I'll go
find out what's doing and let you know. You may take two drinks while
I am gone--no more."
At ten minutes to one o'clock Wade returned. "Brace up, old chap," he
said. "The ambulance got there just as I did. The doctor says he's
dead. You may have one more drink. You let me run this thing for
you. You've got to skip. I don't believe a chair is legally a deadly
weapon. You've got to make tracks, that's all there is to it."
Merriam complained of the cold querulously, and asked for another
drink. "Did you notice what big veins he had on the back of his
hands?" he said. "I never could stand--I never could--"
"Take one more," said Wade, "and then come on. I'll see you through."
Wade kept his promise so well that at eleven o'clock the next morning
Merriam, with a new suit case full of new clothes and hair-brushes,
stepped quietly on board a little 500-ton fruit steamer at an East
River pier. The vessel had brought the season's first cargo of limes
from Port Limon, and was homeward bound. Merriam had his bank balance
of $2,800 in his pocket in large bills, and brief instructions to pile
up as much water as he could between himself and New York. There was
no time for anything more.
From Port Limon Merriam worked down the coast by schooner and sloop to
Colon, thence across the isthmus to Panama, where he caught a tramp
bound for Callao and such intermediate ports as might tempt the
discursive skipper from his course.
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