One night, as he sat placidly playing his game of “cut-throat” in his shirt-sleeves, he looked up and saw a russet-faced figure as stolid as his own. This figure, 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 up from the table and bought a fresh supply of “green” Havana cigars. Then he sauntered out to where the russet-faced stranger stood watching the street crowds.
“Pip, what’re you doing down in these parts?” he casually inquired. He had recognized the man as Pip Tankred, with whom he had come in contact five long years before. Pip, on that occasion, was engaged in loading an East River banana-boat with an odd ton or two of cartridges designed for Castro’s opponents in Venezuela.
“Oh, I’m freightin’ bridge equipment down the West Coast,” he solemnly announced. “And transshippin’ a few cases o’ phonograph-records as a side-line!”
“Have a smoke?” asked Blake.
“Sure,” responded the russet-faced bucaneer. And as they stood smoking together Blake tenderly and cautiously put out the usual feelers, plying the familiar questions and meeting with the too-familiar lack of response. Like all the rest of them, he soon saw, Pip Tankred knew nothing of Binhart or his whereabouts. And with that discovery his interest in Pip Tankred ceased.
So the next day Blake moved inland, working his interrogative way along the Big Ditch to Panama. He even slipped back over the line to San Cristobel and Ancon, found nothing of moment awaiting him there, and drifted back into Panamanian territory. It was not until the end of the week that the first glimmer of hope came to him.
It came in the form of an incredibly thin gringo in an incredibly soiled suit of duck. Blake had been sitting on the wide veranda of the Hotel Angelini, sipping his “swizzle” and studiously watching the Saturday evening crowds that passed back and forth through Panama’s bustling railway station. He had watched the long line of rickety cabs backed up against the curb, the two honking autobusses, 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 groups closer about him, when through that seething and bustling mass of humanity he saw Dusty McGlade pushing his way, a Dusty McGlade on whom the rum of Jamaica and the mezcal of Guatemala and the anisado of Ecuador had combined with the pulque of Mexico to set their unmistakable seal.
But three minutes later the two men were seated together above their “swizzles” and Blake was exploring Dusty’s faded memories as busily as a leather-dip might explore an inebriate’s pockets.
“Who’re you looking for, Jim?” suddenly and peevishly demanded the man in the soiled white duck, as though impatient of the other’s indirections.
Blake smoked for a moment or two before answering.