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

had found out, how near we were getting to him! Harry, this is the man that did it!"

Eaton's fists clenched; but suddenly, recollecting, he checked himself. Harriet, not yet comprehending, stood staring at the two; then Eaton saw the blood rush to her face and dye forehead and cheek and neck as she understood.

"Not here, Mr. Avery; not here!" Conductor Connery had stepped forward, glancing back into the car to assure himself the disturbance on the platform had not attracted the attention of the passengers in the observation-room. He put his hand on Eaton's arm. "Come with me, sir," he commanded.

Eaton thought anxiously for a moment. He looked to Harriet Santoine as though about to say something to her, but he did not speak; instead, he quietly followed the conductor. As they passed through the observation-car into the car ahead, he heard the footsteps of Harriet Santoine and Avery close behind them.

CHAPTER IX QUESTIONS

Connery pulled aside the curtain of the washroom at the end of the Santoine car—the end furthest from the drawing-room where Santoine lay.

"Step in here, sir," he directed. "Sit down, if you want. We're far enough from the drawing-room not to disturb Mr. Santoine."

Eaton, seating himself in the corner of the leather seat built against two walls of the room, and looking up, saw that Avery had come into the room with them. The girl followed. With her entrance into the room came to him—not any sound from her or anything which he could describe to himself as either audible or visual—but a strange sensation which exhausted his breath and stopped his pulse for a beat. To be accused—even to be suspected—of the crime against Santoine was to have attention brought to him which—with his unsatisfactory account of himself—threatened ugly complications. Yet, at this moment of realization, that did not fill his mind. Whether his long dwelling close to death had numbed him to his own danger, however much more immediate it had become, he could not know; probably he had prepared himself so thoroughly, had inured himself so to expect arrest and imminent destruction, that now his finding himself confronted with accusers in itself failed to stir new sensation; but till this day, he had never imagined or been able to prepare himself for accusation before one like Harriet Santoine; so, for a moment, thought solely of himself was a subcurrent. Of his conscious feelings, the terror that she would be brought to believe with the others that he had struck the blow against her father was the most poignant.

Harriet Santoine was not looking at him; but as she stood by the door, she was gazing intently at Avery; and she spoke first:

"I don't believe it, Don!"

Eaton felt the warm blood flooding his face and his heart throb with gratitude toward her.

"You don't believe it because you don't understand yet, dear," Avery declared. "We are going to make you believe it by proving to you it is true."

Avery pulled forward one of the leather chairs for her to seat herself and set another for himself facing Eaton. Eaton, gazing across steadily at Avery, was chilled and terrified as he now fully realized for the first time the element which Avery's presence added. What the relations were between Harriet Santoine and Avery he did not know, but clearly they were very close; and it was equally clear that Avery had noticed and disliked the growing friendship between her and Eaton. Eaton sensed now with a certainty that left no doubt in his own mind that as he himself had realized only a moment before that his strongest feeling was the desire to clear himself before Harriet Santoine, so Avery now was realizing that—since some one on the train had certainly made the attack on Santoine—he hoped he could prove before her that that person was Eaton.

"Why did you ring the bell in Mr. Santoine's berth?" Avery directed the attack upon him suddenly.

"To call help," Eaton answered.

Question and answer, Eaton realized, had made some effect upon Harriet Santoine, as he did not doubt Avery intended they should; yet he could not look toward her to learn exactly what this effect was but kept his eyes on Avery.

"You had known, then, that he needed help?"

"I knew it—saw it then, of course."

"When?"

"When I found him."

"'Found' him?"

"Yes."

"When was that?"

"When I went forward to look for the conductor to ask him about taking a walk on the roof of the cars."

"You found him then—that way, the way he was?"

"That way? Yes."

"How?"

"How?" Eaton iterated.

"Yes; how, Mr. Eaton, or Hillward, or whatever your name is? How did you find him? The curtains were open, perhaps; you saw him as you went by, eh?"

Eaton shook his head. "No; the curtains weren't open; they were closed."

"Then why did you look in?"

"I saw his hand in the aisle."

"Go on."

"When I came back it didn't look right to me; its position had not been changed at all, and it hadn't looked right to me before. So I stopped and touched it, and I found that it was cold."

"Then you looked into the berth?"

"Yes."

"And having looked in and seen Mr. Santoine injured and lying as he was, you did not call any one, you did not bring help—you merely leaned across him and pushed the bell and went on quickly out of the car before any one could see you?"

"Yes; but I waited on the platform of the next car to see that help did come; and the conductor passed me, and I knew that he and the porter must find Mr. Santoine as they did."

"Do you expect us to believe that very peculiar action of yours was the act of an innocent man?"

"If I had been guilty of the attack on Mr. Santoine, I'd not have stopped or looked into the berth at all."

"If you are innocent, you had, of course, some reason for acting as you did. Will you explain what it was?"

"No—I cannot explain."

With a look almost of triumph Avery turned to Harriet Santoine, and Eaton felt his flesh grow warm with gratitude again as he saw her meet Avery's look with no appearance of being convinced.

"Mr. Eaton spoke to me about that," she said quietly.

"You mean he told you he was the one who rang the bell?"

"No; he told me we must not attach too much importance to the ringing of the bell in inquiring into the attack on Father."

Avery smiled grimly. "He did, did he? Don't you see that that only shows more surely that he did not want the ringing of the bell investigated because it would lead us to himself? He did not happen to tell you, did he, that the kind and size of socks he wears and carries in his traveling-bag are very nearly the same as the black sock in which the bar was wrapped with which your father was struck?"

"It was you, then, who took the sock from my bag?" Eaton demanded.

"It was the conductor, and I can assure you, Mr. Eaton-Hillward, that we are preserving it very carefully along with the one which was found in the snow."

"But the socks were not exactly the same, were they?" Harriet Santoine asked.

Avery made a vexed gesture, and turned to Connery. "Tell her the rest of it," he directed.

Connery, who had remained standing back of the two chairs, moved slightly forward. His responsibility in connection with the crime that had been carried out on his train had weighed heavily on the conductor; he was worn and nervous.

"Where shall I begin?" he asked of Avery; he was looking not at the girl but at Eaton.

"At the beginning," Avery directed.

"Mr. Eaton, when you came to this train, the gateman at Seattle called my attention to you," Connery began. "I didn't attach enough importance, I see now, to what he said; I ought to have watched you closer and from the first. Old Sammy has recognized men with criminal records time and time again. He's got seven rewards out of it."

Eaton felt his pulses close with a shock. "He recognized me?" he asked quietly.

"No, he didn't; he couldn't place you," Connery granted. "He couldn't tell whether you were somebody that was 'wanted' or some one well known—some one famous, maybe; but I ought to have kept my eye on you because of that, from the very start. Now this morning you claim a telegram meant for another man—a man named Hillward, on this train, who seems to be all right—that is, by his answers and his account of himself he seems to be exactly what he claims to be."

"Did he read the telegram to you?" Eaton asked. "It was in code. If it was meant for him, he ought to be able to read it."

"No, he didn't. Will you?"

Eaton halted while he recalled the exact wording of the message. "No."

Connery also paused.

"Is this all you have against me?" Eaton asked.

"No; it's not. Mr. Avery's already told you the next thing, and you've admitted it. But we'd already been able by questioning the porter of this car and the ones in front and back of it to narrow down the time of the ringing of Mr. Santoine's bell not to quarter-hours but to minutes; and to find out that during those few minutes you were the only one who passed through the car. So there's no use of my going into that." Connery paused and looked to Avery and the girl. "You'll wait a minute, Mr. Avery; and you, Miss Santoine. I won't be long."

He left the washroom, and the sound of the closing of a door which came to Eaton a half-minute later told that he had gone out the front end of the car.

As the three sat waiting in the washroom, no one spoke. Eaton, looking past Avery, gazed out the window at the bank of snow. Eaton understood fully that the manner in which the evidence against him was being presented to him was not with any expectation that he could defend himself; Avery and Connery were obviously too certain of their conclusion for that; rather, as it was being given thus under Avery's direction, it was for the effect upon Harriet Santoine and to convince her fully. But Eaton had understood this from the first. It was for this reason he had not attempted to deny having rung Santoine's bell, realizing that if he denied it and it afterwards was proved, he would appear in a worse light than by his inability to account for or assign a reason for his act. And he had proved right in this; for the girl had not been convinced. So now he comprehended that something far more convincing and more important was to come; but what that could be, he could not guess.

As he glanced at her, he saw her sitting with hands clasped in her lap, pale, and merely waiting. Avery, as though impatient, had got up and gone to the door, where he could look out into the passage. From time to time people had passed through the car, but no one had stopped at the washroom door or looked in; the voices in the washroom had not been raised, and even if what was going on there could have attracted momentary attention, the instructions to pass quickly through the car would have prevented any one from stopping to gratify his curiosity. Eaton's heart-beat quickened as, listening, he heard the car door open and close again and footsteps, coming to them along the aisle, which he recognized as those of Conductor Connery and some one else with him.

Avery returned to his seat, as the conductor appeared in the door of the washroom followed by the Englishman from Eaton's car, Henry Standish. Connery carried the sheet on which he had written the questions he had asked Eaton, and Eaton's answers.

"What name were you using, Mr. Eaton, when you came from Asia to the United States?" the conductor demanded.

Eaton reflected. "My own," he said. "Philip D. Eaton."

Connery brought the