Chapter 10

The Honorable Secretary rose, took from his desk a paper, and began to read. In his seat Inspector Frawley crossed his legs carefully, drew his fists up under his chin, and stared at the reader, but without focusing his glance on him. Once during the recital he started at some item of description, but immediately relaxed. The report finished, the Secretary let it drop into his lap and waited, impressed, despite himself, at the thought of the immense galleries of crime through which the Inspector was seeking his victim. All at once into the unseeing stare there flickered a light of understanding. Frawley returned to the room, saw the Secretary, and nodded.

"It's Bucky," he said tentatively. A moment his glance went reflectively to a far corner, then he nodded slowly, looked at the Secretary, and said with conviction: "It looks very much, sir, like Bucky Greenfield."

"It is Greenfield," replied the Secretary, without attempting to conceal his astonishment.

"I would like to observe," said Frawley thoughtfully, without noticing his surprise, "that there is a bit of an error in that description, sir. It's the left ear that's broken. Furthermore, he don't toe out--excepting when he does it on a purpose. So it's Bucky Greenfield I'm to bring back, sir?"

The Secretary nodded, penciling Frawley's correction on the paper.

"Bucky--well, now, that is odd!" said Frawley musingly. He rose and took a step to the desk. "Very odd." Mechanically he saw the straggling papers on the top and arranged them into orderly piles. "Well, he can't say I didn't warn him!"

"What!" broke in the Secretary in quick astonishment, "you know the fellow?"

"Indeed, yes, sir," said Frawley, with a nod. "We know most of the crooks in the States. We're good friends, too--so long as they stay over the line. It's useful, you know. So I'm to go after Bucky?"

The Secretary, judging the moment had arrived to be impressive, said solemnly:

"Inspector Frawley, if you have to stick to it until he dies of old age, you're never to let up until you get Bucky Greenfield! While the British Empire holds together, no man shall rob Her Majesty of a farthing and sleep in security. You understand the situation?"

"I do, sir."

The Honorable Secretary, only half satisfied, continued:

"Your credit is unlimited--there'll be no question of that. If you need to buy up a whole South American government--buy it! By the way, he will make for South America, will he not?"

"Probably--yes, sir. Chile or the Argentine--there's no extradition treaty there."

"But even then," broke in the Secretary with a nervous frown--"there are ways--other ways?"

"Oh, yes." Frawley, picking up a paper-cutter, stood by the mantel tapping his palm. "Oh, yes--there are other ways! So it's Bucky--well, I warned him!"

"Now, Inspector, to settle the matter," interrupted the Secretary, anxious to return to his routine, "when can you go on the case?"

"If the papers are ready, sir--"

"They are--everything. The Home Office has been cabled. To-morrow every British official throughout the world will be notified to render you assistance and honor your drafts."

Inspector Frawley heard with approval and consulted his watch.

"There's an express for New York leaves at noon," he said reflectively--then, with a glance at the clock, "thirty-five minutes; I can make that, sir."

"Good, very good."

"If I might suggest, sir--if the Inspector who has had the case in hand could go a short distance with me?"

"Inspector Keech shall join you at the station."

"Thank you, sir. Is there anything further?"

The Secretary shook his head, and springing up, held out his hand enthusiastically.

"Good luck to you, Inspector--you have a big thing ahead of you, a very big thing."

"Thank you, sir."

"By the way--you're not married?"

"No, sir."

"This is pretty short notice. How long have you been on this other case?"

"A trifle over six months, sir."

"Don't you want a couple of days to rest up? I can let you have that very easily."

"It really makes no difference--I think I'll leave to-day, sir."

"Oh, a moment more, Inspector--"

Frawley halted.

"How long do you think this ought to take you?"

Frawley considered, and answered carefully:

"It'll be long, I think. You see, there are several circumstances that are unusual about this case."

"How so?"

"Well, Buck is clever--there's no gainsaying that--quite at the top of the profession. Then, he's expecting me."

"You?"

"They're a queer lot," Frawley explained with a touch of pride. "Crooks are full of little vanities. You see, Bucky knows I've never dropped a trail, and I think it's rather gotten on his nerves. I think he wasn't satisfied until he dared me. He's very odd--very odd indeed. It's a little personal. I doubt, sir, if I bring him back alive."

"Inspector Frawley," said the new Secretary, "I hope I have sufficiently impressed upon you the importance of your mission."

Frawley stared at his chief in surprise.

"I'm to stick to him until I get him," he said in wonder; "that's all, isn't it, sir?"

The Secretary, annoyed by his lack of imagination, essayed a final phrase.

"Inspector, this is my last word," he said with a frown; "remember that you represent Her Majesty's government--you are Her Majesty's government! I have confidence in you."

"Thank you, sir."

Frawley moved slowly to the door and with his hand on the knob hesitated. The Secretary saw in the movement a reluctance to take the decisive step that must open before him the wide stretches of the world.

"After all, he must have a speck of imagination," he thought, reassured.

"I beg pardon, sir."

Frawley had turned in embarrassment.

"Well, Inspector, what can I do for you?"

"If you please, sir," said Frawley, "I was just thinking--after all, it has been a bit of a while since I've been home--indeed, I should like it very much if I could take a good English mutton-chop and a musty ale at old Nell's, sir. I can still get the two o'clock express."

"Granted!"

"If you'd prefer not, sir," said Frawley, surprised at the vexation in his answer.

"Not at all--take the two o'clock--good day, good day!"

Inspector Frawley, sorely puzzled, shifted his balance, opened his mouth, then with a bob of his head answered hastily:

"A--good day, sir!"

II

Sam Greenfield, known as "Bucky," age about 42, height about 5 feet 10 inches, weight between 145 and 150. Hair mouse-colored, thinning out over forehead, parted in middle, showing scalp beneath; mustache would be lighter than hair--if not dyed; usually clipped to about an inch. Waxy complexion, light blue eyes a little close together, thin nose, a prominent dimple on left cheek--may wear whiskers. Laughs in low key. Left ear lobe broken. Slightly bowlegged. While in conversation strokes chin. When standing at a counter or bar goes through motions, as if jerking himself together, crowding his elbows slowly to his side for a moment, then, throwing back his head, jumps up from his heels. When dreaming, attempts to bite mustache with lower lip. When he sits in a chair places himself sidewise and hangs both arms over back. In walking strikes back part of heel first, and is apt to waver from time to time. Dresses neatly, carries hands in side-pockets only--plays piano constantly, composing as he goes along. During day smokes twenty to thirty cigarettes, cutting them in half for cigarette-holder and throwing them away after three or four whiffs. After dinner invariably smokes one cigar. Cut is good likeness. Cut of signature is facsimile of his original writing.

With this overwhelming indictment against the liberty of the fugitive, to escape which Greenfield would have to change his temperament as well as his physical aspect, Inspector Frawley took the first steamer from New York to the Isthmus of Panama.

He had slight doubt of Greenfield's final destination, for the flight of the criminal is a blind instinct for the south as though a frantic return to barbarism. At this time Chile and the Argentine had not yet accepted the principle of extradition, and remained the Mecca of the lawbreakers of the world.

Yet though Frawley felt certain of Greenfield's objective, he did not at once strike for the Argentine. The Honorable Secretary of Justice had eliminated the necessity for considering time. Frawley had no need to guess, nor to risk. He had simply to become a wheel in the machinery of the law, to grind slowly, tirelessly, and inexorably. This idea suited admirably his temperament and his desires.

He arrived at Colon, took train for Panama across the laborious path where a thousand little men were scratching endlessly, and on the brink of the Pacific began his search. No one had heard of Greenfield.

At the end of a week's waiting he boarded a steamer and crawled down the western coast of South America, investigating every port, braving the yellow fever at Guayaquil, Ecuador, and facing a riot at Callao, Peru, before he found at Lima the trail of the fugitive. Greenfield had passed the day there and left for Chile. Dragging each intermediate port with the same caution, Frawley followed the trail to Valparaiso. Greenfield had stayed a week and again departed.

Frawley at once took steamer for the Argentine, passed down the tongue of South America, through the Straits of Magellan, and arrived at length in the harbor of Buenos Ayres.

An hour later, as he took his place at the table in the Criterion Gardens, a hand fell on his shoulder and some one at his back said:

"Well, Bub!"

He turned. A thin man of medium height, with blue eyes and yellow complexion, was laughing in expectation of his discomfiture. Frawley laid down the menu carefully, raised his head, and answered quietly:

"Why, how d'ye do, Bucky?"

III

"We shake, of course," said Greenfield, holding out his hand.

"Why not? Sit down."

The fugitive slid into a chair and hung his arms over the back, asking immediately:

"What took you so long? You're after me, of course?"

"Am I?" Frawley answered, looking at him steadily. Greenfield, with a twitch of his shoulders, returned to his question:

"What took you so long? Didn't you guess I'd come direct?"

"I'm not guessing," said Frawley.

"What do you say to dining on me?" said Greenfield with a malicious smile. "I owe you that. I clipped your vacation pretty short. Besides--guess you know it yourself--you can't touch me here. Why not talk things over frankly? Say, Bub, shall it be on me?"

"I'm willing."

A waiter sidled up and took the order that Greenfield gave without hesitation.

"You see, even the dinner was ready for you," he said with a wink; "see how you like it." With a gesture of impatience he pushed aside the menu, squared his arms on the table, and looked suddenly at his pursuer with the deviltry of a schoolboy glistening in his eyes. "Well, Bub, I went into your all-fired Canady!"

"So you did--why?"

"Well," said Greenfield, drawing lines with his knife-point on the nap, "one reason was I wanted to see if Her Majesty's shop has such an all-fired long arm--"

"And the other reason was I warned you to keep over the line."

"Why, Bub, you _are_ a bright boy!"

"It ain't me, Bucky," Frawley answered, with a shake of his head; "it's the all-fired government that's after you."

"Good--first rate--then we'll have a little excitement!"

"You'll have plenty of that, Bucky!"

"Maybe, Bub, maybe. Well, I made a neat job of it, didn't I?"

"You did," admitted Frawley with an appreciative nod. "But you were wrong--you were wrong--you should have kept off. The Canadian Government ain't like your bloomin' democracy. It don't forgive--it don't forget. Tack that up, Bucky. It's a principle we've got at stake with you!"

"Don't I know it?" cried Greenfield, striking the table. "What else do you think I did it for?"

Frawley gazed at him, then said slowly: "I told them it was a personal matter."

"Sure it was! Do you think I could keep out after you served notice on me? D---- your English pride and your English justice! I'm a good enough Yank to see if your dinky police is such an all-fired cute little bunch of wonder-workers as you say! Bub--you think you're going to get Mr. Greenfield--don't you?"

"I'm not thinking, Bucky--"

"Eh?"

"I'm simply sticking to you."

"Sticking to me!" cried Greenfield with a roar of disgust. "Why, you unimaginative, lumbering, beef-eating Canuck, you can't get me that way! Why in tarnation didn't you strike plump for here--instead of rubbin' yourself down the whole coast of South Ameriky?"

"Bucky, you don't understand the situation properly," objected Frawley, without varying the level tone of his voice. "Supposing it had been a bloomin' corporation had sent me--? that's what I'd have done. But it's the government this time--Her Majesty's government! Time ain't no consideration. I'd have raked down the whole continent if I'd had to--though I knew where you were."

"Well, and now what? You can't touch me, Bub," he added earnestly. "I like straight talk, man to man. Now, what's your game?"

"Business."

"All right then," said Greenfield, with a frown, "but you can't touch me--now. There's an extradition treaty coming, but then there'd have to be a retroactive clause to do you any good." He paused, studying the expression on the Inspector's face. "There's enough of the likes of me here to see that don't occur. Say, Bub?"

"Well?"

"You deal a square pack, don't you?"

"That's my reputation, Bucky."

"Give me your word you'll play me square."

Inspector Frawley, leaning forward, helped himself busily. Greenfield, with pursed lips, studied every movement.

"No kidnapping tricks?"

Without lifting his eyes Frawley sharpened his knife vigorously against his fork and fell to eating.

"Well, Bub?"

"What?"

"No fancy kidnapping?"

"I'm promising nothing, Bucky."

There was a blank moment while Greenfield considered. Suddenly he shot out his hand, saying with a nod: "You're a white man, Bub, and I never heard a word against that." He filled a glass and shoved it toward Frawley. "We might as well clink on it. For I rather opinionate before we get through this little business--there'll be something worth talking about."

"Here's to you then, Bucky," said Frawley, nodding.

"Remember what I tell you," said Greenfield, looking over his glass, "there's going to be something to live for."

"I say, Bucky," said Frawley with a lazy interest, "would they serve you five-o'clock tea here, I wonder?"

Greenfield, drawing back, laughed a superior laugh.

"Bub, I'm sorry for you--'pon my word I am."

"How so, Bucky?"

"Why, you plodding little English lamb, you don't have the slightest suspicion what you're gettin' into!"

"What am I getting into, Bucky?"

Greenfield threw back his head with a chuckle.

"If you get me, it'll be the last job you ever pull off."

"Maybe, maybe."

"Since things are aboveboard--listen here," said Greenfield with sudden seriousness. "Bub, you'll not get me alive. Nothing personal, you understand, but it'll have to be your life or mine. If it comes to the pinch, look out for yourself--"

"Oh, yes," said Frawley, with a matter-of-fact nod, "I understand."

"I ain't tried to bribe you," said Greenfield, rising. "Thank me for that--though another man might have been sent up for life."

"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 dinkies 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 hell. 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 passed 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 passage 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 masses 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 attitude.

"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 massacre 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 passing 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 passage on a sealer bound for Auckland. There he had taken the steamer by the Straits of Magellan back to Buenos Ayres.