowledged Blake, with a pang of regret which he could not fathom, at the mention of the name.
"Well, we could fix it through her."
"Does Elsie Verriner know where that pile is?" the detective inquired. His withered hulk of a body was warmed by a slow glow of anticipation. There was a woman, he remembered, whom he could count on swinging to his own ends.
"No, but she could get it," was Binhart's response.
"And what good would that do me?"
"The two of us could go up to New Orleans. We could slip in there without any one being the wiser. She could meet us. She 'd bring the stuff with her. Then, when you had the pile in your hand, I could just fade off the map."
Blake rode on again in silence.
"All right," he said at last. "I 'm willing."
"Then how 'll you prove it? How 'd I know you 'd make good?" demanded Binhart.
"That's not up to me! You're the man that's got to make good!" was Blake's retort.
"But you 'll give me the chance?" half pleaded his prisoner.
"Sure!" replied Blake, as they rode on again. He was wondering how many more miles of hell he would have to ride through before he could rest. 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. He said it without exultation; but there was a new and less passive timber to his voice.
"I 've been feeling kind o' mean this last day or two," confessed Blake. His own once guttural voice was plaintive, as he spoke. It was almost a quavering whine.
"Had n't we better lay up for a few days?" suggested Binhart.
"Lay up nothing!" cried Blake, and he clenched that determination by an outburst of blasphemous anger. But he secretly took great doses of quinin and drank much native liquor. He fought against a mental lassitude which he could not comprehend. Never before had that ample machinery of the body failed him in an emergency. Never before had he known an illness that a swallow or two of brandy and a night's rest could not scatter to the four winds. It bewildered him to find his once capable frame rebelling against its tasks. It left him dazed, as though he had been confronted by the sudden and gratuitous treachery of a life-long servant.
He grew more irritable, more fanciful. He changed guides at the next native village, fearing that Binhart might have grown too intimate with the old ones. He was swayed by an ever-increasing fear of intrigues. He coerced his flagging will into a feverish watchfulness. He became more arbitrary in his movements and exactions. When the chance came, he purchased a repeating Lee-Enfield rifle, which he packed across his sweating back on the trail and slept with under his arm at night. When a morning came when he was too weak and ill to get up, he lay back on his grass couch, with his rifle across his knees, watching Binhart, always watching Binhart.
He seemed to realize that his power was slipping away, and he brooded on some plan for holding his prisoner, on any plan, no matter what it might cost.
He even pretended to sleep, to the end that Binhart might make an effort to break away—and be brought down with a bullet. He prayed that Binhart would try to go, would give him an excuse for the last move that would leave the two of them lying there together. Even to perish there side by side, foolishly, uselessly, seemed more desirable than the thought that Binhart might in the end get away. He seemed satisfied that the two of them should lie there, for all time, each holding the other down, like two embattled stags with their horns inextricably locked. And he waited there, nursing his rifle, watching out of sullenly feverish eyes, marking each movement of the passive-faced Binhart.
But Binhart, knowing what he knew, was content to wait.
He was content to wait until the fever grew, and the poisons of the blood narcotized the dulled brain into indifference, and then goaded it into delirium. Then, calmly equipping himself for his journey, he buried the repeating rifle and slipped away in the night, carrying with him Blake's quinin and revolver and pocket-filter. He traveled hurriedly, bearing southeast towards the San Juan. Four days later he reached the coast, journeyed by boat to Bluefields, and from that port passed on into the outer world, where time and distance swallowed him up, and no sign of his whereabouts was left behind.