<h2 id="c20">XX</h2>
<p>No catastrophe that was mental in its
origin could oppress for long a man so
essentially physical as Blake. For two desolate
hours, it is true, he wandered about the
streets of the city, struggling to medicine his
depression of the mind by sheer weariness of
the body. Then the habit of a lifetime of
activity reasserted itself. He felt the need
of focusing his resentment on something
tangible and material. And as a comparative
clarity of vision returned to him there also
came back those tendencies of the instinctive
fighter, the innate protest against injustice,
the revolt against final surrender, the forlorn
claim for at least a fighting chance. And
with the thought of his official downfall came
the thought of Copeland and what Copeland
had done to him.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_269">[269]</div>
<p>Out of that ferment of futile protest arose
one sudden decision. Even before he articulated
the decision he found it unconsciously
swaying his movements and directing his
steps. He would go and see Copeland! He
would find that bloodless little shrimp and put
him face to face with a few plain truths. He
would confront that anemic Deputy-Commissioner
and at least let him know what one
honest man thought of him.</p>
<p>Even when Blake stood before Copeland’s
brownstone-fronted house, the house that
seemed to wear a mask of staid discretion in
every drawn blind and gloomy story, no hesitation
came to him. His naturally primitive
mind foresaw no difficulties in that possible
encounter. He knew it was late, that it was
nearly midnight, but even that did not deter
him. The recklessness of utter desperation
was on him. His purpose was something
that transcended the mere trivialities of every-day
intercourse. And he must see him. To
confront Copeland became essential to his
scheme of things.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_270">[270]</div>
<p>He went ponderously up the brownstone
steps and rang the bell. He waited patiently
until his ring was answered. It was some
time before the door swung open. Inside
that door Blake saw a solemn-eyed servant in
a black spiked-tailed service-coat and gray
trousers.</p>
<p>“I want to see Mr. Copeland,” was Blake’s
calmly assured announcement.</p>
<p>“Mr. Copeland is not at home,” answered
the man in the service-coat. His tone was
politely impersonal. His face, too, was impassive.
But one quick glance seemed to have
appraised the man on the doorstep, to have
judged him, and in some way to have found
him undesirable.</p>
<p>“But this is important,” said Blake.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, sir,” answered the impersonal-eyed
servant. Blake made an effort to keep
himself in perfect control. He knew that his
unkempt figure had not won the good-will of
that autocratic hireling.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_271">[271]</div>
<p>“I’m from Police Headquarters,” the man
on the doorstep explained, with the easy mendacity
that was a heritage of his older days.
He produced the one official card that remained
with him, the one worn and dog-eared
and once water-soaked Deputy-Commissioner’s
card which still remained in his dog-eared
wallet. “I’ve got to see him on business,
Departmental business!”</p>
<p>“Mr. and Mrs. Copeland are at the Metropolitan,
sir,” explained the servant. “At the
Opera. And they are not back yet.”</p>
<p>“Then I’ll wait for him,” announced Blake,
placated by the humbler note in the voice of
the man in the service-coat.</p>
<p>“Very good, sir,” announced the servant.
And he led the way upstairs, switching on the
electrics as he went.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_272">[272]</div>
<p>Blake found himself in what seemed to be
a library. About this softly hung room he
peered with an acute yet heavy disdain, with
an indeterminate envy which he could not control.
It struck him as being feminine and
over fine, that shadowy room with all its warm
hangings and polished wood. It stood for a
phase of life with which he had no patience.
And he kept telling himself that it had not
been come by honestly, that on everything
about him, from the silver desk ornaments to
the marble bust glimmering out of its shadowy
background, he himself had some secret claim.
He scowled up at a number of signed etchings
and a row of diminutive and heavily
framed canvases, scowled up at them with
quick contempt. Then he peered uncomfortably
about at the shelves of books, mottled
streaks of vellum and morocco stippled with
gold, crowded pickets of soft-lettered color
which seemed to stand between him and a
world which he had never cared to enter. It
was a foolish world, that world of book reading,
a lackadaisical region of unreality, a place
for women and children, but never meant for
a man with a man’s work to do.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_273">[273]</div>
<p>His stolidly contemptuous eyes were still
peering about the room when the door opened
and closed again. There was something so
characteristically guarded and secretive in the
movement that Blake knew it was Copeland
even before he let his gaze wheel around to
the newcomer. About the entire figure, in
fact, he could detect that familiar veiled wariness,
that enigmatic and self-concealing cautiousness
which had always had the power to
touch him into a quick irritation.</p>
<p>“Mr. Blake, I believe,” said Copeland, very
quietly. He was in full evening dress. In
one hand he held a silk hat and over one arm
hung a black top-coat. He held himself in
perfect control, in too perfect control, yet his
thin face was almost ashen in color, almost the
neutral-tinted gray of a battle-ship’s side-plates.
And when he spoke it was with the
impersonal polite unction with which he might
have addressed an utter stranger.</p>
<p>“You wished to see me!” he said, as his gaze
fastened itself on Blake’s figure. The fact
that he remained standing imparted a tentativeness
to the situation. Yet his eyes remained
on Blake, studying him with the cold
and mildly abstracted curiosity with which he
might view a mummy in its case.</p>
<p>“I do!” said Blake, without rising from his
chair.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_274">[274]</div>
<p>“About what?” asked Copeland. There
was an acidulated crispness in his voice which
hinted that time might be a matter of importance
to him.</p>
<p>“You know what it’s about, all right,” was
Blake’s heavy retort.</p>
<p>“On the contrary,” said Copeland, putting
down his hat and coat, “I’m quite in the dark
as to how I can be of service to you.”</p>
<p>Both his tone and his words angered Blake,
angered him unreasonably. But he kept
warning himself to wait, to hold himself in
until the proper moment arrived.</p>
<p>“I expect no service from you,” was Blake’s
curtly guttural response. He croaked out his
mirthless ghost of a laugh. “You’ve taught
me better than that!”</p>
<p>Copeland, for all his iciness, seemed to resent
the thrust.</p>
<p>“We have always something to learn,” he
retorted, meeting Blake’s stolid stare of
enmity.</p>
<p>“I guess I’ve learned enough!” said
Blake.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_275">[275]</div>
<p>“Then I hope it has brought you what you
are looking for!” Copeland, as he spoke,
stepped over to a chair, but he still remained
on his feet.</p>
<p>“No, it hasn’t brought me what I’m after,”
said the other man. “Not yet! But it’s
going to, in the end, Mr. Copeland, or I’m
going to know the reason why!”</p>
<p>He kept warning himself to be calm, yet he
found his voice shaking a little as he spoke.
The time was not yet ripe for his outbreak.
The climactic moment was still some distance
away. But he could feel it emerging from the
mist just as a pilot sights the bell-buoy that
marks his changing channel.</p>
<p>“Then might I ask what you are after?”
inquired Copeland. He folded his arms, as
though to fortify himself behind a pretense of
indifferency.</p>
<p>“You know what I’ve been after, just as I
know what you’ve been after,” cried Blake.
“You set out to get my berth, and you got it.
And I set out to get Binhart, to get the man
your whole push couldn’t round up—and I’m
going to get him!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_276">[276]</div>
<p>“Blake,” said Copeland, very quietly, “you
are wrong in both instances.”</p>
<p>“Am I!”</p>
<p>“You are,” was Copeland’s answer, and he
spoke with a studious patience which his rival
resented even more than his open enmity.
“In the first place, this Binhart case is a closed
issue.”</p>
<p>“Not with me!” cried Blake, feeling himself
surrendering to the tide that had been tugging
at him so long. “They may be able to buy off
you cuff-shooters down at Headquarters.
They may grease your palm down there, until
you see it pays to keep your hands off. They
may pull a rope or two and make you back
down. But nothing this side o’ the gates o’
hell is going to make <i>me</i> back down. I began
this man-hunt, and <i>I’m going to end it</i>!”</p>
<p>He took on a dignity in his own eyes. He
felt that in the face of every obstacle he was
still the instrument of an ineluctable and incorruptible
Justice. Uncouth and buffeted as
his withered figure may have been, it still represented
the relentlessness of the Law.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_277">[277]</div>
<p>“That man-hunt is out of our hands,” he
heard Copeland saying.</p>
<p>“But it’s not out of <i>my</i> hands!” reiterated
the detective.</p>
<p>“Yes, it’s out of your hands, too,” answered
Copeland. He spoke with a calm authority,
with a finality, that nettled the other man.</p>
<p>“What are you driving at?” he cried out.</p>
<p>“This Binhart hunt is ended,” repeated
Copeland, and in the eyes looking down at him
Blake saw that same vague pity which had
rested in the gaze of Elsie Verriner.</p>
<p>“By God, it’s not ended!” Blake thundered
back at him.</p>
<p>“It <i>is</i> ended,” quietly contended the other.
“And precisely as you have put it—Ended
by God!”</p>
<p>“It’s what?” cried Blake.</p>
<p>“You don’t seem to be aware of the fact,
Blake, that Binhart is dead—dead and
buried!”</p>
<p>Blake stared up at him.</p>
<p>“Is what?” his lips automatically inquired.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_278">[278]</div>
<p>“Binhart died seven weeks ago. He died
in the town of Toluca, out in Arizona. He’s
buried there.”</p>
<p>“That’s a lie!” cried Blake, sagging forward
in his chair.</p>
<p>“We had the Phœnix authorities verify the
report in every detail. There is no shadow of
doubt about it.”</p>
<p>Still Blake stared up at the other man.</p>
<p>“I don’t believe it,” he wheezed.</p>
<p>Copeland did not answer him. He stepped
to the end of the desk and with his scholarly
white finger touched a mother-of-pearl bell
button. Utter silence reigned in the room until
the servant answered his summons.</p>
<p>“Bridley, go to my secretary and bring me
the portfolio in the second drawer.”</p>
<p>Blake heard and yet did not hear the message.
A fog-like sense of unreality seemed
to drape everything about him. The earth itself
seemed to crumble away and leave him
poised alone in the very emptiness of space.
Binhart was dead!</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_279">[279]</div>
<p>He could hear Copeland’s voice far away.
He could see the returning figure of the servant,
but it seemed as gray and ghostlike as
the entire room about him. In his shaking
fingers he took the official papers which Copeland
handed over to him. He could read the
words, he could see the signatures, but they
seemed unable to impart any clear-cut message
to his brain. His dazed eyes wandered over
the newspaper clippings which Copeland
thrust into his unsteady fingers. There, too,
was the same calamitous proclamation, as final
as though he had been reading it on a tombstone.
Binhart was dead! Here were the
proofs of it; here was an authentic copy of the
death certificate, the reports of the police verification;
here in his hands were the final and
indisputable proofs.</p>
<p>But he could not quite comprehend it. He
tried to tell himself it was only that his old-time
enemy was playing some new trick on
him, a trick which he could not quite fathom.
Then the totality of it all swept home to him,
swept through his entire startled being as a
tidal-wave sweeps over a coast-shoal.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_280">[280]</div>
<p>Blake, in his day, had known desolation, but
it had seldom been desolation of spirit. It
had never been desolation like this. He tried
to plumb it, to its deepest meaning, but consciousness
seemed to have no line long enough.
He only knew that his world had ended. He
saw himself as the thing that life had at last
left him—a solitary and unsatisfied man, a
man without an aim, without a calling, without
companionship.</p>
<p>“So this ends the music!” he muttered, as
he rose weakly to his feet. And yet it was
more than the end of the music, he had to confess
to himself. It was the collapse of the
instruments, the snapping of the last string.
It was the ultimate end, the end that proclaimed
itself as final as the stabbing thought
of his own death itself.</p>
<p>He heard Copeland asking if he would care
for a glass of sherry. Whether he answered
that query or not he never knew. He only
knew that Binhart was dead, and that he himself
was groping his way out into the night, a
broken and desolate man.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_281">[281]</div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />