The Blind Man's Eyes by William MacHarg (best book clubs TXT) 📖

windows. It reassured him to find that he looked entirely normal; he had been afraid that during the questioning he might have turned pale, and his paleness—taken in connection with his inability to answer the questions—might have seriously directed the suspicions of the conductors toward him. The others in the car, who might have overheard his refusal to reply to the questions, would be regarding him only curiously, since they did not know the real reasons for the examination. But the conductors—what did they think?

Already, Eaton reflected, before the finding of the senseless form of Basil Santoine, there had occurred the disagreeable incident of the telegram to attract unfavorable attention to him. On the other hand, might not the questioning of him have been purely formal? Connery certainly had treated him, at the time of the discovery of Santoine, as one not of the class to be suspected of being the assailant of Santoine. Avery, to be sure, had been uglier, more excited and hostile; but Harriet Santoine again had treated him trustfully and frankly as one with whom thought of connection with the attack upon her father was impossible. Eaton told himself that there should be no danger to himself from this inquiry, directed against no one, but including comprehensively every one on the train.

As Eaton pretended to read, he could hear behind him the low voices of the conductors, which grew fainter and fainter as they moved further away, section by section, down the car. Finally, when the conductors had left the car, he put his magazine away and went into the men's compartment to smoke and calm his nerves. His return to America had passed the bounds of recklessness; and what a situation he would now be in if his actions brought even serious suspicions against him! He finished his first cigar and was debating whether to light another, when he heard voices outside the car, and opening the window and looking out, he saw Connery and the brakeman struggling through the snow and making, apparently, some search. They had come from the front of the train and had passed under his window only an instant before, scrutinizing the snowbank beside the car carefully and looking under the car—the brakeman even had crawled under it; now they went on. Eaton closed the window and lighted his second cigar. Presently Connery passed the door of the compartment carrying something loosely wrapped in a newspaper in his hands. Eaton finished his cigar and went back to his seat in the car.

As he glanced at the seat where he had left the magazine and his locked traveling-bag, he saw that the bag was no longer there. It stood now between the two seats on the floor, and picking it up and looking at it, he found it unfastened and with marks about the lock which told plainly that it had been forced.

His quick glance around at the other passengers, which showed him that his discovery of this had not been noticed, showed also that they had not seen the bag opened. They would have been watching him if they had; clearly the bag had been carried out of the car during his absence, and later had been brought back. He set it on the floor between his knees and checked over its contents. Nothing had been taken, so far as he could tell; for the bag had contained only clothing, the Chinese dictionary and the box of cigars, and these all apparently were still there. He had laid out the things on the seat across from him while checking them up, and now he began to put them back in the bag. Suddenly he noticed that one of his socks was missing; what had been eleven pairs was now only ten pairs and one odd sock.

The disappearance of a single sock was so strange, so bizarre, so perplexing that—unless it was accidental—he could not account for it at all. No one opens a man's bag and steals one sock, and he was quite sure there had been eleven complete pairs there earlier in the day. Certainly then, it had been accidental: the bag had been opened, its contents taken out and examined, and in putting them back, one sock had been dropped unnoticed. The absence of the sock, then, meant no more than that the contents of the bag had been thoroughly investigated. By whom? By the man against whom the telegram directed to Lawrence Hillward had warned Eaton?

Ever since his receipt of the telegram, Eaton—as he passed through the train in going to and from the diner or for other reasons—had been trying covertly to determine which, if any one, among the passengers was the "one" who, the telegram had warned him, was "following" him. For at first he had interpreted it to mean that one of "them" whom he had to fear must be on the train. Later he had felt certain that this could not be the case, for otherwise any one of "them" who knew him would have spoken by this time. He had watched particularly for a time the man who had claimed the telegram and given the name of Hillward; but the only conclusion he had been able to reach was that the man's name might be Hillward, and that coincidence—strange as such a thing seemed—might have put aboard the train a person by this name. Now his suspicions that one of "them" must be aboard the train returned.

The bag certainly had not been carried out the forward door of the car, or he would have seen it from the compartment at that end of the car where he had sat smoking. As he tried to recall who had passed the door of the compartment, he remembered no one except trainmen. The bag, therefore, had been carried out the rear door, and the man who had opened it, if a passenger, must still be in the rear part of the train.

Eaton, refilling his cigar-case to give his action a look of casualness, got up and went toward the rear of the train. A porter was still posted at the door of the Santoine car, who warned him to be quiet in passing through. The car, he found, was entirely empty; the door to the drawing-room where Santoine lay was closed. Two berths near the farther end of the car had been made up, no doubt for the surgeon and Harriet Santoine to rest there during the intervals of their watching; but the curtains of these berths were folded back, showing both of them to be empty, though one apparently had been occupied. Was Harriet Santoine with her father?

He went on into the observation-car. The card-room was filled with players, and he stood an instant at the door looking them over, but "Hillward" was not among them, and he saw no one whom he felt could possibly be one of "them." In the observation-room, the case was the same; a few men and women passengers here were reading or talking. Glancing on past them through the glass door at the end of the car, he saw Harriet Santoine standing alone on the observation platform. The girl did not see him; her back was toward the car. As he went out onto the platform and the sound of the closing door came to her, she turned to meet him.

She looked white and tired, and faint gray shadows underneath her eyes showed where dark circles were beginning to form.

"I am supposed to be resting," she explained quietly, accepting him as one who had the right to ask.

"Have you been watching all day?"

"With Dr. Sinclair, yes. Dr. Sinclair is going to take half the night watch, and I am going to take the other half. That is why I am supposed to be lying down now to get ready for it; but I could not sleep."

"How is your father?"

"Just the same; there may be no change, Dr. Sinclair says, for days. It seems all so sudden and so—terrible, Mr. Eaton. You can hardly appreciate how we feel about it without knowing Father. He was so good, so strong, so brave, so independent! And at the same time so—so dependent upon those around him, because of his blindness! He started out so handicapped, and he has accomplished so much, and—and it is so unjust that there should have been such an attack upon him."

Eaton, leaning against the rail beside her and glancing at her, saw that her lashes were wet, and his eyes dropped as they caught hers.

"They have been investigating the attack?"

"Yes; Donald—Mr. Avery, you know—and the conductor have been working on it all day."

"What have they learned?"

"Not much, I think; at least not much that they have told me. They have been questioning the porter."

"The porter?"

"Oh, I don't mean that they think the porter had anything to do with it; but the bell rang, you know."

"The bell?"

"The bell from Father's berth. I thought you knew. It rang some time before Father was found—some few minutes before; the porter did not hear it, but the pointer was turned down. They have tested it, and it cannot be jarred down or turned in any way except by means of the bell."

Eaton looked away from her, then back again rather strangely.

"I would not attach too much importance to the bell," he said.

"Father could not have rung it; Dr. Sinclair says that is impossible. So its being rung shows that some one was at the berth, some one must have seen Father lying there and—and rung the bell, but did not tell any one about Father. That could hardly have been an innocent person, Mr. Eaton."

"Or a guilty one, Miss Santoine, or he would not have rung the bell at all."

"I don't know—I don't understand all it might mean. I have tried not to think about anything but Father."

"Is that all they have learned?"

"No; they have found the weapon."

"The weapon with which your father was struck?"

"Yes; the man who did it seems not to have realized that the train was stopped—or at least that it would be stopped for so long—and he threw it off the train, thinking, I suppose, we should be miles away from there by morning. But the train didn't move, and the snow didn't cover it up, and it was found lying against the snowbank this afternoon. It corresponds, Dr. Sinclair says, with Father's injuries."

"What was it?"

"It seems to have been a bar of metal—of steel, they said, I think, Mr. Eaton—wrapped in a man's black sock."

"A sock!" Eaton's voice sounded strange to himself; he felt that the blood had left his cheeks, leaving him pale, and that the girl must notice it. "A man's sock!"

Then he saw that she had not noticed, for she had not been looking at him.

"It could be carried in that way through the sleepers, you know, without attracting attention," she observed.

Eaton had controlled himself. "A sock!" he said again, reflectively.

He felt suddenly a rough tap upon his shoulder, and turning, he saw that Donald Avery had come out upon the platform and was standing beside him; and behind Avery, he saw Conductor Connery. There was no one else on the platform.

"Will you tell me, Mr. Eaton—or whatever else your name may be—what it is that you have been asking Miss Santoine?" Avery demanded harshly.

Eaton felt his blood surge at the tone. Harriet Santoine had turned, and sensing the strangeness of Avery's manner, she whitened. "What is it, Don?" she cried. "What is the matter? Is something wrong with Father?"

"No, dear; no! Harry, what has this man been saying to you?"

"Mr. Eaton?" Her gaze went wonderingly from Avery to Eaton and back again. "Why—why, Don! He has only been asking me what we had found out about the attack on Father!"

"And you told him?" Avery swung toward Eaton. "You dog!" he mouthed. "Harriet, he asked you that because he needed to know—he had to know! He had to know how much we