nd into the fringe
of a nispero forest, where they came upon a hut with a roof of
corrugated iron and walls of wattled bamboo.

Blake, with his revolver in his hand and his guide held before him as a
human shield, cautiously approached the door of this hut, for he feared
treachery. Then, with equal caution, he peered through the narrow
doorway. He stood there for several moments, without moving.

Then he slipped his revolver back into his pocket and stepped into the
hut. For there, in one corner of it, lay Binhart. He lay on a bed
made of bull-hide stretched across a rough-timbered frame. Yet what
Blake looked down on seemed more a shriveled mummy of Binhart than the
man himself. A vague trouble took possession of the detective as he
blinked calmly down at the glazed and sunken eyes, the gaunt neck, the
childishly helpless body. He stood there, waiting until the man on the
sagging bull-skin saw him.

"Hello, Jim!" said the sick man, in little more than a whisper.

"Hello, Connie!" was the other's answer. He picked up a palmetto frond
and fought away the flies. The uncleanness of the place turned his
stomach.

"What's up, Connie?" he asked, sitting calmly down beside the narrow
bed.

The sick man moved a hand, weakly, as though it were the yellow flapper
of some wounded amphibian.

"The jig's up!" he said. The faint mockery of a smile wavered across
the painfully gaunt face. It reminded the other man of heat-lightning
on a dark skyline. "You got me, Jim. But it won't do much good. I 'm
going to cash in."

"What makes you say that?" argued Blake, studying the lean figure.
There was a look of mild regret on his own sodden and haggard face.
"What's wrong with you, anyway?"

The man on the bed did not answer for some time. When he spoke, he
spoke without looking at the other man.

"They said it was black-water fever. Then they said it was
yellow-jack. But I know it's not. I think it's typhoid, or swamp
fever. It's worse than malaria. I dam' near burn up every night. I
get out of my head. I 've done that three nights. That's why the
niggers won't come near me now!"

Blake leaned forward and fought away the flies again.

"Then it's a good thing I got up with you."

The sick man rolled his eyes in their sockets, so as to bring his enemy
into his line of vision.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I 'm not going to let you die," was Blake's answer.

"You can't help it, Jim! The jig 's up!"