<h2 id="c21">XXI</h2>
<p>Several days dragged away before
Blake’s mental clarity returned to him.
Then block by unstable block he seemed to
rebuild a new world about him, a new world
which was both narrow and empty. But it
at least gave him something on which to plant
his bewildered feet.</p>
<p>That slow return to the substantialities of
life was in the nature of a convalescence. It
came step by languid step; he knew no power
to hurry it. And as is so often the case with
convalescents, he found himself in a world
from which time seemed to have detached him.
Yet as he emerged from that earlier state of
coma, his old-time instincts and characteristics
began to assert themselves. Some deep-seated
inner spirit of dubiety began to grope
about and question and challenge. His innate
skepticism once more became active.
That tendency to cynical unbelief which his
profession had imposed upon him stubbornly
reasserted itself. His career had crowned
him with a surly suspiciousness. And about
the one thing that remained vital to that career,
or what was left of it, these wayward
suspicions arrayed themselves like wolves
about a wounded stag.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_282">[282]</div>
<p>His unquiet soul felt the need of some final
and personal proof of Binhart’s death. He
asked for more data than had been given him.
He wanted more information than the fact
that Binhart, on his flight north, had fallen ill
of pneumonia in New Orleans, had wandered
on to the dry air of Arizona with a “spot” on
his lungs, and had there succumbed to the
tubercular invasion for which his earlier sickness
had laid him open. Blake’s slowly
awakening and ever-wary mind kept telling
him that after all there might be some possibility
of trickery, that a fugitive with the
devilish ingenuity of Binhart would resort to
any means to escape being further harassed by
the Law.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_283">[283]</div>
<p>Blake even recalled, a few days later, the
incident of the Shattuck jewel-robbery, during
the first weeks of his régime as a Deputy
Commissioner. This diamond-thief named
Shattuck had been arrested and released under
heavy bail. Seven months later Shattuck’s
attorney had appeared before the District Attorney’s
office with a duly executed certificate
of death, officially establishing the fact that
his client had died two weeks before in the city
of Baltimore. On this he had based a demand
for the dismissal of the case. He had succeeded
in having all action stopped and the
affair became, officially, a closed incident.
Yet two months later Shattuck had been seen
alive, and the following winter had engaged
in an Albany hotel robbery which had earned
for him, under an entirely different name, a
nine-year sentence in Sing Sing.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_284">[284]</div>
<p>From the memory of that case Never-Fail
Blake wrung a thin and ghostly consolation.
The more he brooded over it the more morosely
disquieted he became. The thing grew
like a upas tree; it spread until it obsessed all
his waking hours and invaded even his dreams.
Then a time came when he could endure it no
more. He faced the necessity of purging his
soul of all uncertainty. The whimpering of
one of his unkenneled “hunches” merged into
what seemed an actual voice of inspiration to
him.</p>
<p>He gathered together what money he could;
he arranged what few matters still remained
to engage his attention, going about the task
with that valedictory solemnity with which the
forlornly decrepit execute their last will and
testament. Then, when everything was prepared,
he once more started out on the trail.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_285">[285]</div>
<p class="center"><span class="gs">* * * * * * * *</span></p>
<p>Two weeks later a rough and heavy-bodied
man, garbed in the rough apparel of a mining
prospector, made his way into the sun-steeped
town of Toluca. There he went quietly to
the wooden-fronted hotel, hired a pack-mule
and a camp-outfit and made purchase, among
other things, of a pick and shovel. To certain
of the men he met he put inquiries as to
the best trail out to the Buenavista Copper
Camp. Then, as he waited for the camp-partner
who was to follow him into Toluca,
he drifted with amiable and ponderous restlessness
about the town, talking with the telegraph
operator and the barber, swapping
yarns at the livery-stable where his pack-mule
was lodged, handing out cigars in the wooden-fronted
hotel, casually interviewing the town
officials as to the health of the locality and the
death-rate of Toluca, acquainting himself with
the local undertaker and the lonely young
doctor, and even dropping in on the town officials
and making inquiries about main-street
building lots and the need of a new hotel.</p>
<p>To all this amiable and erratic garrulity
there seemed to be neither direction nor significance.
But in one thing the town of
Toluca agreed; the ponderous-bodied old newcomer
was a bit “queer” in his head.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_286">[286]</div>
<p>A time came, however, when the newcomer
announced that he could wait no longer for
his belated camp-partner. With his pack-mule
and a pick and shovel he set out, late one
afternoon, for the Buenavista Camp. Yet by
nightfall, for some strange reason, any one
traveling that lonely trail might have seen him
returning towards Toluca. He did not enter
the town, however, but skirted the outer fringe
of sparsely settled houses and guardedly made
his way to a close-fenced area, in which neither
light nor movement could be detected. This
silent place awakened in him no trace of either
fear or repugnance. With him he carried his
pick and shovel, and five minutes later the
sound of this pick and shovel might have been
heard at work as the ponderous-bodied man
sweated over his midnight labor. When he
had dug for what seemed an interminable
length of time, he tore away a layer of pine
boards and released a double row of screw-heads.
Then he crouched low down in the
rectangular cavern which he had fashioned
with his spade, struck a match, and peered
with a narrow-eyed and breathless intentness
at what faced him there.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_287">[287]</div>
<p>One glance at that tragic mass of corruption
was enough for him. He replaced the screw-heads
and the pine boards. He took up his
shovel and began restoring the earth, stolidly
tramping it down, from time to time, with his
great weight.</p>
<p>When his task was completed he saw that
everything was orderly and as he had found
it. Then he returned to his tethered pack-mule
and once more headed for the Buenavista
Camp, carrying with him a discovery
which made the night air as intoxicating as
wine to his weary body.</p>
<p>Late that night a man might have been
heard singing to the stars, singing in the midst
of the wilderness, without rhyme or reason.
And in the midst of that wilderness he remained
for another long day and another long
night, as though solitude were necessary to
him, that he might adjust himself to some new
order of things, that he might digest some victory
which had been too much for his shattered
nerves.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_288">[288]</div>
<p>On the third day, as he limped placidly back
into the town of Toluca, his soul was torn between
a great peace and a great hunger. He
hugged to his breast the fact that somewhere
in the world ahead of him a man once known
as Binhart still moved and lived. He kept
telling himself that somewhere about the face
of the globe that restless spirit whom he
sought still wandered.</p>
<p>Day by patient day, through the drought
and heat and alkali of an Arizona summer, he
sought some clue, some inkling, of the direction
which that wanderer had taken. But
about Binhart and his movements, Toluca and
Phœnix and all Arizona itself seemed to know
nothing.</p>
<p>Nothing, Blake saw in the end, remained to
be discovered there. So in time the heavy-bodied
man with the haggard hound’s eyes
took his leave, passing out into the world which
in turn swallowed him up as completely as it
had swallowed up his unknown enemy.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_289">[289]</div>
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