Never-Fail Blake

which he could reach by wireless were duly warned. But more than ever, now, he found, he had to depend on his own initiative, his own personal efforts. The more official the quarters to wh

en he himself was s

y traced. The carefully guarded frontiers of Russia, too, would offer obstacles which he dare not meet. He would stick to the ragged and restless sea-fringes, concluded the detective. But before acting on that conclusion he caught a Toyo Kisen Kaisha steamer for Sha

rickshaw coolies and half-naked Malay wharf-rats, holding the departmental photograph of Binhart in his hand and inquiring of stranger after stranger: "You know? You savvy him?" And time after time the curious ye

otograph, squinted back at Blake, and shook his head in affirmation. A tip of a few English shillings loosened his tongue, but as Blake understood neither Malay nor Chinese he was in the dark until he led his coolie to a Cook's agent

himself in a speaking knowledge of these two tongues. But the effort was futile. Pore as he might over those small volumes, he could glean nothing from their laboriously pondered

ic ancestry equipped him with a mute and sullen antipathy for his aggressively English fellow travelers. He spent much of his time in the smoking-room, playing solitaire. When they stopped at Madras and Bombay he mer

thought to his personal appearance, becoming more and more indifferent as to the impression he made on those about him. His face, for all his increase in flesh, lost its ruddine

to pick up the trail again, with clear proof that a man answering to Binhart's description had sailed for Corfu.

ples. He started southward by train, at once, vaguely surprised at the length of Italy,

verse to curry favor with a New York official, and many persons indirectly in touch with the home Department. These persons he assiduously sought out, one

arrying the casement with him. Blake followed, but the lighter and younger man out-ran him and was swallowed up by one of the unknown streets of an unknown quarter. An hour later Blake had his hired agents raking that quarter from cellar to ga

ing self-immured and preoccupied through Rome and Florenc

tical-looking boatman promptly took Blake several miles down the coast, parleyed in the lingua Franca of the Mediterranean, argued in broken English, and insisted on going further. Blake, scenting imposture, demanded to be put ashor

ed of attempted murder. He found it expedient to call in the aid of the American Consul, who, in turn, suggested the re

a Lloyd Brazileiro steamer for Rio de Jan

is hotel room, for an hour, communing with his own dark soul. He emerged from that self-communion freshly shaved and smoking a cigar

. He read of a rumored Police Department shake up, and he could afford to smile at the vitality of that hellbender-like report. Then, as he turned the worn pages, the smile died from his heavy lips, for his own name leaped up like a snake from the text and seemed to strike him in the face. He spelled through the paragraphs carefully, word by word, as though it were in a language with which he was only half familiar. He even went back and read the entire column for a second t

ll resentment, a resentment which he could not articulate. Yet dull as it was, hour by hour and day by idle day it grew more virulent. About him stood nothing against which this resentment could be marshaled. His pride lay as helpless as a whale was

ing once closed on the rabbit, could release its meal. With Blake, every instinct sloped inward, just as every python-fang sloped backward. The actual reason for the chase was no longer clear to his own vision. It was something no longe