Miss Santoine:
The questions—all of them—that you and others have asked me you are going to find answered very soon—within a very few hours, it may be, certainly within a few days—though they are not going to be answered by me. When they are answered, you are going to think me the most despicable kind of man; you are not going to doubt, then,—for the answers will not let you doubt,—that I was the one who hurt your father. You, and every one else, are going to feel—not only because of that, but because of what you will learn about me—that nothing that may happen to me will be more than I justly deserve.
I don't seem to care very much what people other than you may think; as the time grows nearer, I feel that I care less and less about that; but I do care very much—and more and more—that you are going to think of me in this way. It is very hard for me to know that you are going to regret that you ever let me talk with you in the friendly way you did, or that you let me walk beside you on the station platform at Spokane, and that you are going to shrink with horror when you recollect that you let me touch you and put my hand upon your arm. I feel that you do not yet believe that it was I who attacked your father; and I ask you—even in face of the proof which you are so soon to receive—not to believe it. I took this train—
He stopped writing, recollecting that the letter was to be given to Connery unsealed and that Connery might read it; he scratched out the sentence he had begun; then he thought a moment and went on:
I ask you not to believe that. More than that, I ask you—when you have learned who I am—still to believe in me. I don't ask you to defend me against others; you could not do that, for you will see no one who will not hate and despise me. But I beg of you, in all honesty and faith, not to let yourself feel as they do toward me. I want you to believe—
He stopped again, but not because he felt that Harriet Santoine would not believe what he was asking her to believe; instead, it was because he knew she would. Mechanically he opened his traveling-bag and got out a cigar, bit off the end and forgetting in his absorption to light it, puffed and sucked at it. The future was sure ahead of him; he foresaw it plainly, in detail even, for what was happening to him was only the fulfillment of a threat which had been over him ever since he landed at Seattle. He was going out of life—not only Harriet Santoine's life, but all life, and the letter he was writing would make Harriet Santoine believe his death to have been an act of injustice, of cruelty. She could not help but feel that she herself had been in a way instrumental in his death, since it was the accusation of violence against her father which was going to show who he was and so condemn him. Dared he, dying, leave a sting like that in the girl's life?
He continued to puff at the unlighted cigar; then, mechanically, he struck a match to light it. As the match flared up, he touched it to the sheet on which he had been writing, held the paper until the written part was all consumed, and dropped it on the floor of the car, smiling down at it wryly and grimly. He would go out of Harriet Santoine's life as he had come into it—no, not that, for he had come into it as one who excited in her a rather pleasing doubt and curiosity, but he would go out of it as a man whom she must hate and condemn; to recall him would be only painful to her, so that she would try to kill within her all memory of him.
As he glanced to the window, he saw that they were passing through the outskirts of some place larger than any they had stopped at before; and realizing that this must be the place he had picked out on the map as the one where they would give him to the police, he closed his traveling bag and made ready to go with them. The train drew into the station and stopped; the porter, as it slowed, had unlocked and opened the door of his compartment, and he saw Connery outside upon the platform; but this was no different from their procedure at every stop. Several people got on the train here; others got off; so Connery, obviously, was not preventing those who had been on the train when Santoine was struck, from leaving it now. Eaton, as he saw Connery make the signal for the train to go ahead, sank back suddenly, conscious of the suspense he had been under.
He got out the railroad folder and looked ahead to the next town where he might be given up to the authorities; but when they rolled into this in the late afternoon the proceedings were no different. Eaton could not understand. He saw by studying the time-table that some time in the night they would pass the Montana state line into North Dakota. Didn't they intend to deliver him to the State authorities in Montana?
When the waiter brought his supper, Connery came with him.
"You wrote something to-day?" the conductor asked.
"I destroyed it."
Connery looked keenly around the compartment. "You brought me two envelopes; there they are. You brought three sheets of paper; here are two, and there's what's left of the other on the floor."
Connery seemed satisfied.
"Why haven't you jailed me?" Eaton asked.
"We're waiting to see how things go with Mr. Santoine."
"Has he been conscious?"
Connery did not answer; and through the conductor's silence Eaton sensed suddenly what the true condition of affairs must be. To give him up to the police would make public the attack upon Santoine; and until Santoine either died or recovered far enough to be consulted by them, neither Avery nor Connery—nor Connery's superiors, apparently—dared to take the responsibility of doing this. So Eaton would be carried along to whatever point they might reach when Santoine died or became fully conscious. Where would that be? Clear to Chicago?
It made no material difference to him, Eaton realized, whether the police took him in Montana or Chicago, since in either case recognition of him would be certain in the end; but in Chicago this recognition must be immediate, complete, and utterly convincing.
The next day the weather had moderated, or—here in North Dakota—it had been less severe; the snow was not deep except in the hollows, and on the black, windswept farmlands sprouts of winter wheat were faintly showing. The train was traveling steadily and faster than its regular schedule; it evidently was running as a special, some other train taking the ordinary traffic; it halted now only at the largest cities. In the morning it crossed into Minnesota; and in the late afternoon, slowing, it rolled into some large city which Eaton knew must be Minneapolis or St. Paul. All day he had listened for sounds in the Santoine car, but had heard nothing; the routine which had been established to take care of him had gone on through the day, and he had seen no one but Connery and the negro, and his questions to them had been unanswered.
The car here was uncoupled from the train and picked up by a switch engine; as dusk fell, Eaton, peering out of his window, could see that they had been left lying in the railroad yards; and about midnight, awakening in his berth, he realized that the car was still motionless. He could account for this stoppage in their progress only by some change in the condition of Santoine. Was Santoine sinking, so that they no longer dared to travel? Was he, perhaps—dead?
No sounds came to him from the car to confirm Eaton in any conclusion; there was nothing to be learned from any one outside the car. A solitary man, burly and alert, paced quietly back and forth below Eaton's window. He was a guard stationed to prevent any escape while the car was motionless in the yard.
Eaton lay for a long time, listening for other sounds and wondering what was occurring—or had occurred—at the other end of his car. Toward morning he fell asleep.
"Basil Santoine dying! Blind Millionaire lawyer taken ill on train!"
The alarm of the cry came to answer Eaton's question early the next morning. As he started up in his berth, he shook himself into realization that the shouts were not merely part of an evil dream; some one was repeating the cry outside the car window. He threw up the curtain and saw a vagrant newsboy, evidently passing through the railroad yards to sell to the trainmen. Eaton's guard outside his window was not then in sight; so Eaton lifted his window from the screen, removed that, and hailing the boy, put out his hand for a paper. He took it before he recalled that he had not even a cent; but he looked for his knife in his trousers pocket and tossed it out to the boy with the inquiry: "How'll that do?"
The boy gaped, picked it up, grinned and scampered off. Eaton spread the news-sheet before him and swiftly scanned the lines for information as to the fate of the man who, for four days, had been lying only forty feet away from him at the other end of a Pullman car.
The paper—a Minneapolis one—blared at him that Santoine's condition was very low and becoming rapidly worse. But below, under a Montana date-line, Eaton saw it proclaimed that the blind millionaire was merely sick; there was no suggestion anywhere of an attack. The paper stated only that Basil Santoine, returning from Seattle with his daughter and his secretary, Donald Avery, had been taken seriously ill upon a train which had been stalled for two days in the snow in Montana. The passenger from whom the information had been gained had heard that the malady was appendicitis, but he believed that was merely given out to cover some complication which had required surgical treatment on the train. He was definite as regarded the seriousness of Mr. Santoine's illness and described the measures taken to insure his quiet. The railroad officials refused, significantly, to make a statement regarding Mr. Santoine's present condition. There was complete absence of any suggestion of violence having been done; and also, Eaton found, there was no word given out that he himself had been found on the train. The column ended with the statement that Mr. Santoine had passed through Minneapolis and gone on to Chicago under care of Dr. Douglas Sinclair.
Eaton stared at the newspaper without reading, after he saw that. He thought first—or rather, he felt first—for himself. He had not realized, until now that he was told that Harriet Santoine had gone,—for if her father had gone on, of course she was with him,—the extent to which he had felt her fairness, almost her friendship to him. At least, he knew now that, since she had spoken to him after he was first accused of the attack on her father, he had not felt entirely deserted or friendless till now. And with this start of dread for himself, came also feeling for her. Even if they had taken her father from the other end of this car early in the night to remove him to another special car for Chicago, she would be still watching beside him on the train. Or was her watch beside the dying man over now? And now, if her father were dead, how could Harriet Santoine feel toward the one whom all others—if not she herself—accused of the murder of her father? For evidently it was murder now, not just "an attack."
But why, if Santoine had been taken away, or was dead or dying, had they left Eaton all night in the car in the yards? Since Santoine was dying, would there be any longer an object in concealing the fact that he had been murdered?
Eaton turned the page before him. A large print of a picture of Harriet Santoine looked at him from the paper—her beautiful, deep eyes gazing at him, as he often had surprised her, frankly interested, thoughtful, yet also gay. The newspaper had made up its lack of more definite and extended news by associating her picture with her father's and printing also a photograph of Donald Avery—"closely associated with Mr. Santoine in a confidential capacity and rumored to be engaged to Miss Santoine." Under the blind man's picture was a biography of the sort which newspaper offices hold ready, prepared for the passing of the great.
Eaton did not read that then. The mention in the paper of an engagement between Avery and Harriet Santoine had only confirmed the relation which Eaton had imagined between them. Avery, therefore, must have gone on with her; and if she still watched beside her father, Avery was with her; and if Basil Santoine was dead, his daughter was turning to Avery for comfort.
This feature somehow stirred Eaton so that he could not stay quiet; he dressed and then paced back and forth the two or three steps his compartment allowed him. He stopped now and then to listen; from outside came the noises of the yard; but he made out no sound within the car. If it had been occupied as on the days previous, he must have heard some one coming to the washroom at his end. Was he alone in the car now? or had the customary moving about taken place before he awoke?
Eaton had seen no one but the newsboy when he looked out the window, but he felt sure that, if he had been left alone in the car, he was being watched so that he could not escape.
His hand moved toward the bell, then checked itself. By calling any one, he now must change his situation only for the worse; as long as they were letting him stay there, so much the better. He realized that it was long past the time when the porter usually came to make up his berth and they brought him breakfast; the isolation of the car might account for this delay, but it was more likely that he was to find another reason.
Finally, to free himself from his nervous listening for sounds which never came, he picked up the paper again. A column told of Santoine's youth, his blindness, his early struggle to make a place for himself and his final triumph—position, wealth and power gained; Eaton, reading of Harriet Santoine's father, followed these particulars with interest; and further down the column his interest became even greater. He read:
The news of Mr. Santoine's visit of a week on the Coast, if not known already in great financial circles, is likely to prove interesting there. Troubles between little people are tried in the courts; the powerful settle their disagreements among themselves and without appeal to the established tribunals in which their cases are settled without the public knowing they have been tried at all. Basil Santoine, of late years, has been known to the public as one of the greatest and most influential of the advisers to the financial rulers of America; but before the public knew him he was recognized by the financial masters as one of the most able, clear-minded and impartial of the adjudicators among them in their own disputes. For years he has been the chief agent in keeping peace among some of the great conflicting interests, and more than once he has advised the declaring of financial war when war seemed to him the correct solution. Thus, five years ago, when the violent death of Matthew Latron threatened to precipitate trouble among Western capitalists, Santoine kept order in what might very well have become financial chaos. If his recent visit to the Pacific Coast was not purely for personal reasons but was also to adjust antagonisms such as charged by Gabriel Warden before his death, the loss of Santoine at this time may precipitate troubles which, living, his advice and information might have been able to prevent.
Having read and reread this long paragraph, Eaton started to tear out the picture of Harriet Santoine before throwing the paper away; then he desisted and thrust the sheets out the window. As he sat thinking, with lips tight closed, he heard for the first time that morning footsteps at his end of the car. The door of his compartment was unlocked and opened, and he saw Dr. Sinclair.
"Mr. Santoine wants to speak to you," the surgeon announced quietly.
This startling negation of all he imagined, unnerved Eaton. He started up, then sank back for better composure.
"Mr. Santoine is here, then?"
"Here? Of course he's here."
"And he's conscious?"
"He has been conscious for the better part of two days. Didn't they tell you?" Sinclair frowned. "I heard Miss Santoine send word to you by the conductor soon after her father first came to himself."
"You mean he will recover!"
"He would recover from any injury which was not inevitably fatal. He was in perfect physical condition, and I never have known a patient to grasp so completely the needs of his own case and to help the surgeon as much by his control of himself."
Eaton looked toward the window, breathing hard. "I heard the newsboys—"
Sinclair shrugged. "The papers print what they can get and in the way which seems most effective to them," was his only comment.
Eaton pulled himself together. So Santoine was neither dead nor dying. Therefore, at worst, the charge of murder would not be made; and at best—what? He was soon to find out; the papers evidently were entirely in error or falsely informed. Basil Santoine was still at the other end of the car, and his daughter would be with him there. But as Eaton followed Sinclair out of the compartment into the aisle, he halted a moment—the look of the car was so entirely different from what he had expected. A nurse in white uniform sat in one of the seats toward the middle of the car, sewing; another nurse, likewise clothed in white, had just come out from the drawing-room at the end of the car; Avery and Sinclair apparently had been playing cribbage, for Avery sat at a little table in the section which had been occupied by Santoine, with the cards and cribbage board in front of him. The surgeon led Eaton to the door of the drawing-room, showed him in and left him.
Harriet Santoine was sitting on the little lounge opposite the berth where her father lay. She was watching the face of her father, and as Eaton stood in the door, he saw her lean forward and gently touch her father's hand; then she turned and saw Eaton.
"Here is Mr. Eaton, Father," she said.
"Sit down," Santoine directed.
Harriet made room for Eaton upon the seat beside her; and Eaton, sitting down, gazed across at the blind man in the berth. Santoine was lying flat on his back, his bandaged head turned a little toward Eaton and supported by pillows; he was not wearing his dark glasses, and his eyes were open. Eyes of themselves are capable of no expression except as they may be clear or bloodshot, or by the contraction or dilation of the pupils, or as they shift or are fixed upon some object: their "expression" is caused by movements of the lids and brows and other parts of the face. Santoine's eyes had the motionlessness of the eyes of those who have been long blind; seeing nothing, with pupils which did not change in size, they had only the abstracted look which, with men who see, accompanies deep thought. The blind man was very weak and must stay quite still; and he recognized it; but he knew too that his strength was more than equal to the task of recovery, and he showed that he knew it. His mind and will were, obviously, at their full activity, and he had fully his sense of hearing.
This explained to Eaton the better color in his daughter's face; yet she was still constrained and nervous; evidently she had not found her ordeal over with the start of convalescence of her father. Her lips trembled now as she turned to Eaton; but she did not speak directly to him yet; it was Basil Santoine who suddenly inquired:
"What is it they call you?"
"My name is Philip D. Eaton." Eaton realized as soon as he had spoken that both question and answer had been unnecessary, and Santoine had asked only to hear Eaton's voice.
The blind man was silent for a moment, as he seemed to consider the voice and try again vainly to place it in his memories. Then he spoke to his daughter.
"Describe him, Harriet."
Harriet paled and flushed.
"About thirty," she said, "—under rather than over that. Six feet or a little more in height. Slender, but muscular and athletic. Skin and eyes clear and with a look of health. Complexion naturally rather fair, but darkened by being outdoors a good deal. Hair dark brown, straight and parted at the side. Smooth shaven. Eyes blue-gray, with straight lashes. Eyebrows straight and dark. Forehead smooth, broad and intelligent. Nose straight and neither short nor long; nostrils delicate. Mouth straight, with lips neither thin nor full. Chin neither square nor pointed, and without a cleft. Face and head, in general, of oval Anglo-American type."
"Go on," said Santoine.
Harriet was breathing quickly. "Hands well shaped, strong but without sign of manual labor; nails cared for but not polished. Gray business suit, new, but not made by an American tailor and of a style several years old. Soft-bosomed shirt of plain design with soft cuffs. Medium-height turn-down white linen collar. Four-in-hand tie, tied by himself. Black shoes. No jewelry except watch-chain."
"In general?" Santoine suggested.
"In general, apparently well-educated, well-bred, intelligent young American. Expression frank. Manner self-controlled and reserved. Seems sometimes younger than he must be, sometimes older. Something has happened at some time which has had a great effect and can't be forgotten."
While she spoke, the blood, rising with her embarrassment, had dyed Harriet's face; suddenly now she looked away from him and out the window.
Her feeling seemed to be perceived by Santoine. "Would you rather I sent for Avery, daughter?" he asked.
"No; no!" She turned again toward Eaton and met his look defiantly.
Eaton merely waited. He was confident that much of this description of himself had been given Santoine by his daughter before the attack had been made on him and that she had told him also as fully as she could the two conversations she had had with Eaton. He could not, somehow, conceive it possible that Santoine needed to refresh his memory; the description, therefore, must have been for purposes of comparison. Santoine, in his blindness, no doubt found it necessary to get descriptions of the same one thing from several people, in order that he might check one description against another. He probably had Harriet's and Avery's description of Eaton and now was getting Harriet's again.
"He would be called, I judge, a rather likable-looking man?" Santoine said tentatively; his question plainly was only meant to lead up to something else; Santoine had judged in that particular already.
"I think he makes that impression."
"Certainly he does not make the impression of being a man who could be hired to commit a crime?"
"Very far from it."
"Or who would commit a crime for his own interest—material or financial interest, I mean?"
"No."
"But he might be led into crime by some personal, deeper interest. He has shown deep feeling, I believe—strong, personal feeling, Harriet?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Eaton,"—Santoine addressed him suddenly,—"I understand that you have admitted that you were at the house of Gabriel Warden the evening he was killed while in his car. Is that so?"
"Yes," said Eaton.
"You are the man, then, of whom Gabriel Warden spoke to his wife?"
"I believe so."
"You believe so?"
"I mean," Eaton explained quietly, "that I came by appointment to call on Mr. Warden that night. I believe that it must have been to me that Mr. Warden referred in the conversation with his wife which has since been quoted in the newspapers."
"Because you were in such a situation that, if Mr. Warden defended you, he would himself meet danger?"
"I did not say that," Eaton denied guardedly.
"What, then, was your position in regard to Mr. Warden?"
Eaton remained silent.
"You refuse to answer?" Santoine inquired.
"I refuse."
"In spite of the probability that Mr. Warden met his death because of his intention to undertake something for you?"
"I have not been able to fix that as a probability."
The blind man stopped. Plainly he appreciated that, where Connery and Avery had failed in their questionings, he was not likely to succeed easily; and with his limited strength, he proceeded on a line likely to meet less prepared resistance.
"Mr. Eaton, have I ever injured you personally—I don't mean directly, as man to man, for I should remember that; have I ever done anything which indirectly has worked injury on you or your affairs?"
"No," Eaton answered.
"Who sent you aboard this train?"
"Sent me? No one."
"You took the train of your own will because I was taking it?"
"I have not said I took it because you were taking it."
"That seems to be proved. You can accept it from me; it has been proved. Did you take the train in order to attack me?"
"No."
"To spy upon me?"
"No."
Santoine was silent for an instant. "What was it you took the train to tell me?"
"I? Nothing."
Santoine moved his head upon the pillow.
"Father!" his daughter warned.
"Oh, I am careful, Harriet; Dr. Sinclair allows me to move a little.... Mr. Eaton, in one of the three answers you have just given me, you are not telling the truth. I defy you to find in human reasoning more than four reasons why my presence could have made you take this train in the manner and with the attending circumstances you did. You took it to injure me, or to protect me from injury; to learn something from me, or to inform me of something. I discard the second of these possibilities because you asked for a berth in another car and for other reasons which make it impossible. However, I will ask it of you. Did you take the train to protect me from injury?"
"No."
"Which of your former answers do you wish to change, then?"
"None."
"You deny all four possibilities?"
"Yes."
"Then you are using denial only to hide the fact, whatever it may be; and of the four possibilities I am obliged to select the first as the most likely."
"You mean that I attacked you?"
"That is not what I said. I said you must have taken the train to injure me, but that does not mean necessarily that it was to attack me with your own hand. Any attack aimed against me would be likely to have several agents. There would be somewhere, probably, a distant brain that had planned it; there would be an intelligent brain near by to oversee it; and there would be a strong hand to perform it. The overseeing brain and the performing hand—or hands—might belong to one person, or to two, or more. How many there were I cannot now determine, since people were allowed to get off the train. The conductor and Avery—"
"Father!"
"Yes, Harriet; but I expected better of Avery. Mr. Eaton, as you are plainly withholding the truth as to your reason for taking this train, and as I have suffered injury, I am obliged—from the limited information I now have—to assume that you knew an attack was to be made by some one, upon that train. In addition to the telegram, addressed to you under your name of Eaton and informing of my presence on the train, I have also been informed, of course, of the code message received by you addressed to Hillward. You refused, I understand, to favor Mr. Avery with an explanation of it; do you wish to give one now?"
"No," said Eaton.
"It has, of course, been deciphered," the blind man went on calmly. "The fact that it was based upon your pocket English-Chinese dictionary as a word-book was early suggested; the deciphering from that was simply a trial of some score of ordinary enigma plans, until the meaning appeared."
Eaton made no comment. Santoine went on:
"And that very interesting meaning presented another possible explanation—not as to your taking the train, for as to that there can be only the four I mentioned—but as to the attack itself, which would exonerate you from participation in it. It is because of this that I am treating you with the consideration I do. If that explanation were correct, you would—"
"What?"
"You would have had nothing to do with the attack, and yet you would know who made it."
At this, Eaton stared at the blind man and wet his lips.
"What do you mean?" he said.
Santoine did not reply to the question. "What have you been doing yesterday and to-day?" he asked.
"Waiting," Eaton answered.
"For what?"
"For the railroad people to turn me over to the police."
"So I understood. That is why I asked you. I don't believe in cat-and-mouse methods, Mr. Eaton; so I am willing to tell you that there is no likelihood of your being turned over to the police immediately. I have taken this matter out of the hands of the railroad people. We live in a complex world, Mr. Eaton, and I am in the most complex current of it. I certainly shall not allow the publicity of a police examination of you to publish the fact that I have been attacked so soon after the successful attack upon Mr. Warden—and in a similar manner—until I know more about both attacks and about you—why you came to see Warden that night and how, after failing to see him alive, you followed me, and whether that fact led to the attempt at my life."
Eaton started to speak, and then stopped.
"What were you going to say?" Santoine urged.
"I will not say it," Eaton refused.
"However, I think I understand your impulse. You were about to remind me that there has been nothing to implicate you in any guilty connection with the murder of Mr. Warden. I do not now charge that."
He hesitated; then, suddenly lost in thought, as some new suggestion seemed to come to him which he desired to explain alone, he motioned with a hand in dismissal. "That is all." Then, almost immediately: "No; wait! ... Harriet, has he made any sign while I have been talking?"
"Not much, if any," Harriet answered. "When you said he might not have had anything to do with the attack upon you, but in that case he must know who it was that struck you, he shut his eyes and wet his lips."
"That is all, Mr. Eaton," Santoine repeated.
Eaton started back to his compartment. As he turned, Harriet Santoine looked up at him and their eyes met; and her look confirmed to him what he had felt before—that her father, now taking control of the investigation of the attack upon himself, was not continuing it with prejudice or predisposed desire to damage Eaton, except as the evidence accused him. And her manner now told, even more plainly than Santoine's, that the blind man had viewed the evidence as far from conclusive against Eaton; and as Harriet showed that she was glad of that, Eaton realized how she must have taken his side against Avery in reporting to her father.
For Santoine must have depended entirely upon circumstances presented to him by Avery and Connery and her; and Eaton was very certain that Avery and Connery had accused him; so Harriet Santoine—it could only be she—had opposed them in his defense. The warmth of his gratitude to her for this suffused him as he bowed to her; she returned a frank, friendly little nod which brought back to him their brief companionship on the first day on the train.
And as Eaton went back to his compartment through the open car, Dr. Sinclair looked up at him, but Avery, studying his cribbage hand, pretended not to notice he was passing. So Avery admitted too that affairs were turning toward the better, just now at least, for Eaton. When he was again in his compartment, no one came to lock him in. The porter who brought his breakfast a few minutes later, apologized for its lateness, saying it had had to be brought from a club car on the next track, whither the others in the car, except Santoine, had gone.
Eaton had barely finished with this tardy breakfast when a bumping against the car told him that it was being coupled to a train. The new train started, and now the track followed the Mississippi River. Eaton, looking forward from his window as the train rounded curves, saw that the Santoine car was now the last one of a train—presumably bound from Minneapolis to Chicago.
South they went, through Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the weather grew warmer and the spring further advanced. The snow was quite cleared from the ground, and the willows beside the ditches in the fields were beginning to show green sprouts. At nine o'clock in the evening, some minutes after crossing the state line into Illinois, the train stopped at a station where the last car was cut off.
A motor-ambulance and other limousine motor-cars were waiting in the light from the station. Eaton, seated at the window, saw Santoine carried out on a stretcher and put into the ambulance. Harriet Santoine, after giving a direction to a man who apparently was a chauffeur, got into the ambulance with her father. The surgeon and the nurses rode with them. They drove off. Avery entered another automobile, which swiftly disappeared. Conductor Connery came for the last time to Eaton's door.
"Miss Santoine says you're to go with the man she's left here for you. Here's the things I took from you. The money's all there. Mr. Santoine says you've been his guest on this car."
Eaton received back his purse and bill-fold. He put them in his pocket without examining their contents. The porter appeared with his overcoat and hat. Eaton put them on and stepped out of the car. The conductor escorted him to a limousine car. "This is the gentleman," Connery said to the chauffeur to whom Harriet Santoine had spoken. The man opened the door of the limousine; another man, whom Eaton had not before seen, was seated in the car; Eaton stepped in. Connery extended his hand—"Good-by, sir."
"Good-by."
The motor-car drove down a wide, winding road with tall, spreading trees on both sides. Lights shone, at intervals, from windows of what must be large and handsome homes. The man in the car with Eaton, whose duty plainly was only that of a guard, did not speak to Eaton nor Eaton to him. The motor passed other limousines occasionally; then, though the road was still wide and smooth and still bounded by great trees, it was lonelier; no houses appeared for half a mile; then lights glowed directly ahead; the car ran under the porte-cochère of a great stone country mansion; a servant sprang to the door of the limousine and opened it; another man seized Eaton's hand-baggage from beside the chauffeur. Eaton entered a large, beamed and paneled hallway with an immense fireplace with logs burning in it; there was a wide stairway which the servant, who had appointed himself Eaton's guide, ascended. Eaton followed him and found another great hall upstairs. The servant led him to one of the doors opening off this and into a large room, fitted for a man's occupancy, with dark furniture, cases containing books on hunting, sports and adventure, and smoking things; off this was a dressing room with the bath next; beyond was a bedroom.
"These are to be your rooms, sir," the servant said. A valet appeared and unpacked Eaton's traveling bag.
"Anything else, sir?" The man, who had finished unpacking his clothes and laying them out, approached respectfully. "I've drawn your bath tepid, sir; is that correct?"
"Quite," Eaton said. "There's nothing else."
"Very good. Good night, sir. If there's anything else, the second button beside the bed will bring me, sir."
When the man had withdrawn noiselessly and closed the door, Eaton stood staring about the rooms dazedly; then he went over and tried the door. It opened; it was not locked. He turned about and went into the dressing room and began taking off his clothes; he stepped into the bathroom and felt the tepid bath. In a moment he was in the bath; fifteen minutes later he was in bed with the window open beside him, letting in the crisp, cool breeze. But he had not the slightest idea of sleep; he had undressed, bathed, and gone to bed to convince himself that what he was doing was real, that he was not acting in a dream.
He got up and went to the window and looked out, but the night was cloudy and dark, and he could see nothing except some lighted windows. As he watched, the light was switched out. Eaton went back to bed, but amazement would not let him sleep.
He was in Santoine's house; he knew it could be no other than Santoine's house. It was to get into Santoine's house that he had come from Asia; he had thought and planned and schemed all through the long voyage on the steamer how it was to be done. He would have been willing to cross the Continent on foot to accomplish it; no labor that he could imagine would have seemed too great to him if this had been its end; and here it had been done without effort on his part, naturally, inevitably! Chance and circumstance had done it! And as he realized this, his mind was full of what he had to do in Santoine's house. For many days he had not thought about that; it had seemed impossible that he could have any opportunity to act for himself. And the return to his thoughts of possibility of carrying out his original plan brought before him thoughts of his friends—those friends who, through his exile, had been faithful to him but whose identity or existence he had been obliged to deny, when questioned, to protect them as well as himself.
As he lay on his bed in the dark, he stared upward to the ceiling, wide awake, thinking of those friends whose devotion to him might be justified at last; and he went over again and tested and reviewed the plan he had formed. But it never had presumed a position for him—even if it was the position of a semi-prisoner—inside Santoine's house. And he required more information of the structure of the house than he as yet had, to correct his plan further. But he could not, without too great risk of losing everything, discover more that night; he turned over and set himself to go to sleep.
The first gray of dawn roused Eaton, and drawing on trousers and coat over his pajamas, he seated himself by the open window to see the house by daylight. The glow, growing in the east, showed him first that the house stood on the shore of the lake; the light came to him across water, and from the lake had come the crisp, fresh-smelling breeze that had blown into his windows through the night. As it grew lighter, he could see the house; it was an immense structure of smooth gray stone. Eaton was in its central part, his windows looking to the south. To the north of him was a wing he could not see—the wing which had contained the porte-cochère under which the motor-car had stopped the night before; and the upper part of this wing, he had been able to tell, contained the servants' quarters. To the south, in front of him, was another wing composed, apparently in part at least, of family bedrooms.
Between the house and the lake was a terrace, part flagged, part gravel, part lawn not yet green but with green shoots showing among the last year's grass. A stone parapet walled in this terrace along the top of the bluff which pitched precipitously down to the lake fifty feet below, and the narrow beach of sand and shingle. As Eaton watched, one of the two nurses who had been on the train came to a window of the farthest room on the second floor of the south wing and stood looking out; that, then, must be Santoine's room; and Eaton drew back from his window as he noted this.
The sun had risen, and its beams, reflected up from the lake, danced on his ceiling. Eaton, chilled by the sharp air off the water—and knowing now the locality where he must be—pulled off his coat and trousers and jumped back into bed. The motor driveway which stretches north from Chicago far into Wisconsin leaves between it and the lake a broad wooded strip for spacious grounds and dwellings; Santoine's house was one of these.
Eaton felt that its location was well suited for his plans; and he realized, too, that circumstances had given him time for anything he might wish to do; for the night's stop at Minneapolis and Santoine's unexpected taking him into his own charge must have made Eaton's disappearance complete; for the present he was lost to "them" who had been "following" him, and to his friends alike. His task, then, was to let his friends know where he was without letting "them" learn it; and thinking of how this was to be done, he fell asleep again.
At nine he awoke with a start; then, recollecting everything, he jumped up and shut his windows. There was a respectful, apologetic knock at the door; evidently a servant had been waiting in the hall for some sound within the room.
"May I come in, sir?"
"Come in."
The man who had attended him the evening before entered.
"Your bath, sir; hot or cold in the morning, sir?"
"Hot," Eaton answered.
"Of course, sir; I'd forgotten you'd just come from the Orient, sir. Do you wish anything first, sir?"
"Anything?"
"Anything to drink, sir."
"Oh, no."
The man again prepared the bath. When Eaton returned to his dressing-room, he found the servant awaiting him with shaving mug, razor and apron. The man shaved him and trimmed his hair.
"I shall tell them to bring breakfast up, sir; or will you go down?" the man asked then.
Eaton considered. The manners of servants are modeled on the feelings of their masters, and the man's deference told plainly that, although Eaton might be a prisoner, he was not to be treated openly as such.
"I think I can go down," Eaton replied, when the man had finished dressing him. He found the hall and the rooms below bright and open but unoccupied; a servant showed him to a blue Delft breakfast room to the east, where a fire was burning in an old-fashioned Dutch fireplace. A cloth was spread on the table, but no places were set; a number of covered dishes, steaming above electric discs, were on the sideboard. The servant in attendance there took covers off these dishes as Eaton approached; he chose his breakfast and sat down, the man laying one place for him. This manner of serving gave Eaton no hint as to how many others were in the house or might be expected to breakfast. He had half finished his bacon and greens before any one else appeared.
This was a tall, carefully dressed man of more than fifty, with handsome, well-bred features—plainly a man of position and wealth but without experience in affairs, and without power. He was dark haired and wore a mustache which, like his hair, was beginning to gray. As he appeared in the hall without hat or overcoat, Eaton understood that he lived in the house; he came directly into the breakfast room and evidently had not breakfasted. He observed Eaton and gave him the impersonal nod of a man meeting another whom he may have met but has forgotten.
"Good morning, Stiles," he greeted the servant.
"Good morning, sir," the man returned.
The newcomer sat down at the table opposite Eaton, and the servant, without inquiring his tastes, brought pineapple, rolls and coffee.
"I am Wallace Blatchford," the stranger volunteered as Eaton looked up. He gave the name in a manner which seemed to assume that he now must be recalled; Eaton therefore feigned recognition as he gave him his name in return.
"Basil Santoine is better this morning," Blatchford announced.
"I understood he was very comfortable last evening," Eaton said. "I have not seen either Miss Santoine or Mr. Avery this morning."
"I saw Basil Santoine the last thing last night," the other boasted. "He was very tired; but when he was home, of course he wished me to be beside him for a time."
"Of course," Eaton replied, as the other halted. There was a humility in the boast of this man's friendship for Santoine which stirred sympathy, almost pity.
"I believe with the doctors that Basil Santoine is to be spared," the tall man continued. "The nation is to be congratulated. He is certainly one of the most useful men in America. The President—much as he is to be admired for unusual qualities—cannot compare in service. Suppose the President were assassinated; instantly the Vice President would take his place; the visible government of the country would go on; there would be no chaos, scarcely any confusion. But suppose Basil Santoine had died—particularly at this juncture!"
Eaton finished his breakfast but remained at the table while Blatchford, who scarcely touched his food, continued to boast, in his queer humility, of the blind man and of the blind man's friendship for him. He checked himself only when Harriet Santoine appeared in the doorway. He and Eaton at once were on their feet.
"My dear! He wants to see me now?" the tall man almost pleaded. "He wants me to be with him this morning?"
"Of course, Cousin Wallace," the girl said gently, almost with compassion.
"You will excuse me then, sir," Blatchford said hastily to Eaton and hurried off. The girl gazed after him, and when she turned the next instant to Eaton her eyes were wet.
"Good morning!"
"Good morning, Miss Santoine. You are coming to breakfast?"
"Oh, no; I've had my breakfast; I was going out to see that things outside the house have been going on well since we have been away."
"May I go with you while you do that?" Eaton tried to ask casually. Important to him as was the plan of the house, it was scarcely less essential for him to know the grounds.
She hesitated.
"I understand it's my duty at present to stay wherever I may be put; but I'd hardly run away from you while inside your own grounds."
This did not seem to be the question troubling her. "Very well," she said at last. The renewed friendliness—or the reservation of judgment of him—which she had let him see again after the interview with her father in the car the morning before, was not absent; it seemed only covered over with responsibilities which came upon her now that she was at home. She was abstracted as they passed through the hall and a man brought Eaton's overcoat and hat and a maid her coat. Harriet led the way out to the terrace. The day was crisp, but the breeze had lost the chill it had had earlier in the morning; the lake was free from ice; only along the little projecting breakwaters which guarded the bluff against the washing of the waves, some ice still clung, and this was rapidly melting. A graveled path led them around the south end of the house.
"Your father is still better this morning?" Eaton asked.
"What did you say?" she asked.
He repeated his question. Was her constraint, he wondered, due to her feeling, somehow, that for the first time in their short acquaintance he was consciously "using" her, if only for the purpose of gaining an immediate view of the grounds? He felt that; but he told himself he was not doing the sort of thing he had refused to do when, on the train, he had avoided her invitation to present him to her father. Circumstances now were entirely different. And as he shook off the reproach to himself, she also came from her abstraction.
"Yes; Father's improving steadily and—Dr. Sinclair says—much more rapidly than it would have been right to expect. Dr. Sinclair is going to remain only to-day; then he is to turn Father over to the village doctor, who is very good. We will keep the same nurses at present."
"Mr. Blatchford told me that might be the arrangement."
"Oh, you had some talk with Mr. Blatchford, then?"
"We introduced ourselves."
Harriet was silent for a moment, evidently expecting some comment from him; when he offered none, she said, "Father would not like you to accept the estimate of him which Mr. Blatchford must have given you."
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't Mr. Blatchford argue with you that Father must be the greatest man living?"
"He certainly expressed great admiration for your father," Eaton said. "He is your cousin?"
"I call him that; he's Father's cousin. They were very close friends when they were boys, though Cousin Wallace is a few years older. They entered preparatory school together and were together all through college and ever since. I suppose Cousin Wallace told you that it was he— Those are the garages and stables over there to the north, Mr. Eaton. This road leads to them. And over there are the toolhouses and gardeners' quarters; you can only just see them through the trees."
She had interrupted herself suddenly, as though she realized that his attention had not been upon what she was saying but given to the plan of the grounds. He recalled himself quickly.
"Yes; what was it you were saying about Mr. Blatchford?"
She glanced at him keenly, then colored and went on. "I was saying that Father and he went through college together. They both were looked upon as young men of very unusual promise—Mr. Blatchford especially; I suppose because Father, being younger, had not shown so plainly what he might become. Then Father was blinded—he was just sixteen; and—and Cousin Wallace never fulfilled the promise he had given."
"I don't quite see the connection," Eaton offered.
"Oh, I thought Cousin Wallace must have told you; he tells almost every one as soon as he meets them. It was he who blinded Father. It was a hunting accident, and Father was made totally blind. Father always said it wasn't Cousin Wallace's fault; but Mr. Blatchford was almost beside himself because he believed he had ruined Father's life. But Father went on and did all that he has done, while it stopped poor Cousin Wallace. It's queer how things work out! Cousin Wallace thought it was Father's, but it was his own life that he destroyed. He's happy only when Father wants him with him; and to himself—and to most people—he's only the man that blinded Basil Santoine."
"I think I shall understand him now," Eaton said quietly.
"I like the way you said that.... Here, Mr. Eaton, is the best place to see the grounds."
Their path had topped a little rise; they stopped; and Eaton, as she pointed out the different objects, watched carefully and printed the particulars and the general arrangement of the surroundings on his memory.
As he looked about, he could see that further ahead the path they were on paralleled a private drive which two hundred yards away entered what must be the public pike; for he could see motor-cars passing along it. He noted the direction of this and of the other paths, so that he could follow them in the dark, if necessary. The grounds were broken by ravines at right angles to the shore, which were crossed by little bridges; other bridges carried the public pike across them, for he could hear them rumble as the motor-cars crossed them; a man could travel along the bottom of one of those ravines for quite a distance without being seen. To north and south outside of the cared-for grounds there were clumps of rank, wild-growing thicket. To the east, the great house which the trees could not hide stood out against the lake, and beyond and below it, was the beach; but a man could not travel along the beach by daylight without being visible for miles from the top of the bluff, and even at night, one traveling along the beach would be easily intercepted.
Could Harriet Santoine divine these thoughts in his mind? He turned to her as he felt her watching him; but if she had been observing him as he looked about, she was not regarding him now. He followed her direction and saw at a little distance a powerful, strapping man, half-concealed—though he did not seem to be hiding—behind some bushes. The man might have passed for an undergardener; but he was not working; and once before during their walk Eaton had seen another man, powerfully built as this one, who had looked keenly at him and then away quickly. Harriet flushed slightly as she saw that Eaton observed the man; Eaton understood then that the man was a guard, one of several, probably, who had been put about the house to keep watch of him.
Had Harriet Santoine understood his interest in the grounds as preparatory to a plan to escape, and had she therefore taken him out to show him the guards who would prevent him? He did not speak of the men, and neither did she; with her, he went on, silently, to the gardeners' cottages, where she gave directions concerning the spring work being done on the grounds. Then they went back to the house, exchanging—for the first time between them—ordinary inanities.
She left him in the hall, saying she was going to visit her father; but part way up the stairs, she paused.
"You'll find books in the library of every conceivable sort, Mr. Eaton," she called down to him.
"Thank you," he answered; and he went into the library, but he did not look for a book. Left alone, he stood listening.
As her footsteps on the stairs died away, no other sound came to him. The lower part of the house seemed deserted. He went out again into the hall and looked about quickly and waited and listened; then he stepped swiftly and silently to a closet where, earlier, he had noticed a telephone. He shut himself in and took up the receiver of the instrument. As he placed it to his ear, he heard the almost imperceptible sound of another receiver on the line being lifted; then the girl at the suburban central said, "Number, please."
Eaton held the receiver to his ear without making reply. The other person on the line—evidently it was an extension in the house—also remained silent. The girl at central repeated the request; neither Eaton nor the other person replied. Eaton hung up the receiver and stepped from the closet. He encountered Donald Avery in the hall.
"You have been telephoning?" Avery asked.
"No."
"Oh; you could not get your number?"
"I did not ask for it."
Eaton gazed coolly at Avery, knowing now that Avery had been at the other telephone on the line or had had report from the person who had been prepared to overhear.
"So you have had yourself appointed my—warden?"
Avery took a case from his pocket and lighted a cigar without offering Eaton one. Eaton glanced past him; Harriet Santoine was descending the stair. Avery turned and saw her, and again taking out his cigar-case, now offered it to Eaton, who ignored it.
"I found Father asleep," Harriet said to Eaton.
"May I see you alone for a moment?" he asked.
"Of course," she said; and as Avery made no motion, she turned toward the door of the large room in the further end of the south wing. Eaton started to follow.
"Where are you taking him, Harriet?" Avery demanded of her sharply.
She had seemed to Eaton to have been herself about to reconsider her action; but Avery decided her.
"In here," she replied; and proceeded to open the door which exposed another door just within, which she opened and closed after she had entered and Eaton had followed her in. Her manner was like that of half an hour before, when she showed him the grounds beyond the house. And Eaton, feeling his muscles tighten, strove to control himself and examine the room with only casual curiosity. It would well excuse any one's interest.
It was very large, perhaps forty feet long and certainly thirty in width. There was a huge stone fireplace on the west wall where the wing connected with the main part of the house; and all about the other wall, and particularly to the east, were high and wide windows; and through those to the south, the sunlight now was flooding in. Bookcases were built between the windows up to the ceiling, and bookcases covered the west wall on both sides of the fireplace. And every case was filled with books; upon a table at one side lay a pile of volumes evidently recently received and awaiting reading and classification. There was a great rack where periodicals of every description—popular, financial, foreign and American—were kept; and there were great presses preserving current newspapers.
At the center of the room was a large table-desk with a chair and a lounge beside it; there were two other lounges in the room, one at the south in the sun and another at the end toward the lake. There were two smaller table-desks on the north side of the room, subordinate to the large desk. There were two "business phonograph" machines with cabinets for records; there was a telephone on the large desk and others on the two smaller tables. A safe, with a combination lock, was built into a wall. The most extraordinary feature of the room was a steep, winding staircase, in the corner beyond the fireplace, evidently connecting with the room above.
The room in which they were was so plainly Basil Santoine's work-room that the girl did not comment upon that; but as Eaton glanced at the stairs, she volunteered:
"They go to Father's room; that has the same space above."
"I see. This is a rather surprising room."
"You mean the windows?" she asked. "That surprises most people—so very much light. Father can't see even sunlight, but he says he feels it. He likes light, anyway; and it is true that he can tell, without his eyes, whether the day is bright or cloudy, and whether the light is turned on at night. The rooms in this wing, too, are nearly sound-proof. There is not much noise from outside here, of course, except the waves; but there are noises from other parts of the house. Noise does not irritate Father, but his hearing has become very acute because of his blindness, and noises sometimes distract him when he is working.... Now, what was it you wished to say to me, Mr. Eaton?"
Eaton, with a start, recollected himself. His gaining a view of that room was of so much more importance than what he had to say that, for a moment, he had forgotten. Then:
"I wanted to ask you exactly what my position here is to be."
"Oh," she said. "I thought that was plain to you from what Father said."
"You mean that I am to be kept here?"
"Yes."
"Indefinitely?"
"Until—as Father indicated to you on the train—he has satisfied himself as to the source of the attack upon him."
"I understand. In the meantime, I am not to be allowed to communicate at all with any one outside?"
"That might depend upon the circumstances."
He gazed at the telephone instrument on the desk. "Miss Santoine, a moment ago I tried to telephone, when I—" He described the incident to her. The color on her cheeks heightened. "Some one was appointed to listen on the wire?" he challenged.
"Yes." She hesitated, and then she added, in the manner in which she had directed him to the guard outside the house: "And besides, I believe there are—or will be—the new phonographic devices on every line, which record both sides of a conversation. Subject to that, you may use the telephone."
"Thank you," said Eaton grimly. "I suppose if I were to write a letter, it would be taken from me and opened and read."
She colored ruddier and made no comment.
"And if I wished to go to the city, I would be prevented or followed?"
"Prevented, for the present," she replied.
"Thank you."
"That is all?"
The interview had become more difficult for her; he saw that she was anxious to have it over.
"Just one moment more, Miss Santoine. Suppose I resist this?"
"Yes?"
"Your father is having me held here in what I might describe as a free sort of confinement, but still in confinement, without any legal charge against me. Suppose I refuse to submit to that—suppose I demand right to consult, to communicate with some one in order, let us say, to defend myself against the charge of having attacked your father. What then?"
"I can only answer as before, Mr. Eaton."
"That I will be prevented?"
"For the present. I don't know all that Father has ordered done about you; but he is awaiting the result of several investigations. The telegrams you received doubtless are being traced to their sources; other inquiries are being made. As you have only lately come back to America, they may extend far and take some time."
"Thank you," he acknowledged. He went to the door, opened it and went out; he closed it after him and left her alone.
Harriet stood an instant vacantly staring after him; then she went to the door and fastened it with a catch. She came back to the great table-desk—her blind father's desk—and seated herself in the great chair, his chair, and buried her face in her hands. She had seemed—and she knew that she had seemed—quite composed as she talked to Eaton; now she was not composed. Her face was burning hot; her hands, against her cheeks, were cold; tremors of feeling shook her as she thought of the man who just had left her. Why, she asked herself, was she not able to make herself treat this man in the way that her mind told her she should have treated him? That he might be the one who had dealt the blow intended to kill her father—her being could not and would not accept that. Yet, the only reason she had to deny it, was her feeling.
That Eaton must have been involved in the attack or, at least, must have known and now knew something about it which he was keeping from them, seemed certain. Yet she did not, she could not, abominate and hate this man. Instead, she found herself impelled, against all natural reason, more and more to trust him. Moreover, was it fair to her father for her to do this?
Since childhood, since babyhood, even, no one had ever meant anything to her in comparison with her father. Her mother had died when she was young; she had never had, in her play as a child, the careless abandon of other children, because in spite of play she had been thinking of her father; the greatest joy of childhood she could remember was walking hand in hand with her father and telling him the things she saw; it had been their "game"; and as she grew older and it had ceased to be merely a game—as she had grown more and more useful to the blind man, and he had learned more fully to use and trust her—she had found it only more interesting, a greater pleasure. She had never had any other ambition—and she had no other now—except to serve her father; her joy was to be his eyes; her triumph had been when she had found that, though he searched the world and paid fortunes to find others to "see" for him, no one could serve him as she could; she had never thought of herself apart from him.
Now her father had been attacked and injured—attacked foully, while he slept; he had come close to death, had suffered; he was still suffering. Certainly she ought to hate, at least be aloof from any one, every one, against whom the faintest suspicion breathed of having been concerned in that dastardly attack upon her father; and that she found herself without aversion to Eaton, when he was with her, now filled her with shame and remorse.
She crouched lower against this desk which so represented her father in his power; she felt tears of shame at herself hot on her cold hands. Then she got up and recollected herself. Her father, when he would awake, would wish to work; there were certain, important matters he must decide at once.
Harriet went to the end of the room and to the right of the entrance door. She looked about, with a habit of caution, and then removed a number of books from a shelf about shoulder high; she thus exposed a panel at the back of the bookcase, which she slid back. Behind it appeared the steel door of a combination wall-safe. She opened it and took out two large, thick envelopes with tape about them, sealed and addressed to Basil Santoine; but they were not stamped, for they had not been through the mail; they had been delivered by a messenger. Harriet reclosed the safe, concealed it and took the envelopes back to her father's desk and opened them to examine their contents preparatory to taking them to him. But even now her mind was not on her work; she was thinking of Eaton, where he had gone and what he was doing and—was he thinking of her?
Eaton had left the room, thinking of her. The puzzle of his position in relation to her, and hers to him, filled his mind too. That she had been constrained by circumstances and the opinions of those around her to assume a distrust of him which she did not truly feel, was plain to him; but it was clear that, whatever she felt, she would obey her father's directions in regard to him. And she had told that Basil Santoine, if he was to hold his prisoner as almost a guest in his house pending developments, was to keep that guest strictly from communication with any one outside. Santoine, of course, was aware from the telegram that others had been acting with Eaton; the incident at the telephone had shown that Santoine had anticipated that Eaton's first necessity would be to get in touch with his friends. And this, now, indeed was a necessity. The gaining of Santoine's house, under conditions which he would not have dared to dream of, would be worthless now unless immediately—before Santoine could get any further trace of him—he could get word to and receive word from his friends.
He had stopped, after leaving Santoine's study, in the alcove of the hall in front of the double doors which he had closed behind him; he heard Harriet fasten the inner one. As he stood now, undecided where to go, a young woman crossed the main part of the hall, coming evidently from outside the house—she had on hat and jacket and was gloved; she was approaching the doors of the room he just had left, and so must pass him. He stared at sight of her and choked; then, he controlled himself rigidly, waiting until she should see him.
She halted suddenly as she saw him and grew very pale, and her gloved hands went swiftly to her breast and pressed against it; she caught herself together and looked swiftly and fearfully about her and out into the hall. Seeing no one but himself, she came a step nearer, "Hugh!" she breathed. Her surprise was plainly greater than his own had been at sight of her; but she checked herself again quickly and looked warningly back at the hall; then she fixed on him her blue eyes—which were very like Eaton's, though she did not resemble him closely in any other particular—as though waiting his instructions.
He passed her and looked about the hall. There was no one in sight in the hall or on the stairs or within the other rooms which opened into the hall. The door Eaton had just come from stayed shut. He held his breath while he listened; but there was no sound anywhere in the house which told him they were likely to be seen; so he came back to the spot where he had been standing.
"Stay where you are, Edith," he whispered. "If we hear any one coming, we are just passing each other in the hall."
"I understand; of course, Hugh! But you—you're here! In his house!"
"Even lower, Edith; remember I'm Eaton—Philip Eaton."
"Of course; I know; and I'm Miss Davis here—Mildred Davis."
"They let you come in and out like this—as you want, with no one watching you?"
"No, no; I do stenography for Mr. Avery sometimes, as I wrote you. That is all. When he works here, I do his typing; and some even for Mr. Santoine himself. But I am not confidential yet; they send for me when they want me."
"Then they sent for you to-day?"
"No; but they have just got back, and I thought I would come to see if anything was wanted. But never mind about me; you—how did you get here? What are you doing here?"