Abington walked forward a few steps, stooped and picked up his cigarette case from the hot sand of the trail.
“Spencer founded his whole philosophy on the premise that there is a soul of goodness even in things evil,” he observed with the little hidden smile tucked into the corners of his black-bearded lips. “Your man has made off with your car, but he very thoughtfully returned my cigarette case—not altogether empty, either. Not knowing I have a full carton in the car, he has left us a cigarette apiece; which proves the soul of goodness within the evil. Will you have a smoke, sheriff?”
“Might as well, I guess,” Park grumbled, his eyes on the departing car. “This is a hell of a note! Doctor Abington, what we’ve got to do is make it in to Mina and get word out to the different towns before Bill can make Tonopah or Goldfield.
“Thunder! Who’d ever think he’d try to pull off a stunt like that? I was going to take the irons off his legs, but I kinda had a hunch not to. Never dreamed he’d pull out with the car while his legs was shackled; did you?”
“I’m afraid my mind was quite taken up with my own problem.” Abington confessed in a slightly apologetic tone. “I’m not accustomed to chasing live men, you know. It’s the dead ones I’m interested in, and the longer they’ve been dead the better.
“Nevertheless, sheriff, I realize your predicament. If there’s a long-distance telephone in Mina you can intercept the fellow at Tonopah, I should think.” He was thoughtfully turning the cigarette case over in his fingers as if his habit was to admire its glossy brown leather and the silver filigree. Now he slipped it into his pocket and turned to retrace his steps.
“I suppose we ought to get the old boat headed down the trail, sheriff. Your prisoner went off with your canteen, you know, so we’ll have to pet my motor along as best we can. But she’ll roll down the cañon in neutral, and then we’ll drive it as far as we can—which may not be far.
“At the turnout, down the road here, I’ll get the car headed in the other direction, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we beat your man in, after all. Will he have gas enough to take him to Tonopah?”
“Lord, yes! I filled the tank plumb full, and it’s one of them old thirty-gallon tanks. But somebody’ll maybe run across him trying to fill the radiator or something, and see the leg irons and take him in. Tires ain’t none too good—maybe he’ll have tire trouble. I sure hope so,” he added unnecessarily.
Abington, leaning to push at the side of the car while he kept one hand on the steering wheel, did not answer. Park added his weight at the front fender, straining until his gloomy countenance went purple. The car rolled over the hump, and Abington hopped nimbly to the running board, watched his chance and straddled in behind the wheel.
Some time was lost in negotiating the turn. After that, coasting down the road with a dead engine cooled the cylinders considerably. By skillful management Abington was able to start the motor and use what power was needed to drive the car up over certain small knolls near the foot of the cañon.
At the edge of the long valley, a hill gave them momentum sufficient to carry them well down toward a white, leprous expanse, called Soda Lake, with a tiny settlement a few miles beyond. Here, in the chuck holes of the soda-incrusted lake bed, the car refused to go any farther without power, and power in that grilling heat required a full radiator.
Even so, the two made fair time walking, and at the settlement Abington was able to hire a man to haul water out to the car. Also, Park was successful in getting wires through to the sheriff’s office at Tonopah, and also at Goldfield, the only points he believed Bill Jonathan would attempt to reach.
“If you like, sheriff, we can follow up your man at once,” Abington suggested when Park came out of the telegraph office looking less worried. “I’m willing to postpone the pleasure of chastising Shorty and Pete, and drive you straight through to Tonopah. Water is the only thing I needed for the trip, and the man is waiting out here with a full supply, ready to drive us back to my car. At the most we will be only three hours behind the fugitive and, as you say, he can’t do much with leg irons on.
“He’ll need to have a remarkable run of luck if he reaches there ahead of us. For instance, your motor had been heating, and you had only half a canteen of water. As I remember the road, there’s a long, hard climb for several miles beyond that cañon. He’ll be compelled to fill up with water at that spring just over the summit; one stop, at least, where he will have enough awkward walking to hold him there twice as long as a man with his legs free. So—”
“Say, Doctor Abington, you sure can figure things out!” Park grinned while he bit the end off a forlorn-looking cigar he had just bought at the little store. “You ought to be a detective.”
“I am. I’ve been trying to detect the origin of the human race, for years now,” Abington smiled. “It’s the same kind of figuring brought down to modern conditions. If you’re ready, sheriff, we’ll get underway.”
So back they went, roaring up the long rough trail to the cañon and on to Tonopah. They did not meet a soul on the way, nor did they overtake Bill Jonathan and the roadster. Neither did they glimpse anywhere a sign of his turning aside from the main highway, though Park’s eyes watered from watching intently the trail.
Abington proved to be a scientifically reckless driver and a silent one withal. Within an incredibly short time he landed a grateful deputy at the sheriff’s office in Tonopah, bade him an unperturbed adieu, drove his car into a garage and established himself comfortably in the best hotel the town afforded—all with the brisk, purposeful air of one who is clearing away small matters so that he may take up the business which really engrosses his mind.
In his room at the hotel John Abington dragged the most comfortable chair directly under the two-globe chandelier, lighted a cigarette from the pasteboard box which he took from his pocket, and pulled out the leather cigarette case as if this was what he had been all along preparing to do.
“Got a tack from the upholstery, no doubt, for a stylus,” he mused. “Old car—binding probably loose on the door pocket—that’s where it gives first. H’m! That’s what he waited for. Knew he meant to escape, of course—saw it in his eyes. H’m! Let’s see, now.”
Abington blew a cloud of smoke and thoughtfully examined the case as he turned it over slowly in his hand, just as he had done when he picked it up in the cañon road.
As he studied it his lips moved in that silent musing speech which was his habit —the black beard offering perfect concealment for his soundless whisperings.
“H’m! Clever of him—hieroglyphics adapted to code work. Let’s see. The old Babylonian ‘chain of evil’—three links, meaning ‘not so bad.’ Following that, a man. Humph! That’s Bill himself, no doubt.
“Nest—h’m!—that’s Egyptian; the old Egyptian symbol denoting the number of days in a journey, but with the Babylonian and Manchurian moon month at the end. Probably meant a month’s journey, and didn’t know the sign for it. Bill, my lad, you show intelligence above the average layman, at least.
“Now, what’s all this? Water sign, mountains, stopping place— Bill descended to picture writing there, I see! That’s the mountain across from my camp where I took Bill in and fed him—gave him my best hiking boots, too, by Jove! My camp by the river— Bill, you are ingenious!
“Without a doubt you wish me to understand that within a month you will be at my old camp by the river—counting on more food and more boots, perhaps! H’m! I don’t just know about that.
“Don’t see how you are going to make it. Handicap too heavy. Doubt whether I myself could overcome the obstacles—leg irons, officers on the watch, posses on the trail, three hundred miles to go— Bill, old fellow, if you make it you’ll prove yourself a man worth helping! You won’t get half the distance—but if you do, you may have my next-best boots and welcome!”
Abington turned the case over, held it closer to the light, frowned and gave a faint whistle at what he saw. He had supposed that the message had been repeated here as a precaution against his failure to notice the barely discernible markings in the leather on the other side.
But as he peered sharply at the fine indentations his eyes brightened with interest. For although the river and the stopping-place symbols were repeated, and the string of tiny circles which signified the number of days’ journeying, the plural sign was there just below them. At the end of the journey, mountains—but they were indicated by the conventional, premodified Manchurian symbol and, close by, the sign of a mummy.
“What the deuce!” breathed Abington, pulling black eyebrows together. “He’s blundered there—maybe means he’ll leave my camp only in custody. No, by Jove! That can’t be it, either.”
For a long time he sat motionless except when he turned the cigarette case for a renewed scrutiny of the other side. The message that had seemed so simple presented an unexpected little twist of mystery.
Bill Jonathan, pursued by the chain of evil, meant to journey for perhaps a month and arrive at John Abington’s camp in the mountains that bordered the river. That much seemed fairly plain, and one would logically expect no further information at present.
But there was more to it, apparently. Bill had not sat in that roadster idly scratching hieroglyphics on the cigarette case of an archaeologist just to pass the time away. Meaning to escape in the car, uncertain too of the number of minutes at his disposal, he must have grudged every second of delay while he worked out his message.
Abington permitted his cigarette to go out while he brooded over those crude lines. His thoughts harked back to the time, four months before, when Bill Jonathan had come limping into camp, crippled with stone bruises from traveling the rough granite hills in thin-soled shoes worn to tattered leather. He had been hungry, too, by the manner in which he wolfed his first meal whenever he thought Abington was not looking his way.
He had not told his name, and Abington had taken the hint and asked no questions. Bill had called himself a prospector, said he had an outfit back in the hills and had come down to Abington’s camp to see if he could rustle a pair of boots and a little tobacco. A likable fellow, Abington had found him; one of those rare individuals who can display an intelligent interest in the other fellow’s subject.
Abington at that time had been searching out and recording with a camera all the ancient rock carvings along the river. While Bill’s feet were healing he had wanted to know all about the various symbols and their meanings. He had told Abington of two or three cañons where writings could be found, and he had discussed with Abington the possibility of finding petrified human remains—
“By Jove!” Abington ejaculated, straightening suddenly in his chair. “I wonder if that is not what he means! That we’ll both journey to a spot in the mountains where I can find my fossilized man!”
The idea once implanted in his mind, Abington could not seem to get rid of it. Without a doubt, that was the meaning Bill had meant to convey; that he had found the fossil man which would mean more to Abington than a gold mine—for such is the peculiar point of view held by scientists of a certain school.
“Told him that mummy symbol indicated a burial—remember we discussed it. He recognized the sign from having seen one on a rock. I told him it undoubtedly meant that some one had been buried there. H’m! Nothing else he could mean. Wasn’t sitting in that car drawing marks for fun. Couldn’t write a message. Afraid Park might pick up the case, no doubt. Too bad—handicapped too heavily. Never will make it.”
Nevertheless Abington loitered for four days in Tonopah, though he had no business to hold him there. He heard nothing of an escaped convict being captured in that part of the country, so finally went his way.
He had meant to hire more men and carry his explorations over into Utah, but the sporting instinct for once prevailed over scientific zeal. He still believed that Bill would never make it—that the “chain of evil” was too strong. But being an archaeologist, he had learned the sublime lesson of a patient, plodding persistence that simply ignores failure. Abington returned alone to a field already pretty thoroughly covered, and rëestablished his old camp by the river. There he sat himself down to wait, with a brooding patience not unlike the eternal hills that hemmed him in.
