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 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'—theTamba Maruthat 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 theTamba 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 theTamba Maruprepared 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 theTamba Maruor you were on it under some other name than Eaton. Which was it?"
"I never said I was on theTamba Maru," Eaton returned steadily. "I said I came from Asia by steamer. You yourself supplied the nameTamba 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 theTamba 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 theTamba 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 that Avery's relation to her was not so completely accepted by her and so definite as appeared on the surface, since Avery thought it necessary to convince her rather than merely tell her. And what sent the blood hot and throbbing into Eaton's temples was the cruelty of Avery's action.
So Avery was that kind of a man! The kind that, when an end is to be attained, is ready to ignore as though unimportant the human side of things. Concurrently with these thoughts—as always with all his thoughts—was running the memory of his own experience—that experience of which Eaton had not spoken and of which he had avoided speaking at any cost; and as he questioned now whether Avery might be one of those men who to gain an end they deem necessary are ready to disregard humanity,—to inflict suffering, wrong, injustice,—he realized that he was beginning to hate Avery for himself, for what he was, aside from the accusation he brought.
No sounds came to him now from the washroom—the girl must have controlled herself; footsteps passing the door of his compartment told him then that the two had gone out into the open car.
Half an hour later, Connery unlocked the door of Eaton's compartment, entered and closed the door behind him. He had brought in Eaton's traveling bag and put it down.
"You understand," said the conductor, "that when a train is stalled like this it is considered as if under way. So I have local police power, and I haven't exceeded my rights in putting you under arrest."
"I don't recall that I have questioned your right," Eaton answered shortly.
"I thought you might question it now. I'm going to search you. Are you going to make trouble or needn't I send for help?"
"I'll help you." Eaton took off his coat and vest and handed them over. The conductor put them on a seat while he felt over his prisoner for weapons or other concealed objects. Eaton handed him a pocket-knife, and the key to his traveling-bag—he had no other keys—from his trousers pockets. The conductor discovered nothing else. He found a pencil—but no papers or memorandum book—a plain gold watch, unengraved, and a bill-fold containing seven hundred dollars in United States bank-notes in the vest. Connery wrote out a receipt for the money and handed it to his prisoner. He returned the other articles. In the coat, the conductor found a handkerchief and in another pocket the torn scraps of the telegram delivered to Eaton in his berth.
"That's the one we had the fuss over in the dining car," Eaton volunteered, as the conductor began fitting the scraps together.
"You forgot to completely destroy it, eh?"
"What was the use?" Eaton took up the other's point of view. "You had a copy anyway."
"You might have wanted to get rid of it since the discovery of the murder."
"Murder?"
"I guess it's the same thing." The conductor dropped the scraps into an envelope and put it in his pocket. He examined the coat for a tailor's name.
"That coat was copied by a Chinaman in Amoy from the coat I had before. Before the new one was made, I took out the name of the other tailor so it wouldn't be copied too," Eaton remarked in explanation of the lack of any mark. Connery handed back the coat, went out and locked the door behind him.
Eaton opened his traveling bag and checked over the contents. He could tell that everything in it had been again carefully examined, but nothing more had been taken except the small Chinese-English dictionary; that was now gone. There had been nothing in the bag to betray any other identity than the one he had given. Eaton put the bag away and went back to his seat by the window.
The clear, bright day was drawing toward its dusk: there had been no movement or attempt to move the train all day. About six o'clock, as people began passing forward to the diner, Connery appeared again with a waiter from the dining car bearing a tray with dinner.
"This is 'on' the Department of Justice, Conductor?" Eaton tried to ask lightly.
"The check is a dollar twenty. If you want this, I'll charge it against your money which I have."
"Make it a dollar, forty-five then," Eaton directed. "Remember the waiter."
The black boy grinned and spread the table.
"How is Mr.—" Eaton began.
"Dorne?" Connery put in sharply.
"Thanks," said Eaton. "I understand. How is he?"
Connery did not answer, and with the waiter left him, locking him in again. At ten, Connery came once more with the porter of the car, and the conductor stood by silently while the porter made up the berth. Eaton went to bed with the car absolutely still, with only the wall of snow outside his window and no evidence of any one about but a subdued step occasionally passing his door. Though he had had nothing to do all the long, lonely hours of the evening but to think, Eaton lay awake thinking. He understood definitely now that whatever action was to be taken following his admission of his presence at Warden's, a charge of murder or of assault to kill—dependent upon whether Santoine died or seemed likely to recover—would be made against him at the first city they reached after the train had started again. He would be turned over to the police; inquiry would be made; then—he shrank from going further with these thoughts.
The night again was very cold; it was clear, with stars shining; toward midnight wind came; but little snow drifted now, for the cold had frozen a crust. In the morning, from somewhere over the snow-covered country, a man and a boy appeared at the top of the shining bank beside the train. They walked beside the sleepers to the dining car, where, apparently, they disposed of whatever they had brought in the bags they carried; they came back along the cars and then disappeared.
As he watched them, Eaton felt the desperate impulse to escape through the window and follow them; but he knew he surely would be seen; and even if he could get away unobserved, he would freeze; his overcoat and hat had been kept by Connery. The conductor came after a time and let in the porter, who unmade the berth and carried away the linen; and later, Connery came again with the waiter bringing breakfast. He had brought a magazine, which he dropped upon the seat beside Eaton; and he stood by until Eaton had breakfasted and the dishes were carried away.
"Want to talk yet?" he asked.
"No."
"Is there anything else you want?" he asked.
"I'd like to see Miss Santoine."
Connery turned away.
"You will tell Miss Santoine I have something I want to say to her?" Eaton asked more definitely.
Connery turned back. "If you've anything to say, tell it to me," he bade curtly.
"It will do no good to tell it to you. Will you tell her what I asked?"
"No," said Connery.
At noon, when they brought Eaton's luncheon, he repeated his request and was again refused; but less than an hour afterward Connery came to his door again, and behind Connery, Eaton saw Harriet Santoine and Avery.
Eaton jumped up, and as he saw the girl's pale face, the color left his own.
"Miss Santoine has asked to speak to you," Connery announced; and he admitted Harriet Santoine and Avery, and himself remaining outside in the aisle, closed the door upon them.
"How is your father?" Eaton asked the girl.
"He seems just the same; at least, I can't see any change, Mr. Eaton." She said something in a low tone to Avery, who nodded; then she sat down opposite Eaton, and Avery seated himself on the arm of the seat beside her.
"Can Dr. Sinclair see any difference?" Eaton asked.
"Dr. Sinclair will not commit himself except to say that so far as he can tell, the indications are favorable. He seems to think—" The girl choked; but when she went on, her blue eyes were very bright and her lips did not tremble. "Dr. Sinclair seems to think, Mr. Eaton, that Father was found just in time, and that whatever chance he has for recovery came from you. Mr. Avery and I had passed by the berth; other people had gone by. Sometimes Father had insomnia and wouldn't get to sleep till late in the morning; so I—and Mr. Avery too—would have left him undisturbed until noon. Dr. Sinclair says that if he had been left as long as that, he would have had no chance at all for life."
"He has a chance, then, now?"
"Yes; but we don't know how much. The change Dr. Sinclair is expecting may be either for better or worse. I—I wanted you to know, Mr. Eaton, that I recognize—that the chance Father may have came through you, and that I am trying to think of you as the one who gave him the chance."
The warm blood flooded Eaton's face, and he bowed his head. She, then, was not wholly hostile to him; she had not been completely convinced by Avery.
"What was it you wanted to tell Miss Santoine?" Avery challenged.
"What did Miss Santoine want to tell me?"
"What she has just told you."
Eaton thought for a moment. The realization that had come to him just now that something had kept the girl from condemning him as Avery and Connery had condemned him, and that somehow, for some reason, she must have been fighting within herself to-day and last night against the proof of his guilt, flushed him with gratitude and changed the attitude he had thought it was going to be necessary for him to take in this talk with her. As he looked up, her eyes met his; then she looked quickly away. Avery moved impatiently and repeated his question:
"What was it you wanted to say?"
"Are they looking for any one, Miss Santoine—any one besides me in connection with the attack upon your father?"
She glanced at Avery and did not answer. Avery's eyes narrowed. "We are quite satisfied with what we have been doing," he answered.
"Then they are not looking, Miss Santoine!"
Her lips pressed together, and again it was Avery who answered. "We have not said so."
"I must assume it, then," Eaton said to the girl without regarding Avery. "I have been watching as well as I could since they shut me up here, and I have listened, but I haven't found any evidence that anything more is being done. So I'm obliged to assume that nothing is being done. The few people who know about the attack on your father are so convinced and satisfied that I am the one who did it that they aren't looking any further. Among the people moving about on the train, the—the man who made the attack is being allowed to move about; he could even leave the train, if he could do so without being seen and was willing to take his chance in the snow; and when the train goes on, he certainly will leave it!"
Harriet Santoine turned questioningly to Avery again.
"I am not asking anything of you, you see," Eaton urged. "I'm not asking you to let me go or to give me any—any increase of liberty which might make it possible for me to escape. I—I'm only warning you that Mr. Avery and the conductor are making a mistake; and you don't have to have any faith in me or any belief that I'm telling the truth when I say that I didn't do it! I'm only warning you, Miss Santoine, that you mustn't let them stop looking! Why, if I had done it, I might very likely have had an accomplice whom they are going to let escape. It's only common sense, you see."
"That is what you wanted to say?" Avery asked.
"That is it," Eaton answered.
"We can go, then, Harriet."
But she made no move to go. Her eyes rested upon Eaton steadily; and while he had been appealing to her, a flush had come to her cheeks and faded away and come again and again with her impulses as he spoke.
"If you didn't do it, why don't you help us?" she cried.
"Help you?"
"Yes: tell us who you are and what you are doing? Why did you take the train because Father was on it, if you didn't mean any harm to him? Why don't you tell us where you are going or where you have been or what you have been doing? What did your appointment with Mr. Warden mean? And why, after he was killed, did you disappear until you followed Father on this train? Why can't you give the name of anybody you know or tell us of any one who knows about you?"
Eaton sank back against the seat away from her, and his eyes shifted to Avery standing ready to go, and then fell.
"I might ask you in return," Eaton said, "why you thought it worth while, Miss Santoine, to ask so much about myself when you first met me and before any of this had happened? You were not so much interested then in me personally as that; and it was not because you could have suspected I had been Mr. Warden's friend; for when the conductor charged that, it was a complete surprise to you."
"No; I did not suspect that."
"Then why were you curious about me?"
Before Avery could speak or even make a gesture, Harriet seemed to come to a decision. "My Father asked me to," she said.
"Your father? Asked you to do what?"
"To find out about you."
"Why?"
As she hesitated, Avery put his hand upon her shoulder as though warning her to be still; but she went on, after only an instant.
"I promised Mr. Avery and the conductor," she said, "that if I saw you I would listen to what you had to say but would not answer questions without their consent; but I seem already to have broken that promise. I have been wondering, since we have found out what we have about you, whether Father could possibly have suspected that you were Mr. Warden's friend; but I am quite sure that was not the original reason for his inquiring about you. My Father thought he recognized your voice, Mr. Eaton, when you were speaking to the conductor about your tickets. He thought he ought to know who you were. He knew that some time and somewhere he had been near you before, and had heard you speak; but he could not tell where or when. And neither Mr. Avery nor I could tell him who you were; so he asked us to find out. I do not know whether, after we had described you to Father, he may have connected you with Mr. Warden or not; but that could not have been in his mind at first."
Eaton had paled; Avery had seemed about to interrupt her, but watching Eaton, he suddenly had desisted.
"You and Mr. Avery?" Eaton repeated. "He sent you to find out about me?"
"Sent me—in this case—more than Mr. Avery; because he thought it would be easier for me to do it." Harriet had reddened under Eaton's gaze. "You understand, Mr. Eaton, it was—was entirely impersonal with me. My Father, being blind, is obliged to use the eyes of others—mine, for one; he has trained me to see for him ever since we used to take walks together when I was a little girl, and he has made me learn to tell him what I see in detail, in the way that he would see it himself; and for helping him to see other things on which I might be unable to report so definitely and clearly, he has Mr. Avery. He calls us his eyes, sometimes; and it was only—only because I had been commissioned to find out about you that I was obliged to show so much curiosity."
"I understand," said Eaton quietly. "Your report to your father, I suppose, convinced him that he had been mistaken in thinking he knew my voice."
"No—not that. He knew that he had heard it; for sounds have so much meaning to him that he never neglects or forgets them, and he carries in his mind the voices of hundreds of different people and almost never makes a mistake among them. It did make him surer that you were not any one with whose voice he ought to have been familiar, but only some one whom he had heard say something—a few words or sentences, maybe—under conditions which impressed your voice upon his mind. And he told Mr. Avery so, and that has only made Mr. Avery and the conductor more certain that you must be the—one. And since you will not tell—"
"To tell would only further confirm them—"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean they would be more certain it was I who—" Eaton, as he blundered with the words and checked himself, looked up apprehensively at Avery; but Avery, if he had thought that it was worth while to let this conversation go on in the expectation that Eaton might let slip something which could be used against himself, now had lost that expectation.
"Come, Harry," he said.
Harriet arose, and Eaton got up as she did and stood as she went toward the door.
"You said Mr. Avery and the conductor believe—" he began impulsively, in answer to the something within him which was urging him to know, to make certain, how far Harriet Santoine believed him to have been concerned in the attack upon her father. And suddenly he found that he did not need to ask. He knew; and with this sudden realization he all at once understood why she had not been convinced in spite of the conviction of the others—why, as, flushing and paling, she had just now talked with him, her manner had been a continual denial of the suspicion against him.
To Avery and to Connery the attack upon Santoine was made a vital and important thing by the prominence of Santoine and their own responsibility toward him, but after all there was nothing surprising in there having been an attack. Even to Harriet Santoine it could not be a matter of surprise; she knew—she must know—that the father whom she loved and thought of as the best of men, could not have accomplished all he had done without making enemies; but she could conceive of an attack upon him being made only by some one roused to insane and unreasoning hate against him or by some agent wicked and vile enough to kill for profit. She could not conceive of its having been done by a man whom, little as she had known him, she had liked, with whom she had chatted and laughed upon terms of equality. The accusation of the second telegram had overwhelmed her for a time, and had driven her from the defense of him which she had made after he had admitted his connection with Gabriel Warden; but now, Eaton felt, the impulse in his favor had returned. She must have talked over with her father many times the matter of the man whom Warden had determined to befriend; and plainly she had become so satisfied that he deserved consideration rather than suspicion that Connery's identification of Eaton now was to his advantage. Harriet Santoine could not yet answer the accusation of the second telegram against him, but—in reason or out of reason—her feelings refused acceptance of it.
It was her feelings that were controlling her now, as suddenly she faced him, flushed and with eyes suffused, waiting for the end of the sentence he could not finish. And as his gaze met hers, he realized that life—the life that held Harriet Santoine, however indefinite the interest might be that she had taken in him—was dearer to him than he had thought.
Avery had reached the door, holding it open for her to go out. Suddenly Eaton tore the handle from Avery's grasp, slammed the door shut upon him and braced his foot against it. He would be able to hold it thus for several moments before they could force it open.
"Miss Santoine," he pleaded, his voice hoarse with his emotion, "for God's sake, make them think what they are doing before they make a public accusation against me—before they charge me with this to others not on this train! I can't answer what you asked; I can't tell you now about myself; there is a reason—a fair and honest reason, and one which means life or death to me. It will not be merely accusation they make against me—it will be my sentence! I shall be sentenced before I am tried—condemned without a chance to defend myself! That is the reason I could not come forward after the murder of Mr. Warden. I could not have helped him—or aided in the pursuit of his enemies—if I had appeared; I merely would have been destroyed myself! The only thing I could hope to accomplish has been in following my present course—which, I swear to you, has had no connection with the attack upon your father. What Mr. Avery and Connery are planning to do to me, they cannot undo. They will merely complete the outrage and injustice already done me,—of which Mr. Warden spoke to his wife,—and they will not help your father. For God's sake, keep them from going further!"
Her color deepened, and for an instant, he thought he saw full belief in him growing in her eyes; but if she could not accept the charge against him, neither could she consciously deny it, and the hands she had been pressing together suddenly dropped.
"I—I'm afraid nothing I could say would have much effect on them, knowing as little about—about you as I do!"
They dashed the door open then—silenced and overwhelmed him; and they took her from the room and left him alone again. But there was something left with him which they could not take away; for in the moment he had stood alone with her and passionately pleading, something had passed between them—he could give no name to it, but he knew that Harriet Santoine never could think of him again without a stirring of her pulses which drew her toward him. And through the rest of the lonely day and through the sleepless night, he treasured this and thought of it again and again.
The following morning the relieving snowplows arrived from the east, and Eaton felt it was the beginning of the end for him. He watched from his window men struggling in the snow about the forward end of the train; then the train moved forward past the shoveled and trampled snow where rock and pieces of the snowplow were piled beside the track—stopped, waited; finally it went on again and began to take up its steady progress.
The attack upon Santoine having taken place in Montana, Eaton thought that he would be turned over to the police somewhere within that State, and he expected it would be done at the first stop; but when the train slowed at Simons, he saw the town was nothing more than a little hamlet beside a side-track. They surely could not deliver him to the village authorities here. The observation car and the Santoine car were uncoupled here and the train made up again with the Santoine car as the last car of the train and the observation car ahead of it. This, evidently, was to stop the passing of passengers through the Santoine car. Did it mean that the change in Santoine's condition which Dr. Sinclair had been expecting had taken place and was for the worse? Eaton would have liked to ask about this of Connery, whom he saw standing outside his window and keeping watch upon him during the switching of the cars; but he knew that the conductor would not answer him.
He rang, instead, for the porter and asked him for a railway folder, and when this had been brought, he opened it to the map of the railroad and checked off the names of the towns they would pass through. Nearly all the names set in the bold-face letters which denoted the cities and larger towns ahead of them were, he found, toward the eastern end of the State; the nearest—and the one, therefore, at which he thought he would be given up—was several hours away. At long intervals the train passed villages all but buried in the snow; the inhabitants of these, gathered at the stations, stared in on him as they looked in on any other passenger; and at each of these stops Connery stood outside his window guarding against possibility of his escape. Each time, too, that the train slowed, the porter unlocked the door of the compartment, opened it and stood waiting until the train had regained its speed; plainly they were taking no chances of his dropping from the window.
Early in the afternoon, as they approached the town whose name in bold-face had made him sure that it was the one where he would be given to the police, Eaton rang for the porter again.
"Will you get me paper and an envelope?" he asked.
The negro summoned the conductor.
"You want to write?" Connery asked.
"Yes."
"You understand that anything you write must be given to me unsealed."
"That's satisfactory to me. I don't believe that, even though it is unsealed, you'll take it upon yourself to read it."
The conductor looked puzzled, but sent the porter for some of the stationery the railroad furnished for passengers. The negro brought paper, and pen and ink, and set up the little table in front of Eaton; and when they had left him and had locked the door, Eaton wrote: