The man whose interest in the passenger in Section Three of the last sleeper was most definite and understandable and, therefore, most openly acute, was Conductor Connery. Connery had passed through the Pullmans several times during the morning—first in the murk of the dawn before the dimmed lamps in the cars had been extinguished; again later, when the passengers had been getting up; and a third time after all the passengers had left their berths except Dorne, and after nearly all the berths had been unmade and the bedding packed away behind the panels overhead. Each time he passed, Connery had seen the hand which hung out into the aisle from between the curtains; but the only definite thought that came to him was that Dorne was a sound sleeper.
Nearly all the passengers had now breakfasted. Connery, therefore, took a seat in the diner, breakfasted leisurely and after finishing, went forward to see what messages had been received as to the relieving snow-plows. Nothing definite yet had been learned; the snow ahead of them was fully as bad as this where they were stopped, and it would be many hours before help could get to them. Connery walked back through the train. Dorne by now must be up, and might wish to see the conductor. Unless Dorne stopped him, however, Connery did not intend to speak to Dorne. The conductor had learned in his many years of service that nothing is more displeasing to the sort of people for whom trains are held than officiousness.
As Connery entered the last sleeper, his gaze fell on the dial of pointers which, communicating with the pushbuttons in the different berths, tell the porter which section is calling him, and he saw that while all the other arrows were pointing upward, the arrow marked "3" was pointing down. Dorne was up, then—for this was the arrow denoting his berth—or at least was awake and had recently rung his bell.
Connery looked in upon the porter, who was cleaning up the washroom.
"Section Three's getting up?" he asked.
"No, Mistah Connery—not yet," the porter answered.
"What did he ring for?" Connery thought Dorne might have asked for him.
"He didn't ring. He ain't moved or stirred this morning."
"He must have rung." Connery looked to the dial, and the porter came out of the washroom and looked at it also.
"Fo' the lan's sake. I didn't hear no ring, Mistah Connery. It mus' have been when I was out on the platform."
"When was that?"
"Jus' now. There ain't been nobody but him in the car for fifteen minutes, and I done turn the pointers all up when the las' passenger went to the diner. It can't be longer than a few minutes, Mistah Connery."
"Answer it, then," Connery directed.
As the negro started to obey, Connery followed him into the open car. He could see over the negro's shoulder the hand sticking out into the aisle, and this time, at sight of it, Connery started violently. If Dorne had rung, he must have moved; a man who is awake does not let his hand hang out into the aisle. Yet the hand had not moved. Nothing was changed about it since Connery had seen it before. The long, sensitive fingers fell in precisely the same position as before, stiffly separated a little one from another; they had not changed their position at all.
"Wait!" Connery seized the porter by the arm. "I'll answer it myself."
He dismissed the negro and waited until he had gone. He looked about and assured himself that the car, except for himself and the man lying behind the curtains of Section Three, was empty. He slowed, as he approached the hand. He halted and stood a moment beside the berth, himself almost breathless as he listened for the sound of breathing within. He heard nothing, though he bent closer to the curtain. Yet he still hesitated, and retreating a little and walking briskly as though he were carelessly passing up the aisle, he brushed hard against the hand and looked back, exclaiming an apology for his carelessness.
The hand fell back heavily, inertly, and resumed its former position and hung as white and lifeless as before. No response to the apology came from behind the curtains; the man in the berth had not roused. Connery rushed back to the curtains and touched the hand with his fingers. It was cold! He seized the hand and felt it all over; then, gasping, he parted the curtains and looked into the berth. He stared; his breath whistled out; his shoulders jerked, and he drew back, instinctively pressing his two clenched hands against his chest and the pocket which held President Jarvis' order.
The man in the berth was lying on his right side facing the aisle; the left side of his face was thus exposed; and it had been crushed in by a violent blow from some heavy weapon which, too blunt to cut the skin and bring blood, had fractured the cheekbone and bludgeoned the temple. The proof of murderous violence was so plain that the conductor, as he saw the face in the light, recoiled with starting eyes, white with horror.
He looked up and down the aisle to assure himself that no one had entered the car during his examination; then he carefully drew the curtains together again, and hurried to the forward end of the car where he had left the porter.
"Lock the rear door of the car," he commanded. "Then come back here."
He gave the negro the keys, and himself waited to prevent any one from entering the car at his end. Looking through the glass of the door, he saw the young man Eaton standing in the vestibule of the car next ahead. Connery hesitated; then he opened the door and beckoned Eaton to him.
"Will you go forward, please," he requested, "and see if there isn't a doctor—"
"You mean the man with red hair in my car?" Eaton inquired.
"That's the one."
Eaton started off without asking any questions. The porter, having locked the rear door of the car, returned and gave Connery back the keys. Connery still waited, until Eaton returned with the red-haired man, "D. S." He let them in and locked the door behind them.
"You are a doctor?" Connery questioned the red-haired man.
"I am a surgeon; yes."
"That's what's wanted. Doctor—"
"My name is Sinclair. I am Douglas Sinclair, of Chicago."
Connery nodded. "I have heard of you." He turned then to Eaton. "Do you know where the gentleman is who belongs to Mr. Dorne's party?—Avery, I believe his name is."
"He is in the observation car," Eaton answered.
"Will you go and get him? The car-door is locked. The porter will let you in and out. Something serious has happened here—to Mr. Dorne. Get Mr. Avery, if you can, without alarming Mr. Dorne's daughter."
Eaton nodded understanding and followed the porter, who, taking the keys again from the conductor, let him out at the rear door of the car and reclosed the door behind him. Eaton went on into the observation car. As he passed the club compartment of this car, he sensed an atmosphere of disquiet which gave him first the feeling that some of these people must know already that there was something wrong farther forward; but this was explained when he heard some one say that the door of the car ahead was locked. Another asked Eaton how he had got through; he put the questioner off and went on into the observation-room. No suspicion of anything having occurred had as yet penetrated there.
"How long you've been!" Harriet Dorne remarked as he came near. "And how is it about the roof promenade?"
"Why, all right, I guess, Miss Dorne—after a little." Controlling himself to an appearance of casualness, he turned then to Avery: "By the way, can I see you a moment?"
Without alarming Harriet Dorne, he got Avery away and out of the car. A few passengers now were collected upon the platforms between this car and the next, who questioned and complained as Eaton, pushing by them with Avery, was admitted by the negro, who refused the others admittance.
"Is it something wrong with Mr. Dorne?" Donald Avery demanded as Eaton drew back to let Avery precede him into the open part of the car.
"So the conductor says."
Avery hurried forward toward the berth where Connery was standing beside the surgeon. Connery turned toward him.
"I sent for you, sir, because you are the companion of the man who had this berth."
Avery pushed past him, and leaped forward as he looked past the surgeon. "What has happened to Mr. Dorne?"
"You see him as we found him, sir." Connery stared down nervously beside him.
Avery leaned inside the curtains and recoiled. "He's dead!"
"The doctor hasn't made his examination yet; but, there seems no doubt he's dead." Connery was very pale but controlled.
"He's been murdered!"
"It looks so, Mr. Avery. Yes; if he's dead, he's certainly been murdered," Connery agreed. "This is Doctor Douglas Sinclair, a Chicago surgeon. I called him just now to make an examination; but since Mr. Dorne seems to have been dead for some time, I waited for you before moving the body. You can tell,"—Connery avoided mention of President Jarvis' name,—"tell any one who asks you, Mr. Avery, that you saw him just as he was found."
He looked down again at the form in the berth, and Avery's gaze followed his; then, abruptly, it turned away. Avery stood clinging to the curtain, his eyes darting from one to another of the three men.
"As he was found? When?" he demanded. "Who found him that way? When? How?"
"I found him so," Connery answered.
Avery said nothing more.
"Will you start your examination now, Dr. Sinclair," Connery suggested. "No—I'll ask you to wait a minute."
Noises were coming to them from the platforms at both ends of the car, and the doors were being tried and pounded on, as passengers attempted to pass through. Connery went to the rear, where the negro had been posted; then, repassing them, he went to the other end of the car. The noises ceased. "The Pullman conductor is forward, and the brakeman is back there now," he said, as he turned to them. "You will not be interrupted, Dr. Sinclair."
"What explanation did you give them?" Eaton asked.
"Why?" Connery returned.
"I was thinking of Miss Dorne."
"I told them nothing which could disturb her." Connery, as he spoke, pulled back the curtains, entirely exposing the berth.
The surgeon, before examining the man in the berth more closely, lifted the shades from the windows. Everything about the berth was in place, undisturbed; except for the mark of the savage blow on the side of the man's head, there was no evidence of anything unusual. The man's clothes were carefully and neatly hung on the hooks or in the little hammock; his glasses were in their case beside the pillow; his watch and purse were under the pillow; the window at his feet was still raised a crack to let in fresh air while he slept. Save for the marks upon the head, the man might yet be sleeping. It was self-evident that, whatever had been the motives of the attack, robbery was not one; whoever had struck had done no more than reach in and deliver his murderous blow; then he had gone on.
Connery shut the window.
As the surgeon carefully and deliberately pulled back the bedclothing and exposed the body of the man clothed in pajamas, the others watched him. Sinclair made first an examination of the head; completing this, he unbuttoned the pajamas upon the chest, loosened them at the waist and prepared to make his examination of the body.
"How long has he been dead?" Connery asked.
"He is not dead yet."
"You mean he is still dying?"
"I did not say so."
"You mean he is alive, then?"
"Life is still present," Sinclair answered guardedly. "Whether he will live or ever regain consciousness is another question."
"One you can't answer?"
"The blow, as you can see,"—Sinclair touched the man's face with his deft finger-tips,—"fell mostly on the cheek and temple. The cheekbone is fractured. He is in a complete state of coma; and there may be some fracture of the skull. Of course, there is some concussion of the brain."
Any inference to be drawn from this as to the seriousness of the injuries was plainly beyond Connery. "How long ago was he struck?" he asked.
"Some hours."
"You can't tell more than that?"
"Longer ago than five hours, certainly."
"Since four o'clock, then, rather than before?"
"Since midnight, certainly; and longer ago than five o'clock this morning."
"Could he have revived half an hour ago—say within the hour—enough to have pressed the button and rung the bell from his berth?"
Sinclair straightened and gazed at the conductor curiously. "No, certainly not," he replied. "That is completely impossible. Why did you ask?"
Connery avoided answer.
The doctor glanced down quickly at the form of the man in the berth; then again he confronted Connery. "Why did you ask that?" he persisted. "Did the bell from this berth ring recently?"
Connery shook his head, not in negation of the question, but in refusal to answer then. But Avery pushed forward. "What is that? What's that?" he demanded.
"Will you go on with your examination, Doctor?" Connery urged.
"You said the bell from this berth rang recently!" Avery accused Connery.
"I did not say that; he asked it," the conductor evaded.
"But is it true?"
"The pointer in the washroom, indicating a signal from this berth, was turned down a minute ago," Connery had to reply. "A few moments earlier, all pointers had been set in the position indicating no call."
"What!" Avery cried. "What was that?"
Connery repeated the statement.
"That was before you found the body?"
"That was why I went to the berth—yes," Connery replied; "that was before I found the body."
"Then you mean you did not find the body," Avery charged. "Some one, passing through this car a minute or so before you, must have found him!"
Connery attended without replying.
"And evidently that man dared not report it and could not wait longer to know whether Mr.—Mr. Dorne, was really dead; so he rang the bell!"
"Ought we keep Dr. Sinclair any longer from the examination, sir?" Connery now seized Avery's arm in appeal. "The first thing for us to know is whether Mr. Dorne is dying. Isn't—"
Connery checked himself; he had won his appeal. Eaton, standing quietly watchful, observed that Avery's eagerness to accuse now had been replaced by another interest which the conductor's words had recalled. Whether the man in the berth was to live or die—evidently that was momentously to affect Donald Avery one way or the other.
"Of course, by all means proceed with your examination, Doctor," Avery directed.
As Sinclair again bent over the body, Avery leaned over also; Eaton gazed down, and Connery—a little paler than before and with lips tightly set.
The surgeon, having finished loosening the pajamas, pulled open and carefully removed the jacket part, leaving the upper part of the body of the man in the berth exposed. Conductor Connery turned to Avery.
"You have no objection to my taking a list of the articles in the berth?"
Avery seemed to oppose; then, apparently, he recognized that this was an obvious part of the conductor's duty. "None at all," he replied.
Connery gathered up the clothing, the glasses, the watch and purse, and laid them on the seat across the aisle. Sitting down, then, opposite them, he examined them and, taking everything from the pockets of the clothes, he began to catalogue them before Avery. In the coat he found only the card-case, which he noted without examining its contents, and in the trousers a pocket-knife and bunch of keys. He counted over the gold and banknotes in the purse and entered the amount upon his list.
"You know about what he had with him?" he asked.
"Very closely. That is correct. Nothing is missing," Avery answered.
The conductor opened the watch. "The crystal is missing."
Avery nodded. "Yes; it always—that is, it was missing yesterday."
Connery looked up at him, as though slightly puzzled by the manner of the reply; then, having finished his list, he rejoined the surgeon.
Sinclair was still bending over the naked torso. With Eaton's help, he had turned the body upon its back in order to look at its right side, which before had been hidden. It had been a strong, healthy body; Sinclair guessed its age at fifty. As a boy, the man might have been an athlete,—a college track-runner or oarsman,—and he had kept himself in condition through middle age. There was no mark or bruise upon the body, except that on the right side and just below the ribs there now showed a scar about an inch and a half long and of peculiar crescent shape. It was evidently a surgical scar and had completely healed.
Sinclair scrutinized this carefully and then looked up to Avery. "He was operated on recently?"
"About two years ago."
"For what?"
"It was some operation on the gall-bladder."
"Performed by Kuno Garrt?"
Avery hesitated. "I believe so."
He watched Sinclair more closely as he continued his examination; the surgeon had glanced quickly at the face on the pillow and seemed about to question Avery again; but instead he laid the pajama jacket over the body and drew up the sheet and blanket. Connery touched the surgeon on the arm. "What must be done, Doctor? And where and when do you want to do it?"
Sinclair, however, it appeared, had not yet finished his examination. "Will you pull down the window-curtains?" he directed.
As Connery, reaching across the body, complied, the surgeon took a matchbox from his pocket, and glancing about at the three others as though to select from them the one most likely to be an efficient aid, he handed it to Eaton. "Will you help me, please?"
"What is it you want done?"
"Strike a light and hold it as I direct—then draw it away slowly."
He lifted the partly closed eyelid from one of the eyes of the unconscious man and nodded to Eaton: "Hold the light in front of the pupil."
Eaton obeyed, drawing the light slowly away as Sinclair had directed, and the surgeon dropped the eyelid and exposed the other pupil.
"What's that for?" Avery now asked.
"I was trying to determine the seriousness of the injury to the brain. I was looking to see whether light could cause the pupil to contract."
"Could it?" Connery asked.
"No; there was no reaction."
Avery started to speak, checked himself—and then he said: "There could be no reaction, I believe, Dr. Sinclair."
"What do you mean?"
"His optic nerve is destroyed."
"Ah! He was blind?"
"Yes, he was blind," Avery admitted.
"Blind!" Sinclair ejaculated. "Blind, and operated upon within two years by Kuno Garrt!" Kuno Garrt operated only upon the all-rich and -powerful or upon the completely powerless and poor; the unconscious man in the berth could belong only to the first class of Garrt's clientele. The surgeon's gaze again searched the features in the berth; then it shifted to the men gathered about him in the aisle.
"Who did you say this was?" he demanded of Avery.
"I said his name was Nathan Dorne," Avery evaded.
"No, no!" Sinclair jerked out impatiently. "Isn't this—" He hesitated, and finished in a voice suddenly lowered: "Isn't this Basil Santoine?"
Avery, if he still wished to do so, found it impossible to deny.
"Basil Santoine!" Connery breathed.
To the conductor alone, among the four men standing by the berth, the name seemed to have come with the sharp shock of a surprise; with it had come an added sense of responsibility and horror over what had happened to the passenger who had been confided to his care, which made him whiten as he once more repeated the name to himself and stared down at the man in the berth.
Conductor Connery knew Basil Santoine only in the way that Santoine was known to great numbers of other people—that is, by name but not by sight. There was, however, a reason why the circumstances of Santoine's life had remained in the conductor's mind while he forgot or had not heeded the same sort of facts in regard to men who traveled much more often on trans-continental trains. Thus Connery, staring whitely at the form in the berth, recalled for instance Santoine's age; Santoine was fifty-one.
Basil Santoine at twenty-two had been graduated from Harvard, though blind. His connections,—the family was of well-to-do Southern stock,—his possession of enough money for his own support, made it possible for him to live idly if he wished; but Santoine had not chosen to make his blindness an excuse for doing this. He had disregarded too the thought of foreign travel as being useless for a man who had no eyes; and he had at once settled himself to his chosen profession, which was law. He had not found it easy to get a start in this; lawyers had shown no willingness to take into their offices a blind boy to whom the surroundings were unfamiliar and to whom everything must be read; and he had succeeded only after great effort in getting a place with a small and unimportant firm. Within a short time, well within two years, men had begun to recognize that in this struggling law-firm there was a powerful, clear, compelling mind. Santoine, a youth living in darkness, unable to see the men with whom he talked or the documents and books which must be read to him, was beginning to put the stamp of his personality on the firm's affairs. A year later, his name appeared with others of the firm; at twenty-eight, his was the leading name. He had begun to specialize long before that time, in corporation law; he married shortly after this. At thirty, the firm name represented to those who knew its particulars only one personality, the personality of Santoine; and at thirty-five—though his indifference to money was proverbial—he was many times a millionaire. But except among the small and powerful group of men who had learned to consult him, Santoine himself at that time was utterly unknown.
There are many such men in all countries,—more, perhaps, in America than anywhere else,—and in their anonymity they are like minds without physical personality; they advise only, and so they remain out of public view, behind the scenes. Now and then one receives publicity and reward by being sent to the Senate by the powers that move behind the screen, or being called to the President's cabinet. More often, the public knows little of them until they die and men are astonished by the size of the fortunes or of the seemingly baseless reputations which they leave. So Santoine—consulted continually by men concerned in great projects, immersed day and night in vast affairs, capable of living completely as he wished—had been, at the age of forty-six, great but not famous, powerful but not publicly known. At that time an event had occurred which had forced the blind man out unwillingly from his obscurity.
This event had been the murder of the great Western financier Matthew Latron. There had been nothing in this affair which had in any way shadowed dishonor upon Santoine. So much as in his role of a mind without personality Santoine ever fought, he had fought against Latron; but his fight had been not against the man but against methods. There had come then a time of uncertainty and unrest; public consciousness was in the process of awakening to the knowledge that strange things, approaching close to the likeness of what men call crime, had been being done under the unassuming name of business. Government investigation threatened many men, Latron among others; no precedent had yet been set for what this might mean; no one could foresee the end. Scandal—financial scandal—breathed more strongly against Latron than perhaps against any of the other Western men. He had been among their biggest; he had his enemies, of whom impersonally Santoine might have been counted one, and he had his friends, both in high places; he was a world figure. Then, all of a sudden, the man had been struck down—killed, because of some private quarrel, men whispered, by an obscure and till then unheard-of man.
The trembling wires and cables, which should have carried to the waiting world the expected news of Latron's conviction, carried instead the news of Latron's death; and disorder followed. The first public concern had been, of course, for the stocks and bonds of the great Latron properties; and Latron's bigness had seemed only further evidenced by the stanchness with which the Latron banks, the Latron railroads and mines and public utilities stood firm even against the shock of their builder's death. Assured of this, public interest had shifted to the trial, conviction and sentence of Latron's murderer; and it was during this trial that Santoine's name had become more publicly known. Not that the blind man was suspected of any knowledge—much less of any complicity—in the crime; the murder had been because of a purely private matter; but in the eager questioning into Latron's circumstances and surroundings previous to the crime, Santoine was summoned into court as a witness.
The drama of Santoine's examination had been of the sort the public—and therefore the newspapers—love. The blind man, led into the court, sitting sightless in the witness chair, revealing himself by his spoken, and even more by his withheld, replies as one of the unknown guiders of the destiny of the Continent and as counselor to the most powerful,—himself till then hardly heard of but plainly one of the nation's "uncrowned rulers,"—had caught the public sense. The fate of the murderer, the crime, even Latron himself, lost temporarily their interest in the public curiosity over the personality of Santoine. So, ever since, Santoine had been a man marked out; his goings and comings, beside what they might actually reveal of disagreements or settlements among the great, were the object of unfounded and often disturbing guesses and speculations; and particularly at this time when the circumstances of Warden's death had proclaimed dissensions among the powerful which they had hastened to deny, it was natural that Santoine's comings and goings should be as inconspicuous as possible.
It had been reported for some days that Santoine had come to Seattle directly after Warden's death; but when this was admitted, his associates had always been careful to add that Santoine, having been a close personal friend of Gabriel Warden, had come purely in a personal capacity, and the impression was given that Santoine had returned quietly some days before. The mere prolonging of his stay in the West was more than suggestive that affairs among the powerful were truly in such state as Warden had proclaimed; this attack upon Santoine, so similar to that which had slain Warden, and delivered within eleven days of Warden's death, must be of the gravest significance.
Connery stood overwhelmed for the moment with this fuller recognition of the seriousness of the disaster which had come upon this man entrusted to his charge; then he turned to the surgeon.
"Can you do anything for him here, Doctor?" he asked.
The surgeon glanced down the car. "That stateroom—is it occupied?"
"It's occupied by his daughter."
"We'll take him in there, then. Is the berth made?"
The conductor went to the rear of the car and brought the porter who had been stationed there, with the brakeman. He set the negro to making up the berth; and when it was finished, the four men lifted the inert figure of Basil Santoine, carried it into the drawing-room and laid it on its back upon the bed.
"I have my instruments," Sinclair said. "I'll get them; but before I decide to do anything, I ought to see his daughter. Since she is here, her consent is necessary before any operation on him."
The surgeon spoke to Avery. Eaton saw by Avery's start of recollection that Harriet Dorne's—or Harriet Santoine's—friend could not have been thinking of her at all during the recent moments. The chances of life or death of Basil Santoine evidently so greatly and directly affected Donald Avery that he had been absorbed in them to the point of forgetting all other interests than his own. Eaton's own thought had gone often to her. Had Connery in his directions said anything to the trainmen guarding the door or to the passengers on the platforms, that had frightened her with suspicions of what had happened here? When the first sense of something wrong spread back to the observation car, what word had reached her? Did she connect it with her father? Was she—the one most closely concerned—among those who had been on the rear platform seeking admittance? Was she standing there in the aisle of the next car waiting for confirmation of her dread? Or had no word reached her, and must the news of the attack upon her father come to her with all the shock of suddenness?
Eaton had been about to leave the car, where he now was plainly of no use, but these doubts checked him.
"Miss Santoine is in the observation car," Avery said. "I'll get her."
The tone was in some way false—Eaton could not tell exactly how. Avery started down the aisle.
"One moment, please, Mr. Avery!" said the conductor. "I'll ask you not to tell Miss Santoine before any other passengers that there has been an attack upon her father. Wait until you get her inside the door of this car."
"You yourself said nothing, then, that can have made her suspect it?" Eaton asked.
Connery shook his head; the conductor, in doubt and anxiety over exactly what action the situation called for,—unable, too, to communicate any hint of it to his superiors to the West because of the wires being down,—clearly had resolved to keep the attack upon Santoine secret for the time. "I said nothing definite even to the trainmen," he replied; "and I want you gentlemen to promise me before you leave this car that you will say nothing until I give you leave."
His eyes shifted from the face of one to another, until he had assured himself that all agreed. As Avery left the car, Eaton found a seat in one of the end sections near the drawing-room. Sinclair and the conductor had returned to Santoine. The porter was unmaking the berth in the next section which Santoine had occupied, having been told to do so by Connery; the negro bundled together the linen and carried it to the cupboard at the further end of the car; he folded the blankets and put them in the upper berth; he took out the partitions and laid them on top of the blankets. Eaton stared out the window at the bank of snow. He did not know whether to ask to leave the car, or whether he ought to remain; and he would have gone except for recollection of Harriet Santoine. He had heard the rear door of the car open and close some moments before, so he knew that she must be in the car and that, in the passage at that end, Avery must be telling her about her father. Then the curtain at the end of the car was pushed further aside, and Harriet Santoine came in.
She was very pale, but quite controlled, as Eaton knew she would be. She looked at Eaton, but did not speak as she passed; she went directly to the door of the drawing-room, opened it and went in, followed by Avery. The door closed, and for a moment Eaton could hear voices inside the room—Harriet Santoine's, Sinclair's, Connery's. The conductor then came to the door of the drawing-room and sent the porter for water and clean linen; Eaton heard the rip of linen being torn, and the car became filled with the smell of antiseptics.
Donald Avery came out of the drawing-room and dropped into the seat across from Eaton. He seemed deeply thoughtful—so deeply, indeed, as to be almost unaware of Eaton's presence. And Eaton, observing him, again had the sense that Avery's absorption was completely in consequences to himself of what was going on behind the door—in how Basil Santoine's death or continued existence would affect the fortunes of Donald Avery.
"Is he going to operate?" Eaton asked.
"Operate? Yes; he's doing it," Avery replied shortly.
"And Miss Santoine?"
"She's helping—handing instruments and so on."
Avery could not have replied, as he did, if the strain this period must impose upon Harriet Santoine had been much in his mind. Eaton turned from him and asked nothing more. A long time passed—how long, Eaton could not have told; he noted only that during it the shadows on the snowbank outside the window appreciably changed their position. Once during this time, the door of the drawing-room was briefly opened, while Connery handed something out to the porter, and the smell of the antiseptics grew suddenly stronger; and Eaton could see behind Connery the surgeon, coatless and with shirt-sleeves rolled up, bending over the figure on the bed. Finally the door opened again, and Harriet Santoine came out, paler than before, and now not quite so steady.
Eaton rose as she approached them; and Avery leaped up, all concern and sympathy for her immediately she appeared. He met her in the aisle and took her hand.
"Was it successful, dear?" Avery asked.
She shut her eyes before she answered, and stood holding to the back of a seat; then she opened her eyes, saw Eaton and recognized him and sat down in the seat where Avery had been sitting.
"Dr. Sinclair says we will know in four or five days," she replied to Avery; she turned then directly to Eaton. "He thought there probably was a clot under the skull, and he operated to find it and relieve it. There was one, and we have done all we can; now we may only wait. Dr. Sinclair has appointed himself nurse; he says I can help him, but not just yet. I thought you would like to know."
"Thank you; I did want to know," Eaton acknowledged. He moved away from them, and sat down in one of the seats further down the car. Connery came out from the drawing-room, went first to one end of the car, then to the other; and returning with the Pullman conductor, began to oversee the transfer of the baggage of all other passengers than the Santoine party to vacant sections in the forward sleepers. People began to pass through the aisle; evidently the car doors had been unlocked. Eaton got up and left the car, finding at the door a porter from one of the other cars stationed to warn people not to linger or speak or make other noises in going through the car where Santoine was.
As the door was closing behind Eaton, a sound came to his ears from the car he just had left—a young girl suddenly crying in abandon. Harriet Santoine, he understood, must have broken down for the moment, after the strain of the operation; and Eaton halted as though to turn back, feeling the blood drive suddenly upon his heart. Then, recollecting that he had no right to go to her, he went on.
As he entered his own car, Eaton halted; that part of the train had taken on its usual look and manner, or as near so, it seemed, as the stoppage in the snow left possible. Knowing what he did, Eaton stared at first with astonishment; and the irrational thought came to him that the people before him were acting. Then he realized that they were almost as usual because they did not know what had happened; the fact that Basil Santoine had been attacked—or that he was on the train—still had been carefully kept secret by the spreading of some other explanation of the trouble in the car behind. So now, in their section, Amy and Constance were reading and knitting; their parents had immersed themselves in double solitaire; the Englishman looked out the window at the snow with no different expression than that with which he would have surveyed a landscape they might have been passing. Sinclair's section, of course, remained empty; and a porter came and transferred the surgeon's handbag and overcoat to the car behind in which he was caring for Santoine.
Eaton found his car better filled than it had been before, for the people shifted from the car behind had been scattered through the train. He felt a hand on his arm as he started to go to his seat, and turned and faced Connery.
"If you must say anything, say it was appendicitis," the conductor warned when he had brought Eaton back to the vestibule. "Mr. Dorne—if a name is given, it is that—was suddenly seized with a recurrence of an attack of appendicitis from which he had been suffering. An immediate operation was required to save him; that was what Dr. Sinclair did."
Eaton reaffirmed his agreement to give no information. He learned by the conversation of the passengers that Connery's version of what had happened had been easily received; some one, they said, had been taken suddenly and seriously ill upon the train. Their speculation, after some argument, had pitched on the right person; it was the tall, distinguished-looking man in the last car who wore glasses. At noon, food was carried into the Santoine car.
Keeping himself to his section, Eaton watched the car and outside the window for signs of what investigation Connery and Avery were making. What already was known had made it perfectly clear that whoever had attacked Santoine must still be upon the train; for no one could have escaped through the snow. No one could now escape. Avery and Connery and whoever else was making investigation with them evidently were not letting any one know that an investigation was being made. A number of times Eaton saw Connery and the Pullman conductor pass through the aisles. Eaton went to lunch; on his way back from the diner, he saw the conductors with papers in their hands questioning a passenger. They evidently were starting systematically through the cars, examining each person; they were making the plea of necessity of a report to the railroad offices of names and addresses of all held up by the stoppage of the train. As Eaton halted at his section, the two conductors finished with the man from the rear who had been installed in Section One, and they crossed to the Englishman opposite. Eaton heard them explain the need of making a report and heard the Englishman's answer, with his name, his address and particulars as to who he was, where he was coming from and whither he was going.
Eaton started on toward the rear of the train.
"A moment, sir!" Connery called.
Eaton halted. The conductors confronted him.
"Your name, sir?" Connery asked.
"Philip D. Eaton."
Connery wrote down the answer. "Your address?"
"I—have no address."
"You mean you don't want to give it?"
"No, I have none. I was going to a hotel in Chicago—which one I hadn't decided yet."
"Where are you coming from?"
"From Asia."
"That's hardly an address, Mr. Eaton!"
"I can give you no address abroad. I had no fixed address there. I was traveling most of the time. You could not reach me or place me by means of any city or hotel there. I arrived in Seattle by the Asiatic steamer and took this train."
"Ah! you came on theTamba Maru."
Connery made note of this, as he had made note of all the other questions and answers. Then he said something to the Pullman conductor, who replied in the same low tone; what they said was not audible to Eaton.
"You can tell us at least where your family is, Mr. Eaton," Connery suggested.
"I have no family."
"Friends, then?"
"I—I have no friends."
"What?"
"I say that I can refer you to no friends."
"Nowhere?"
"Nowhere."
Connery pondered for several moments. "The Mr. Hillward—Lawrence Hillward, to whom the telegram was addressed which you claimed this morning, your associate who was to have taken this train with you—will you give me his address?"
"I thought you had decided the telegram was not meant for me."
"I am asking you a question, Mr. Eaton—not making explanations. It isn't impossible there should be two Lawrence Hillwards."
"I don't know Hillward's address."
"Give me the address, then, of the man who sent the telegram."
"I am unable to do that, either."
Connery spoke again to the Pullman conductor, and they conversed inaudibly for a minute. "That is all, then," Connery said finally.
He signed his name to the sheet on which he had written Eaton's answers, and handed it to the Pullman conductor, who also signed it and returned it to him; then they went on to the passenger now occupying Section Four, without making any further comment.
Eaton abandoned his idea of going to the rear of the train; he sat down, picked up his magazine and tried to read; but after an instant, he leaned forward and looked at himself in the little mirror between the 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 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.