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

did you get it?" he repeated. "Are you ashamed to say?"

"Ashamed? Father gave it to me!"

"Your father!" Avery started; but if anything had caused him apprehension, it instantly disappeared. "Then didn't he tell you who this man Eaton is?"

His tone terrified her, made her confused; she snatched for the picture but he held it from her. "Didn't he tell you what this picture is?"

"What?" she repeated.

"What did he say to you?"

"He got the picture and had me see it; he asked me if it was—Mr. Eaton. I told him yes."

"And then didn't he tell you who Eaton was?" Avery iterated.

"What do you mean, Don?"

He put the picture down on the table beside him and, as she rushed for it, he seized both her hands and held her before him. "Harry, dear!" he said to her. "Harry, dear—"

"Don't call me that! Don't speak to me that way!"

"Why not?"

"I don't want you to."

"Why not?"

She struggled to free herself from him.

"I know, of course," he said. "It's because of him." He jerked his head toward the picture on the table; the manner made her furious.

"Let me go, Don!"

"I'm sorry, dear." He drew her to him, held her only closer.

"Don; Father wants to see you! He wanted to know when he came in; he will let you know when you can go to him."

"When did he tell you that?"

"Just now."

"When he gave you the picture?"

"Yes."

Avery had almost let her go; now he held her hard again. "Then he wanted me to tell you about this Eaton."

"Why should he have you tell me about—Mr. Eaton?"

"You know!" he said to her.

She shrank and turned her head away and shut her eyes not to see him. And he was the man whom, until some strange moment a few days ago, she had supposed she was some time to marry. Amazement burned through her now at the thought; because this man had been well looking, fairly interesting and amusing and got on well both with her father and herself and because he cared for her, she had supposed she could marry him. His assertion of his right to intimacy with her revolted her, and his confidence that he had ability, by something he might reveal, to take her from Eaton and bring her back within reach of himself.

Or wasn't it merely that? She twisted in his arms until she could see his face and stared at him. His look and manner were full of purpose; he was using terms of endearment toward her more freely than he ever had dared to use them before; and it was not because of love for her, it was for some purpose or through some necessity of his own that he was asserting himself like this.

So she ceased to struggle against him, only drawing away from him as far as she could and staring at him, prepared, before she asked her question, to deny and reject his answer, no matter what it was.

"What have you to say about him, Donald?"

"Harry, you haven't come to really care for him; it was just madness, dear, only a fancy, wasn't it?"

"What have you to say about him?"

"You must never think of him again, dear; you must forget him forever!"

"Why?"

"Harry—"

"Donald, I am not a child. If you have something to say which you consider hard for me to hear, tell it to me at once."

"Very well. Perhaps that is best. Dear, either this man whom you have known as Eaton will never be found or, if he is found, he cannot be let to live. You understand?"

"Why? For the shooting of Cousin Wallace? He never did that! I don't believe that; I don't think Father believes that; you'll never make any jury believe that. So if that's all you have to tell me, let me go!"

She struggled again but Avery held her. "I was not talking about that; that's not necessary—to bring that against him."

"Necessary?"

"No; nor is it necessary, if he is caught, even to bring him before a jury. That's been done already, you see."

"Done already?"

Avery nodded again toward the photograph on the table. "Yes, Harry, have you never seen a picture with the numbers printed in below like that? Can't you guess yet where your father must have sent for that picture? Don't you know what those numbers mean?"

"What do they mean?"

"They are the figures of his number in what is called 'The Rogue's Gallery'; now have you heard of it?"

"Go on."

"And they mean he has committed a crime and been tried and convicted of it; they mean in this case that he has committed a murder!"

"A murder!"

"For which he was convicted and sentenced."

"Sentenced!"

"Yes; and is alive now only because before the sentence could be carried out, he escaped. That man, Philip Eaton, is Hugh—"

"Hugh!"

"Hugh Overton, Harry!"

"Hugh Overton!"

"Yes; I found it out to-day. The police have just learned it, too. I was coming to tell your father. He's Hugh Overton, the murderer of Matthew Latron!"

Harriet fought herself free. Denial, revolt stormed in her. "It isn't so!" she cried. "He is not that man! Hugh—his name is Hugh; but he is not Hugh Overton. Mr. Warden said Hugh—this Hugh had been greatly wronged—terribly wronged. Mr. Warden tried to help Hugh even at the risk of his own life. He would not—nobody would have tried to help Hugh Overton!"

"Mr. Warden probably had been deceived."

"No; no!"

"Yes, Harry; for this man is certainly Hugh Overton."

"It isn't so! I know it isn't so!"

"You mean he told you he was—some one else, Harry?"

"No; I mean—" She faced him defiantly. "Father let me keep the photograph! I asked him, and he said, 'Do whatever you wish with it.' He knew I meant to keep it! He knows who Hugh is, so he would not have said that, if—if—"

She heard a sound behind her and turned. Her father had come into the room. And as she saw his manner and his face she knew that what Avery had just told her was the truth. She shrank away from them. Her hands went to her face and hid it.

So this was that unknown thing which had stood between herself and Hugh—that something which she had seen a hundred times check the speech upon his lips and chill his manner toward her! Hadn't Hugh himself told her—or almost told her it was something of that sort? He had said to her on the train, when she urged him to defend himself against the charge of having attacked her father, "If I told them who I am, that would make them only more certain their charge is true; it would condemn me without a hearing!" And his being Hugh Overton explained everything.

She knew now why it was that her father, on hearing Hugh's voice, had become curious about him, had tried to place the voice in his recollection—the voice of a prisoner on trial for his life, heard only for an instant but fixed upon his mind by the circumstances attending it, though those circumstances afterward had been forgotten. She knew why she, when she had gazed at the picture a few minutes before, had been disturbed and frightened at feeling it to be a kind of picture unfamiliar to her and threatening her with something unknown and terrible. She knew the reason now for a score of things Hugh had said to her, for the way he had looked many times when she had spoken to him. It explained all that! It seemed to her, in the moment, to explain everything—except one thing. It did not explain Hugh himself; the kind of man he was, the kind of man she knew him to be—the man she loved—he could not be a murderer!

Her hands dropped from her face; she threw her head back proudly and triumphantly, as she faced now both Avery and her father.

"He, the murderer of Mr. Latron!" she cried quietly. "It isn't so!"

The blind man was very pale; he was fully dressed. A servant had supported him and helped him down the stairs and still stood beside him sustaining him. But the will which had conquered his disability of blindness was holding him firmly now against the disability of his hurts; he seemed composed and steady. She saw compassion for her in his look; and compassion—under the present circumstances—terrified her. Stronger, far more in control of him than his compassion for her, she saw purpose. She recognized that her father had come to a decision upon which he now was going to act; she knew that nothing she or any one else could say would alter that decision and that he would employ his every power in acting upon it.

The blind man seemed to check himself an instant in the carrying out of his purpose; he turned his sightless eyes toward her. There was emotion in his look; but, except that this emotion was in part pity for her, she could not tell exactly what his look expressed.

"Will you wait for me outside, Harriet?" he said to her. "I shall not be long."

She hesitated; then she felt suddenly the futility of opposing him and she passed him and went out into the hall. The servant followed her, closing the door behind him. She stood just outside the door listening. She heard her father—she could catch the tone; she could not make out the words—asking a question; she heard the sound of Avery's response. She started back nearer the door and put her hand on it to open it; inside they were still talking. She caught Avery's tone more clearly now, and it suddenly terrified her. She drew back from the door and shrank away. There had been no opposition to Avery in her father's tone; she was certain now that he was only discussing with Avery what they were to do.

She had waited nearly half an hour, but the library door had not been opened again. The closeness of the hall seemed choking her; she went to the front door and threw it open. The evening was clear and cool; but it was not from the chill of the air that she shivered as she gazed out at the woods through which she had driven with Hugh the night before. There the hunt for him had been going on all day; there she pictured him now, in darkness, in suffering, alone, hurt, hunted and with all the world but her against him!

She ran down the steps and stood on the lawn. The vague noises of the house now no longer were audible. She stood in the silence of the evening strained and fearfully listening. At first there seemed to be no sound outdoors other than the gentle rush of the waves on the beach at the foot of the bluff behind her; then, in the opposite direction, she defined the undertone of some faraway confusion. Sometimes it seemed to be shouting, next only a murmur of movement and noise. She ran up the road a hundred yards in its direction and halted again. The noise was nearer and clearer—a confusion of motor explosions and voices; and now one sound clattered louder and louder and leaped nearer rapidly and rose above the rest, the roar of a powerful motor car racing with "cut-out" open. The rising racket of it terrified Harriet with its recklessness and triumph. Yes; that was it; triumph! The far-off tumult was the noise of shouts and cries of triumph; the racing car, blaring its way through the night, was the bearer of news of success of the search.

Harriet went colder as she knew this; then she ran up the road to meet the car coming. She saw the glare of its headlights through the trees past a bend in the road; she ran on and the beams of the car's headlight straightened and glared down the road directly upon her. The car leaped at her; she ran on toward it, arms in the air. The clatter of the car became deafening and the machine was nearly upon her when