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

paper nearer to the light of the window, running his finger down it till he found the note he wanted. "When I asked this afternoon where you came from in Asia, Mr. Eaton, you answered me something like this: You said you could give me no address abroad; you had been traveling most of the time; you could not be placed by inquiring at any city or hotel; you came to Seattle by the Asiatic steamer and took this train. That was your reply, was it not?"

"Yes," Eaton answered.

"The 'Asiatic steamer'—the Tamba Maru that was, Mr. Eaton."

Eaton looked up quickly and was about to speak; but from Connery his gaze shifted swiftly to the Englishman, and checking himself, he said nothing.

"Mr. Standish,"—Connery faced the Englishman,—"you came from Yokohama to Seattle on the Tamba Maru, didn't you?"

"I did, yes."

"Do you remember this Mr. Eaton among the passengers?"

"No."

"Do you know he was not among the passengers?"

"Yes, I do."

"How do you know?"

The Englishman took a folded paper from his pocket, opened it and handed it to the conductor. Connery, taking it, held it out to Eaton.

"Here, Mr. Eaton," he said, "is the printed passenger-list of the people aboard the Tamba Maru prepared after leaving Yokohama for distribution among the passengers. It's unquestionably correct. Will you point out your name on it?"

Eaton made no move to take the paper; and after holding it long enough to give him full opportunity, Connery handed it back to the Englishman.

"That's all, Mr. Standish," he said.

Eaton sat silent as the Englishman, after staring curiously around at them with his bulging, interested eyes, left the washroom.

"Now, Mr. Eaton," Connery said, as the sound of Standish's steps became inaudible, "either you were not on the Tamba Maru or you were on it under some other name than Eaton. Which was it?"

"I never said I was on the Tamba Maru," Eaton returned steadily. "I said I came from Asia by steamer. You yourself supplied the name Tamba Maru."

"In case of questioning like that, Mr. Eaton, it makes no difference whether you said it or I supplied it in your hearing. If you didn't correct me, it was because you wanted me to get a wrong impression about you. You can take notice that the only definite fact about you put down on this paper has proved to be incorrect. You weren't on the Tamba Maru, were you?"

"No, I was not."

"Why didn't you say so while Mr. Standish was here?"

"I didn't know how far you had taken him into your confidence in this matter."

"You did come from Asia, though, as your railroad ticket seemed to show?"

"Yes."

"From where?"

Eaton did not answer.

"From Yokohama?"

"The last port we stopped at before sailing for Seattle was Yokohama—yes."

Connery reflected. "You had been in Seattle, then, at least five days; for the last steamer you could have come on docked five days before the Tamba Maru."

"You assume that; I do not tell you so."

"I assume it because it must be so. You'd been in Seattle—or at least you had been in America—for not less than five days. In fact, Mr. Eaton, you had been on this side of the water for as many as eleven days, had you not?"

"Eleven days?" Eaton repeated.

"Yes; for it was just eleven days before this train left Seattle that you came to the house of Mr. Gabriel Warden and waited there for him till he was brought home dead!"

Eaton, sitting forward a little, looked up at the conductor; his glance caught Avery's an instant; he gazed then to Harriet Santoine. At the charge, she had started; but Avery had not. The identification, therefore, was Connery's, or had been agreed upon by Connery and Avery between them; suggestion of it had not come from the Santoines. And Connery had made the charge without being certain of it; he was watching the effect, Eaton now realized, to see if what he had accused was correct.

"What do you mean by that?" Eaton returned.

"What I said. You came to see Gabriel Warden in Seattle eleven days ago," Connery reasserted. "You are the man who waited in his house that night and whom every one has been looking for since!"

"Well?" inquired Eaton.

"Isn't that so?" Connery demanded. "Or do you want to deny that too and have it proved on you later?"

Again for a moment Eaton sat silent. "No," he decided, "I do not deny that."

"Then you are the man who was at Warden's the night he was murdered?"

"Yes," said Eaton, "I was there that evening. I was the one who came there by appointment and waited till after Mr. Warden was brought home dead."

"So you admit that?" Connery gloated; but he could not keep from Eaton a sense that, by Eaton's admission of the fact, Connery had been disappointed. Avery too plainly had expected Eaton to deny it; the identification of Eaton with the man who had waited at Warden's was less a triumph to Avery, now that it was confessed. Indeed, Eaton's heart leaped with quick gratitude as he now met Harriet Santoine's eyes and as he heard her turning it into a fact in his favor.

"All you have brought against Mr. Eaton is that he has been indefinite in his replies to your questions or has refused answers; isn't that all, Don?" she said. "So if Mr. Eaton is the one who had the appointment with Mr. Warden that night, does not that explain his silence?"

"Explain it?" Avery demanded. "How?"

"We have Mr. Warden's word that Mr. Eaton came that night because he was in trouble—he had been outrageously wronged, Don. He was in danger. Because of that danger, undoubtedly, he has not made himself known since. May not that be the only reason he has avoided answering your questions now?"

"No!" Avery jerked out shortly.

Eaton's heart, from pulsating fast with Harriet Santoine's attempt at his defense, now constricted with a sudden increase of his terror and anxiety.

"All right, Mr. Eaton!" Connery now returned to his charge. "You are that man. So besides whatever else that means, you'd been in Seattle eleven days and yet you were the last person to get aboard this train, which left a full hour after its usual starting time. Who were you waiting to see get on the train before you yourself took it?"

Eaton wet his lips. To what was Connery working up? The probability, now rapidly becoming certainty, that in addition to the recognition of him as the man who had waited at Warden's—which fact any one at any time might have charged—Connery knew something else which the conductor could not have been expected to know—this dismayed Eaton the more by its indefiniteness. And he saw, as his gaze shifted to Avery, that Avery knew this thing also. All that had gone before had been only preliminary, then; they had been leading up step by step to the circumstance which had finally condemned him in their eyes and was to condemn him in the eyes of Harriet Santoine.

She, he saw, had also sensed the feeling that something else more definite and conclusive was coming. She had paled after the flush in which she had spoken in Eaton's defense, and her hands in her lap were clenched so tightly that the knuckles showed only as spots of white.

Eaton controlled himself to keep his voice steady.

"What do you mean by that question?" he asked.

"I mean that—however innocent or guilty may be the chance of your being at Mr. Warden's the night he was killed—you'll have a hard time proving that you did not wait and watch and take this train because Basil Santoine had taken it; and that you were not following him. Do you deny it?"

Eaton was silent.

"You asked the Pullman conductor for a Section Three after hearing him assign Mr. Santoine to Section Three in this car. Do you deny that you did this so as not to be put in the same car with him?"

Eaton, in his uncertainty, still said nothing. Connery, bringing the paper in his hand nearer to the window again, glanced down once more at the statement Eaton had made. "I asked you who you knew in Chicago," he said, "and you answered 'No one.' That was your reply, was it not?"

"Yes."

"You still make the same statement?"

"Yes."

"You know no one in Chicago?"

"No one," Eaton repeated.

"And certainly no one there knows you well enough to follow your movements in relation to Mr. Santoine. That's a necessary assumption from the fact that you know no one at all there."

The conductor pulled a telegram from his pocket and handed it to Avery, who, evidently having already seen it, passed it on to Harriet Santoine. She took it, staring at it mechanically and vacantly; then suddenly she shivered, and the yellow paper which she had read slipped from her hand and fluttered to the floor. Connery stooped and picked it up and handed it toward Eaton.

"This is yours," he said.

Eaton had sensed already what the nature of the message must be, though as the conductor held it out to him he could read only his name at the top of the sheet and did not know yet what the actual wording was below. Acceptance of it must mean arrest, indictment for the crime against Basil Santoine; and that, whether or not he later was acquitted, must destroy him; but denial of the message now would be hopeless.

"It is yours, isn't it?" Connery urged.

"Yes; it's mine," Eaton admitted; and to make his acceptance definite, he took the paper from Connery. As he looked dully down at it, he read:

He is on your train under the name of Dorne.

The message was not signed.

Connery touched him on the shoulder. "Come with me, Mr. Eaton."

Eaton got up slowly and mechanically and followed the conductor. At the door he halted and looked back; Harriet Santoine was not looking; her face was covered with her hands; Eaton hesitated; then he went on. Connery threw open the door of the compartment next to the washroom and corresponding to the drawing-room at the other end of the car, but smaller.

"You'll do well enough in here." He looked over Eaton deliberately. "Judging from your manner, I suppose there's not much use expecting you to answer anything more about yourself—either in relation to the Warden murder or this?"

"No," said Eaton, "there is not."

"You prefer to make us find out anything more?"

Eaton made no answer.

"All right," Connery concluded. "But if you change your mind for the better, or if you want anything bad enough to send for me, ring for the porter and he'll get me."

He closed the door upon Eaton and locked it. As Eaton stood staring at the floor, he could hear through the metal partition of the washroom the nervous, almost hysterical weeping of an overstrained girl. The thing was done; in so far as the authorities on the train were concerned, it was known that he was the man who had had the appointment with Gabriel Warden and had disappeared; and in so far as the train officials could act, he was accused and confined for the attack upon Basil Santoine. But besides being overwhelmed with the horror of this position, the manner in which he had been accused had roused him to helpless anger, to rage at his accusers which still increased as he heard the sounds on the other side of the partition where Avery was now trying to silence Harriet Santoine and lead her away.

Why had Avery gone at his accusation of him in that way? Connery had had the telegram in his pocket from the start of the questioning in the washroom; Avery had seen and read it; they could have condemned him with whomever they wished, merely by showing it. Why, then, had Avery chosen to drag this girl—strained and upset already by the attack upon her father and with long hours of nursing ahead of her before expert help could be got—step by step through their accusation of him? Eaton saw that—whatever Harriet Santoine's casual interest in himself might be—this showed at least