Never-Fail Blake

breakfasting at the Café Britto in the Ovidor. At the same table with

ificial diamonds. Still later in the day he held converse with a fellow gambler at the Paineiras, half-way up Mount C

ngston. Once again he beheld a tropical sun shimmer on hot brass-work and pitch boil up between bone-white deck-boards sluiced and resluiced by a half-naked crew. Once again he had to face an enervating equatorial heat that vitiated both mind and body. But he neither fretted nor complained. Som

ings that were comprehensible to him, gamblers and adventurers who took him poignantly back to the life he had left so far behind him. Along that crowded and shifting half-way house for the tropic-loving American he found more than one passing friend to whom he talked hungrily an

apper in the barroom of the Hotel Central, where he would sit without coat or vest, calmly giving an eye to his game of "draw" or stolidly "rolling the bo

ure, he perceived, was discreetly studying him as he sat under the glare of the light. Blake went on with his game. In a quarter of an hour, however, he got u

ed, with whom he had come in contact five long years before. Pip, on that occasion, was engaged in loading

t Coast," he solemnly announced. "And transshippin

moke?" as

ual feelers, plying the familiar questions and meeting with the too-familiar lack of response. Like all the rest of them, he

ped back over the line to San Cristobel and Ancon, found nothing of moment awaiting him there, and drifted ba

way station. He had watched the long line of rickety cabs backed up against the curb, the two honking auto-busses, the shifting army of pleasure-seekers along the sidewalks, the noisy saloons round which the crowds eddied like bees about a hive, and he was once more appraising the gr

their "swizzles" and Blake was exploring Dusty's faded memories

vishly demanded the man in the soiled white duck

a moment or two

to study that ruinous figure in front of him. It startled him to see what idleness and

once been afraid of this man called Blake, he remembered. But time had changed things, as time has the habit of doing. And most o

ow!" Blake's guttural

our ago?" contested McGlade, with

ed Blake. He waited, with a show of indifference.

ght, all right-but it

till Blake was b

her man with a lean finger that was both u

d Blake, striking a match. "I

of his swizzle. Then he put down his empty gl

e in it for

the small table, Weighed bo

ten his flaccid lips. He could see the faded eyes fasten on the bills as they were counted out. He knew where th

yaquil," McGlade

that?" promptly

take you to him. Binhart 'd picked up a medicine-chest and a bag of instruments fr

t li

ght he 'd get down to Callao. But the

ay he 's t

es

ard the

t to be aboard

you say I can

uarantine. That whole harbor's rotten with yellow-jack. It's tied up as tight as a

e something going the

be held and given the blood-test and picketed with a gunboat for a month! And what's more, they 've got that Alfa

st word, raised h

nced. His thoughts, in fact, were already far

r yellow fever?" inqui

ort. He was recalling certain things that the russet-faced Pip Tankred had told him. And before everything else

ing to try to get into Gua

e I 've got to go and get him,"

s ground, began one of his old-time "investigations

tolls, the examination of records that were both official and unofficial, the asking of many quest

painted upperworks and a rusty red hull. The side-plates of this red hull, Blake observed, were as pitted and scarred as the face of an Egyptian obelisk. Her ventilators

by accident, on the veranda of the Hotel Angelini. The latter, a

at deluged the city, the warm devitalizing rain that un

nounced, "you 're going to s

eried the

tomorrow," repeated Blake, "and you

and thin as a pool-que, "you 're sure laborin' under the misapprehen

acknowledged the other m

ssengers-she ain't allowed

rry me," asserted Blake

d he fixed Blake with a bellige

d friend

?" still chall

of yours, and those doped-up clearance papers, and those cases of carbines you 've got down your hold labeled bridge equipment,

ontinued

"if it ain't kind o' flirtin' with danger know

the coquetting in t

din' for no rivals

o alike in their accidental attitudes of an un

take me to Guayaqu

was the calmly insolent rejoinder

y you

ed his earlier deliberat

s up the Guayas River. And if I 'm gun-runnin' for Alfaro, as you say, I naturally ain't n

as close to Guayaquil as

e man with the

am about Alfaro and his two-cent revolution. I 'm not sitting up worrying over him or his junta or

me Tankred turne

" he finally demanded. Blake knew that nothi

down there, and I 'm g

is

usiness," re

aquil's your business!

m up North-and he 's not in your line of

I know

ave my wor

wung roun

line o' patrol? And then crawl into a town that's reekin' with yellow-jac

that!" ackno

Tankred turned and s

ter your gen'leman friend

got to get

ve go

to, and I '

r-end away and laughed

rguin' about, anyway? If it's s

hink it's

ankred

end, you'll sure see some ro