“You’ll never get me there!” he said, in little more than a whisper. “Never!”
XVII
Binhart was moved that night up into the hills. There he was installed in a bungalow of an abandoned banana plantation and a doctor was brought to his bedside. He was delirious by the time this doctor arrived, and his ravings through the night were a source of vague worry to his enemy. On the second day the sick man showed signs of improvement.
For three weeks Blake watched over Binhart, saw to his wants, journeyed to Chalavia for his food and medicines. When the fever was broken and Binhart began to gain strength the detective no longer made the trip to Chalavia in person. He preferred to remain with the sick man.
He watched that sick man carefully, jealously, hour by hour and day by day. A peon servant was paid to keep up the vigil when Blake slept, as sleep he must.
But the strain was beginning to tell on him. He walked heavily. The asthmatic wheeze of his breathing became more audible. His earlier touch of malaria returned to him, and he suffered from intermittent chills and fever. The day came when Blake suggested it was about time for them to move on.
“Where to?” asked Binhart. Little had passed between the two men, but during all those silent nights and days each had been secretly yet assiduously studying the other.
“Back to New York,” was Blake’s indifferent-noted answer. Yet this indifference was a pretense, for no soul had ever hungered more for a white man’s country than did the travel-worn and fever-racked Blake. But he had his part to play, and he did not intend to shirk it. They went about their preparations quietly, like two fellow excursionists making ready for a journey with which they were already over-familiar. It was while they sat waiting for the guides and mules that Blake addressed himself to the prisoner.
“Connie,” he said, “I’m taking you back. It doesn’t make much difference whether I take you back dead or alive. But I’m going to take you back.”
The other man said nothing, but his slight head-movement was one of comprehension.