Murder in Any Degree Part 33

"Thanks," Frawley said with a drawl. "And you'll notice I haven't advised you to come back and face the music. Seems to me we understand each other."

"Here's my address," said Greenfield, handing him a card; "may save you some trouble. I'm here every night." He held out his hand. "Turn up and meet the profesh. They're a clever lot here. They'd appreciate meeting you, too."

"Perhaps I will."

"Ta-ta, then."

Greenfield took a few steps, halted, and lounged back with a smile full of mischief.

"By the way, Bub--how long has Her Majesty's d.i.n.kies given you?"

"It's a life appointment, Bucky."

"Really--bless me--then your bloomin' government has some sense after all."

The two men saluted gravely, with a parting exchange.

"Now, Bub--keep fit."

"Same to you, Bucky."

IV

The view of Greenfield sauntering lightly away among the noisy tables, bravado in his manner, deviltry in his heart, was the last glimpse Inspector Frawley was destined to have of him in many months. True, Greenfield had not lied: the address was genuine, but the man was gone.

For days Frawley had the city scoured without gaining a clue. No steamer had left the harbor, not even a tramp. If Greenfield was not in hiding, he must have buried himself in the interior.

It was a week before Frawley found the track. Greenfield had walked thirty miles into the country and taken the train for Rio Mendoza on the route across the Andes to Valparaiso.

Frawley followed the same day, somewhat mystified at this sudden change of base. In the train the thermometer stood at 116. The heat made of everything a solitude. Frawley, lifeless, stifling, and numbed, glued himself to the air-holes with eyes fastened on the horizon, while the train sped across the naked, singeing back of the plains like the welt that springs to meet the fall of the lash. For two nights he watched the distended sun, exhausted by its own madness, drop back into the heated void, and the tortured stars rise over the stricken desert. At the end of thirty-six hours of agony he arrived at Rio Mendoza. Thence he reached Punta de Vacas, procured mules and a guide, and prepared for the ascent over the mountains.

At two o'clock the next morning he began to climb out of h.e.l.l. The tortured plains settled below him. A divine freshness breathed upon him with a new hope of life. He left the burning conflict of summer and pa.s.sed into the aroma of spring.

Then the air grew intense, a new suffocation pressed about his temples--the suffocation of too much life. In an hour he had run the gamut of the seasons. The cold of everlasting winter descended and stung his senses. Up and up and up they went--then suddenly down, with the half-breed guide and the tireless mule always at the same distance before him; and again began the insistent mechanical toiling upward. He grew listless and indifferent, acquiescent in these steep efforts that the next moment must throw away. The horror of immense distance rose about him. From time to time a stone dislodged by their pa.s.sage rushed from under him, struck the brink, and spun into the void, to fall endlessly. The face of the earth grew confused and dropped in a mist from before his eyes.

Then as they toiled still upward, a gale as though sent in anger rushed down upon them, sweeping up whirlwinds of snow, raging and shrieking, dragging them to the brink, and threatening to blot them out.

Frawley clutched the saddle, then flung his arms about the neck of his mule. His head was reeling, the indignant blood rushed to his nostrils and his ears, his lungs no longer could master the divine air. Then suddenly the mules stopped, exhausted. Through the maelstrom the guide shrieked to him not to use the spur. Frawley felt himself in danger of dying, and had no resentment.

For a day they affronted the immense wilds until they had forced themselves thousands of feet above the race of men. Then they began to descend.

Below them the clouds lapped and rolled like the elements before the creation. Still they descended, and the moist oblivion closed about them, like the curse of a world without color. The bleak mists separated and began to roll up above them, a cloud split asunder, and through the slit the earth jumped up, and the solid land spread before them as when at the dawn it obeyed the will of the Creator. They saw the hills and the mountains grow, and the rivers trickle toward the sea. The ma.s.ses of brown and green began to be splashed with red and yellow as the fields became fertile and fructified; and the insect race of men began to crawl to and fro.

The half-breed, who saw the scene for the hundredth time, bent his head in awe. Frawley straightened in his saddle, stretched the stiffness out of his limbs, patted his mule solicitously, glanced at the guide, and stopped in perplexity at the mute, reverential att.i.tude.

"What's he starin' at now?" he muttered in as then, with a glance at his watch, he added anxiously, "I say, Sammy, when do we get a bit to eat?"

V

In Valparaiso he readily found the track of Greenfield. Up to the time of his departure, two boats had sailed: one for the north, and one by the Straits of Magellan to Buenos Ayres. Greenfield had bought a ticket for each, after effecting the withdrawal of his account at a local bank.

Frawley was in perplexity: for Greenfield to flee north was to run into the jaws of the law. The withdrawal of the account decided him. He returned to Buenos Ayres by the route he had come, arriving the day before the steamer. To his discomfiture Greenfield was not on board. By ridiculously casting away his protection he had thrown the detective off the track and gained three weeks. Without more concern than he might have shown in taking a trip from Toronto to New York, Frawley a third time crossed the Andes and set himself to correcting his first error.

He traced Greenfield laboriously up the coast back to Panama and there lost the trail. At the end of two months he learned that Greenfield had shipped as a common sailor on a freighter that touched at Hawaii. From here he followed him to Yokohama, Singapore, Ceylon, and Bombay.

Thence Greenfield, suddenly abandoning the water route, had proceeded by land to Bagdad, and across the Turkish Empire to Constantinople.

Without a pause, Frawley traced him next into the Balkans, through Bulgaria, Roumania, amid ma.s.sacre and revolution to Budapest, back to Odessa, and across the back of Russia by Moscow and Riga to Stockholm. A year had elapsed.

Several times he might have gained on the fugitive had he trusted to his instinct; but he bided his time, renouncing a stroke of genius, in order to be certain of committing no error, awaiting the moment when Greenfield would pause and he might overtake him. But the fugitive, as though stung by a gad-fly, continued to plunge madly over sea and continent. Four months, five months behind, Frawley continued the tireless pursuit.

From Stockholm the chase led to Copenhagen, to Christiansand, down the North Sea to Rotterdam. From thence Greenfield had rushed by rail to Lisbon and taken steamer to Africa, touching at Gibraltar, Portuguese and French Guinea, Sierra Leone, and proceeding thence into the Congo.

For a month all traces disappeared in the veldt, until by chance, rather than by his own merits, Frawley found the trail anew in Madagascar, whither Greenfield had come after a desperate attempt to bury his trail on the immense plains of Southern Africa.

From Madagascar, Frawley followed him to Aden in Arabia and by steamer to Melbourne. Again for weeks he sought the confused track vainly through Australia, up through Sydney, down again to Tasmania and New Zealand on a false clue, back to Queensland, where at last in Cooktown he learned anew of the pa.s.sing of his man.

The third year began without appreciable gain. Greenfield still was three months in advance, never pausing, scurrying from continent to continent, as though instinctively aware of the progress of his pursuer.

In this year Frawley visited Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, stopped at Manila, jumped immediately to Korea, and hurried on to Vladivostok, where he found that Greenfield had procured pa.s.sage on a sealer bound for Auckland. There he had taken the steamer by the Straits of Magellan back to Buenos Ayres.

There, within the first hour, he heard a report that his man had gone on to Rio Janeiro, caught the cholera, and died there. Undaunted by the epidemic, Frawley took the next boat and entered the stricken city by swimming ash.o.r.e. For a week he searched the hospitals and the cemeteries. Greenfield had indeed been stricken, but, escaping with his life, had left for the northern part of Brazil. The delay resulted in a gain of three months for Frawley, but without heat or excitement he began anew the pursuit, pa.s.sing up the coast to Para and the mouth of the Amazon, by Bogota and Panama into Mexico, on up toward the border of Texas. The months between him and Greenfield shortened to weeks, then to days without troubling his equanimity. At El Paso he arrived a few hours after Greenfield had left, going toward the Salt Basin and the Guadalupe Mountains. Frawley took horses and a guide and followed to the edge of the desert. At three o'clock in the afternoon a horseman grew out of the horizon, a figure that remained stationary and attentive, studying his approach through a spy-gla.s.s. Suddenly, as though satisfied, the stranger took off his hat and waved it above his head in challenge, and digging his heels into his horse, disappeared into the desert.

VI

Frawley understood the challenge--the end was to be in the desert.

Failing to move his guide by threat or promise, he left him clamoring frantically on the edge of the desert and rode on toward where the figure of Greenfield had disappeared on the horizon in a puff of dust.

For three days they went their way grimly into the parched sands, husbanding every particle of strength, within plain sight of each other, always at the same unvarying walk. At night they slept by fits and starts, with an ear trained for the slightest hostile sound. Then they cast aside their saddles, their rifles, and superfluous clothing, in a vain effort to save their mounts.

The horses, heaving and staggering, crawled over the yielding sands like silhouettes drawn by a thread. In the sky not a cloud appeared; below, the yellow monotony extended as flat as a dish. Above them a lazy buzzard, wheeling in languid circles, followed with patient conviction.

On the fourth morning Frawley's horse stopped, shuddered, and went down in a heap. Greenfield halted and surveyed his discomfiture grimly, without a sign of elation.

"That's bad, very bad," Frawley said judicially. "I ought to have sent word to the department. Still, it's not over yet--his horse won't last long. Well, I mustn't carry much."

He abandoned his revolver, a knife, $200 in gold, and continued on foot, preserving only the water-bag with its precious mouthful. Greenfield, who had waited immovably, allowed him to approach within a quarter of a mile before putting his horse in motion.

"He's going to make sure I stay here," said Frawley to himself, seeing that Greenfield made no attempt to increase the lead. "Well, we'll see."

Twelve hours later Greenfield's horse gave out. Frawley uttered a cry of joy, but the handicap of half a day was a serious one; he was exhausted, famished, and in the bag there remained only sufficient water to moisten his lips.