<h2 id="c5">V</h2>
<p>When Never-Fail Blake alighted from
his sleeper in Montreal he found one
of Teal’s men awaiting him at Bonaventure
Station. There had been a hitch or a leak
somewhere, this man reported. Binhart, in
some way, had slipped through their fingers.</p>
<p>All they knew was that the man they were
tailing had bought a ticket for Winnipeg, that
he was not in Montreal, and that, beyond the
railway ticket, they had no trace of him.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_80">[80]</div>
<p>Blake, at this news, had a moment when he
saw red. He felt, during that moment, like
a drum-major who had “muffed” his baton on
parade. Then recovering himself, he promptly
confirmed the Teal operative’s report by telephone,
accepted its confirmation as authentic,
consulted a timetable, and made a dash for
Windsor Station. There he caught the Winnipeg
express, took possession of a stateroom
and indited carefully worded telegrams to
Trimble in Vancouver, that all out-going Pacific
steamers should be watched, and to Menzler
in Chicago, that the American city might
be covered in case of Binhart’s doubling southward
on him. Still another telegram he sent
to New York, requesting the Police Department
to send on to him at once a photograph of
Binhart.</p>
<p>In Winnipeg, two days later, Blake found
himself on a blind trail. When he had talked
with a railway detective on whom he could rely,
when he had visited certain offices and interviewed
certain officials, when he had sought out
two or three women acquaintances in the city’s
sequestered area, he faced the bewildering
discovery that he was still without an actual
clue of the man he was supposed to be shadowing.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_81">[81]</div>
<p>It was then that something deep within his
nature, something he could never quite define,
whispered its first faint doubt to him. This
doubt persisted even when late that night a
Teal Agency operative wired him from Calgary,
stating that a man answering Binhart’s
description had just left the Alberta Hotel for
Banff. To this latter point Blake promptly
wired a fuller description of his man, had an
officer posted to inspect every alighting passenger,
and early the next morning received
a telegram, asking for still more particulars.</p>
<p>He peered down at this message, vaguely
depressed in spirit, discarding theory after theory,
tossing aside contingency after contingency.
And up from this gloomy shower
slowly emerged one of his “hunches,” one of
his vague impressions, coming blindly to the
surface very much like an earthworm crawling
forth after a fall of rain. There was
something wrong. Of that he felt certain.
He could not place it or define it. To continue
westward would be to depend too much
on an uncertainty; it would involve the risk of
wandering too far from the center of things.
He suddenly decided to double on his tracks
and swing down to Chicago. Just why he
felt as he did he could not fathom. But the
feeling was there. It was an instinctive propulsion,
a “hunch.” These hunches were to
him, working in the dark as he was compelled
to, very much what whiskers are to a cat. They
could not be called an infallible guide. But
they at least kept him from colliding with impregnabilities.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_82">[82]</div>
<p>Acting on this hunch, as he called it, he
caught a Great Northern train for Minneapolis,
transferred to a Chicago, Milwaukee & St.
Paul express, and without loss of time sped
southward. When, thirty hours later, he
alighted in the heart of Chicago, he found himself
in an environment more to his liking, more
adaptable to his ends. He was not disheartened
by his failure. He did not believe in
luck, in miracles, or even in coincidence. But
experience had taught him the bewildering
extent of the resources which he might command.
So intricate and so wide-reaching were
the secret wires of his information that he knew
he could wait, like a spider at the center of its
web, until the betraying vibration awakened
some far-reaching thread of that web. In
every corner of the country lurked a non-professional
ally, a secluded tipster, ready to report
to Blake when the call for a report came.
The world, that great detective had found,
was indeed a small one. From its scattered
four corners, into which his subterranean wires
of espionage stretched, would in time come
some inkling, some hint, some discovery. And
at the converging center of those wires Blake
was able to sit and wait, like the central operator
at a telephone switchboard, knowing that
the tentacles of attention were creeping and
wavering about dim territories and that in time
they would render up their awaited word.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_83">[83]</div>
<p>In the meantime, Blake himself was by no
means idle. It would not be from official circles,
he knew, that his redemption would come.
Time had already proved that. For months
past every police chief in the country had held
his description of Binhart. That was a fact
which Binhart himself very well knew; and
knowing that, he would continue to move as
he had been moving, with the utmost secrecy,
or at least protected by some adequate disguise.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_84">[84]</div>
<p>It would be from the underworld that the
echo would come. And next to New York,
Blake knew, Chicago would make as good a
central exchange for this underworld as could
be desired. Knowing that city of the Middle
West, and knowing it well, he at once “went
down the line,” making his rounds stolidly and
systematically, first visiting a West Side faro-room
and casually interviewing the “stools” of
Custom House Place and South Clark Street,
and then dropping in at the Café Acropolis, in
Halsted Street, and lodging houses in even less
savory quarters. He duly canvassed every
likely dive, every “melina,” every gambling
house and yegg hang out. He engaged in leisurely
games of pool with stone-getters and
gopher men. He visited bucket-shops and barrooms,
and dingy little Ghetto cafés. He
“buzzed” tipsters and floaters and mouthpieces.
He fraternized with till tappers and
single-drillers. 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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_85">[85]</div>
<p>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.
There was still an army of obsequious
underlings compelled to respect his wishes. It
was merely a matter of time and mathematics.
Then the law of averages would ordain its end;
the needed card would ultimately be turned up,
the right dial-twist would at last complete the
right combination.</p>
<p>The first faint glimmer of life, in all those
seemingly dead wires, came from a gambler
named Mattie Sherwin, who reported that he
had met Binhart, two weeks before, in the café
of the Brown Palace in Denver. He was traveling
under the name of Bannerman, wore his
hair in a pomadour, and had grown a beard.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_86">[86]</div>
<p>Blake took the first train out of Chicago for
Denver. In this latter city an Elks’ Convention
was supplying blue-bird weather for underground
“haymakers,” busy with bunco-steering,
“rushing” street-cars and “lifting
leathers.” Before the stampede at the news
of his approach, he picked up Biff Edwards
and Lefty Stivers, put on the screws, and
learned nothing. He went next to Glory McShane,
a Market Street acquaintance indebted
for certain old favors, and from her, too,
learned nothing of moment. He continued the
quest in other quarters, and the results were
equally discouraging.</p>
<p>Then began the real detective work about
which, Blake knew, newspaper stories were seldom
written. This work involved a laborious
and monotonous examination of hotel registers,
a canvassing of ticket agencies and cab stands
and transfer companies. It was anything but
story-book sleuthing. It was a dispiriting
tread-mill round, but he was still sifting doggedly
through the tailings of possibilities when
a code-wire came from St. Louis, saying Binhart
had been seen the day before at the Planters’
Hotel.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_87">[87]</div>
<p>Blake was eastbound on his way to St. Louis
one hour after the receipt of this wire. And
an hour after his arrival in St. Louis he was engaged
in an apparently care free and leisurely
game of pool with one Loony Ryan, an old-time
“box man” who was allowed to roam with
a clipped wing in the form of a suspended indictment.
Loony, for the liberty thus doled
out to him, rewarded his benefactors by an occasional
indulgence in the “pigeon-act.”</p>
<p>“Draw for lead?” asked Blake, lighting a
cigar.</p>
<p>“Sure,” said Loony.</p>
<p>Blake pushed his ball to the top cushion, won
the draw, and broke.</p>
<p>“Seen anything of Wolf Yonkholm?” he
casually inquired, as he turned to chalk his cue.
But his eye, with one quick sweep, had made
sure of every face in the room.</p>
<p>Loony studied the balls for a second or two.
Wolf was a “dip” with an international record.</p>
<p>“Last time I saw Wolf he was out at
’Frisco, workin’ the Beaches,” was Loony’s reply.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_88">[88]</div>
<p>Blake ventured an inquiry or two about other
worthies of the underworld. The players went
on with their game, placid, self-immured, matter-of-fact.</p>
<p>“Where’s Angel McGlory these days?”
asked Blake, as he reached over to place a ball.</p>
<p>“What’s she been doin’?” demanded Loony,
with his cue on the rail.</p>
<p>“She’s traveling with a bank sneak named
Blanchard or Binhart,” explained Blake.
“And I want her.”</p>
<p>Loony Ryan made his stroke.</p>
<p>“Hep Roony saw Binhart this mornin’, beatin’
it for N’ Orleans. But he wasn’t travelin’
wit’ any moll that Hep spoke of.”</p>
<p>Blake made his shot, chalked his cue again,
and glanced down at his watch. His eyes were
on the green baize, but his thoughts were elsewhere.</p>
<p>“I got ’o leave you, Wolf,” he announced as
he put his cue back in the rack. He spoke
slowly and calmly. But Wolf’s quick gaze circled
the room, promptly checking over every
face between the four walls.</p>
<p>“What’s up?” he demanded. “Who’d you
spot?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_89">[89]</div>
<p>“Nothing, Wolf, nothing! But this game
o’ yours blamed near made me forget an appointment
o’ mine!”</p>
<p>Twenty minutes after he had left the bewildered
Wolf Ryan in the pool parlor he was
in a New Orleans sleeper, southward bound.
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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_90">[90]</div>
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