<h2 id="c17">XVII</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_232">[232]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_233">[233]</div>
<p>“Connie,” he said, “I’m taking you back.
It doesn’t make much difference whether I
take you back dead or alive. But I’m going
to take you back.”</p>
<p>The other man said nothing, but his slight
head-movement was one of comprehension.</p>
<p>“So I just wanted to say there’s no side-stepping,
no four-flushing, at this end of the
trip!”</p>
<p>“I understand,” was Binhart’s listless response.</p>
<p>“I’m glad you do,” Blake went on in his dully
monotonous voice. “Because I got where I
can’t stand any more breaks.”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_234">[234]</div>
<p>It was as they made their way slowly down
to the coast that Blake put an unexpected question
to Binhart.</p>
<p>“Connie, where in hell did you plant that
haul o’ yours?”</p>
<p>This thing had been worrying Blake. Weeks
before he had gone through every nook and
corner, every pocket and crevice in Binhart’s
belongings.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Oh, I left that up in the States, where it’d
be safe,” he answered.</p>
<p>“What’ll you do about it?” Blake casually
inquired.</p>
<p>“I can’t tell, just yet,” was Binhart’s retort.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_235">[235]</div>
<p>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 <i>you</i> ought to get it!”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” asked Blake. He
resented the bodily weakness that was making
burro-riding a torture.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“Well, you quit, and I’ll stand for the
Law!”</p>
<p>“But, can’t you see, they’d never stand for
you!”</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_236">[236]</div>
<p>“But how’d we ever handle the deal?”
prompted the tired-bodied man on the burro.</p>
<p>“You remember a woman called Elsie Verriner?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” acknowledged Blake, with a pang of
regret which he could not fathom, at the mention
of the name.</p>
<p>“Well, we could fix it through her.”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“No, but she could get it,” was Binhart’s response.</p>
<p>“And what good would that do <i>me</i>?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_237">[237]</div>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Blake rode on again in silence.</p>
<p>“All right,” he said at last. “I’m willing.”</p>
<p>“Then how’ll you prove it? How’d I
know you’d make good?” demanded Binhart.</p>
<p>“That’s not up to me! You’re the man
that’s got to make good!” was Blake’s retort.</p>
<p>“But you’ll give me the chance?” half
pleaded his prisoner.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_238">[238]</div>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“Hadn’t we better lay up for a few days?”
suggested Binhart.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_239">[239]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_240">[240]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But Binhart, knowing what he knew, was
content to wait.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_241">[241]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_242">[242]</div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />