Eaton drew further back into the alcove as some one passed through the hall above. The girl turned swiftly to the tall pier mirror near to which she stood; she faced it, slowly drawing off her gloves, trembling and not looking toward him. The foot-steps ceased overhead; Eaton, assured no one was coming down the stairs, spoke swiftly to tell her as much as he might in their moment. "He—Santoine—wasn't taken ill on the train, Edith; he was attacked."
"Attacked!" Her lips barely moved.
"He was almost killed; but they concealed it, Edith—pretended he was only ill. I was on the train—you know, of course; I got your wire—and they suspected me of the attack."
"You? But they didn't find out about you, Hugh?"
"No; they are investigating. Santoine would not let them make anything public. He brought me here while he is trying to find out about me. So I'm here, Edith—here! Is it here too?"
Again steps sounded in the hall above. The girl swiftly busied herself with gloves and hat; Eaton stood stark in suspense. The servant above—it was a servant they had heard before, he recognized now—merely crossed from one room to another overhead. Now the girl's lips moved again.
"It?" She formed the question noiselessly.
"The draft of the new agreement."
"It either has been sent to him, or it will be sent to him very soon—here."
"Here in this house with me!"
"Mr. Santoine has to be a party to it—he's to draft it, I think. Anyway, he hasn't seen it yet—I know that. It is either here now, Hugh, or it will be here before long."
"You can't find out about that?"
"Whether it is here, or when it will be? I think I can."
"Where will it be when it is here?"
"Where? Oh!" The girl's eyes went to the wall close to where Eaton stood; she seemed to measure with them a definite distance from the door and a point shoulder high, and to resist the impulse to come over and put her hand upon the spot. As Eaton followed her look, he heard a slight and muffled click as if from the study; but no sound could reach them through the study doors and what he heard came from the wall itself.
"A safe?" he whispered.
"Yes; Miss Santoine—she's in there, isn't she?—closed it just now. There are two of them hidden behind the books one on each side of the door."
Eaton tapped gently on the wall; the wall was brick; the safe undoubtedly was backed with steel.
"The best way is from inside the room," he concluded.
She nodded. "Yes. If you—"
"Look out!"
Some one now was coming downstairs. The girl had time only to whisper swiftly, "If we don't get a chance to speak again, watch that vase." She pointed to a bronze antique which stood on a table near them. "When I'm sure the agreement is in the house, I'll drop a glove-button in that—a black one, if I think it'll be in the safe on the right, white on the left. Now go."
Eaton moved quietly on and into the drawing-room. Avery's voice immediately afterwards was heard; he was speaking to Miss Davis, whom he had found in the hallway. Eaton was certain there was no suspicion that he had talked with her there; indeed, Avery seemed to suppose that Eaton was still in the study with Harriet Santoine. It was her lapse, then, which had let him out and had given him that chance; but it was a lapse, he discovered, which was not likely to favor him again. From that time, while never held strictly in restraint, he found himself always in the sight of some one. Blatchford, in default of any one else, now appeared to assume the oversight of him as his duty. Eaton lunched with Blatchford, dined with Blatchford and Avery—Blatchford's presence as a buffer against Avery's studied offense to him alone making the meal endurable. Eaton went to his room early, where at last he was left alone.
The day, beginning with his discovery of the fact that he was in Santoine's house and continuing through the walk outside, which first had shown him the lay of the grounds, and then the chance at the sight of Santoine's study followed by the meeting just outside the study door—all this had been more than satisfactory to him. He sat at his window thinking it over. The weather had been clear and there was a moon; as he watched the light upon the water and gazed now and again at the south wing where Santoine had his study, suddenly several windows on the first floor blazed out simultaneously; some one had entered Santoine's work-room and turned on the light. Almost at once the light went out; then, a minute or so later, the same windows glowed dully. The lights in the room had been turned on again, but heavy, opaque curtains had been drawn over the windows before the room was relighted. These curtains were so close over the windows that, unless Eaton had been attracted by the first flash of light, he scarcely would have noticed that the lights were burning within the room.
He had observed, during the day, that Avery or Harriet had been at work in that room—one of them or both—almost all day; and besides the girl he had met in the hall, there had been at least one other stenographer. Must work in this house go on so continuously that it was necessary for some one to work at night, even when Santoine lay ill and unable to make other than the briefest and most important dispositions? And who was working in that room now, Avery or Harriet? He let himself think, idly, about the girl—how strange her life had been—that part of it at least which was spent, as he had gathered most of her waking hours of recent years had been spent, with her father. Strange, almost, as his own life! And what a wonderful girl it had made of her—clever, sweet, lovable, with more than a woman's ordinary capacity for devotion and self-sacrifice.
But, if she were the one working there, was she the sort of girl she had seemed to be? If her service to her father was not only on his personal side but if also she was intimate in his business affairs, must she not therefore have shared the cruel code which had terrorized Eaton for the last four years and kept him an exile in Asia and which, at any hour yet, threatened to take his life? A grim set came to Eaton's lips; his mind went again to his own affairs.
In the supposition that he was to have less liberty, Eaton proved correct. Harriet Santoine, to whose impulses had been due his first privileges, showed toward him a more constrained attitude the following morning. She did not suggest hostility, as Avery constantly did; nor, indeed, was there any evidence of retrogression in her attitude toward him; she seemed merely to be maintaining the same position; and since this seemed difficult if they were often together, she avoided him. Eaton found his life in the house after that first day more strictly ordered into a routine which he was obliged to keep. He understood that Santoine, steadily improving but not yet able to leave his bed, had taken up his work again, propped up by pillows; one of the nurses had been dismissed; the other was only upon day duty. But Eaton did not see Santoine at all; and though he learned that Miss Davis or another stenographer, whose name was West, came daily to the house, he never was in a position again to encounter any outsider either coming or going. Besides the servants of the house, he met Blatchford, with whom Eaton usually breakfasted; he also lunched with Blatchford, and Harriet sometimes—sometimes with Avery; he dined with Blatchford and Avery or with all three.
At other times, except that he was confined to the house or to a small space of the grounds about it and was kept under constant surveillance, he was left largely to his own devices; and these at least sufficed to let him examine morning and night, the vase in which he was to find the signal that was to be left for him; these permitted examination of window-locks in other rooms, if not in Santoine's study; these permitted the examination of many other items also and let him follow at least the outline of the method of Santoine's work.
There was no longer room for Eaton to doubt that Harriet had the confidence of her father to almost a complete extent. Now that Santoine was ill, she worked with him daily for hours; and Eaton learned that she did the same when he was well. But Avery worked with the blind man too; he too was certainly in a confidential capacity. Was it not probable then that Avery, and not Harriet, was entrusted with the secrets of dangerous and ugly matters; or was it possible that this girl, worshiping her father as she did, could know and be sure that, because her father approved these matters, they were right?
A hundred times a day, as Eaton saw or spoke with the girl or thought of her presence near by, this obsessed him. A score of times during their casual talk upon meeting at meals or elsewhere, he found himself turned toward some question which would aid him in determining what must be the fact; but each time he checked himself, until one morning—it was the fifth after his arrival at Santoine's house—Harriet was taking him for his walk in the garden before the house.
It was a bright, sunshiny morning and warm—a true spring day. As they paced back and forth in the sunshine—she bare-haired and he holding his cap in his hand—he looked back at the room in the wing where Santoine still lay; then Eaton looked to the daughter, clear-eyed, clear-skinned, smiling and joyous with the day. She had just told him, at his inquiry, that her father was very much stronger that morning, and her manner more than ever evidenced her pride in him.
"I have been intending to ask you, Miss Santoine," Eaton said to her suddenly then, "if your belief in the superiority of business over war—as we were discussing it ten days ago—-hasn't suffered a shock since then?"
"You mean because of—Father?"
"Yes; you can hardly go back far enough in the history of war to find a time when the soldier's creed was not against killing—or trying to kill—a sleeping enemy."
She looked at him quickly and keenly. "I can't think of Father as being any one's enemy, though I know of course no man can do big things without making some people hate him. Even if what he does is wholly good, bad people hate him for it." She was silent for a few steps. "I like your saying what you did, Mr. Eaton."
"Why?"
"It implies your own creed would be against such a thing. But aren't we rather mixing things up? There is nothing to show yet that the attack on Father sprang out of business relations; and even if it did, it would have to be regarded as an—an atrocity outside the rules of business, just as in war, atrocities occur which are outside the rules of war. Wait! I know what you are going to say; you are going to say the atrocities are a part of war even if they are outside its recognized rules."
"Yes; I was going to say that."
"And that atrocities due to business are a part of business, even if they are outside the rules."
"Yes; as business is at present conducted."
"But the rules are a part of the game, Mr. Eaton."
"Do you belong among the apologists for war, Miss Santoine?"
"I?"
"Yes; what you say is exactly what the apologists for war say, isn't it? They say that war, in spite of its open savagery and inevitable atrocities, is not a different sort of combat from the combat between men in time of peace. That is, the acts of war differ only in appearance or in degree from the acts of peace. Is that what you believe, Miss Santoine?"
"That men in times of peace perform acts upon each other which differ only in degree from the acts of war?"
"Yes."
"Do you believe that, Mr. Eaton?"
He hesitated. "Do you want me to answer that question from my own experience or from what I would like to believe life to be?"
"From your own experience, of course."
"Then I must answer that I believe the apologists to be right as to that fact."
He saw her clear eyes darken. "But you don't believe that argument itself, do you, Mr. Eaton?" she appealed. "It is only the old, old argument, 'Whatever is, is right.' You don't excuse those acts—those atrocities in time of peace? Or was I mistaken in thinking such things were against your creed? Life is part right, part wrong, isn't it?"
"I am not in a good position to judge, I'm afraid; for what I have seen of it has been all wrong—both business and life."
He had tried to speak lightly; but a sudden bitterness, a sharp hardness in his tone, seemed to assail her; it struck through her and brought her shoulders together in a shudder; but, instead of alienating her, she turned with a deeper impulse of feeling toward him.
"You—you do not want to tell more—to tell how it has been wrong; you don't want to tell that—" She hesitated, and then in an intimate way which surprised and frightened him, she added, "to me?"
After she had said it, she herself was surprised, and frightened; she looked away from him with face flushed, and he did not dare answer, and she did not speak again.
They had come to the end of the gardens where he was accustomed to turn and retrace his steps toward the house; but now she went on, and he went on with her. They were upon the wide pike which ran northward following, but back from, the shore of the lake. He saw that now, as a motor passed them on the road, she recalled that she was taking him past the previously appointed bounds; but in the intimacy of the moment, she could not bring herself to speak of that. It was Eaton who halted and asked, "Shall we go on?"
"Wouldn't you like to?"
They walked on slowly. "I wish you could tell me more about yourself, Mr. Eaton."
"I wish so too," he said.
"Then why can you not?" She turned to him frankly; he gazed at her a moment and then looked away and shook his head. How had she answered, in what she already had said, the question which lay below what he had asked her? In her defense of business, did she know all the cruelties of business and defend the wrong she knew, together with the right, as inevitable? Or did she not know all of what was known even under her father's roof; and if she knew all, would she then loathe or defend it? Another motor sped near, halted and then speeded on again; Eaton, looking up, saw it was a runabout with Avery alone in it; evidently, seeing them in the road, Avery had halted to protest, then thought better of it and gone on. But other motors passed now with people who spoke to Harriet and who stopped to inquire for her father and wish him well.
"Your father does not seem to be one of the great men without honor in his own neighborhood," Eaton said to her after one of these had halted and gone on.
"Every one who knows Father likes and admires him!" she rejoiced.
"I don't mean exactly that," Eaton went on. "They must trust him too, in an extraordinary way. His associates must place most complete confidence in him when they leave to him the adjustment of matters such as I understand they do. There is no way, as I comprehend it, that any of the powerful men who ask his advice could hold him accountable if he were unfair to them; yet men of the most opposite types, the most inimical and hostile, place their affairs in his hands. He tells them what is just, and they abide by his decision."
Harriet shook her head. "No; it isn't quite that," she said.
"What, then?"
"You are correct in saying that men of the most opposite sorts—and most irreconcilable to each other—constantly place their fate in Father's hand; and when he tells them what they must do, they abide by his decision. But he doesn't decide for them what is just."
"I don't understand."
"Father cannot tell them which side is just because, if he did that, they wouldn't consider his decision; and they wouldn't ask him to make any more; he would lose all influence for better relations. So he doesn't tell them what is just."
"What does he tell them, then?"
"He tells them what would be the outcome if they fought, who would win and who would lose and by how much. And they believe him and abide by his decision without fighting; for he knows; and they know that he knows and is absolutely honest."
Eaton was silent for a moment as they walked along. "How can he come to his decision?" he asked at last.
"How?"
"I mean, much of the material presented to him must be documentary."
"Much of it is."
"You will pardon me," Eaton prefaced, "but of course I am immensely interested. How are these written out for him—in Braille characters or other letters for the blind?"
"No; that would not be practicable for all documents, and so it is done with none of them."
"Then some one must read them to him."
"Of course."
Eaton started to speak—then refrained.
"What were you going to say?" she questioned.
"That the person—or persons—who reads the documents to him must occupy an extremely delicate position."
"He does. In fact, I think that position is Father's one nightmare."
"Nightmare?"
"The person he trusts must not only be absolutely discreet but absolutely honest."
"I should think so. If any one in that position wanted to use the information brought to your father, he could make himself millions overnight, undoubtedly, and ruin other men."
"And kill Father too," the girl added quietly. "Yes," she said as Eaton looked at her. "Father puts nothing above his trust. If that trust were betrayed—whether or not Father were in any way to blame for it—I think it would kill him."
"So you are the one who is in that position."
"Yes; that is, I have been."
"You mean there is another now; that is, of course, Mr. Avery?"
"Yes; here at this house Mr. Avery and I, and Mr. Avery at the office. There are some others at the office whom Father trusts, but not completely; and it is not necessary to trust them wholly, for all Father's really important decisions are made at the house, and the most important records are kept here. Before Mr. Avery came, I was the only one who helped here at the house."
"When was that?"
"When Mr. Avery came? About five years ago. Father had an immense amount of work at that time. Business conditions were very much unsettled. There was trouble at that time between some of the big Eastern and the big Western men, and at the same time the Government was prosecuting the Trusts. Nobody knew what the outcome of it all would be; many of the biggest men who consulted Father were like men groping in the dark. I don't suppose you would remember the time by what I say; but you would remember it, as nearly everybody else does by this: it was the time of the murder of Mr. Latron."
"Yes; I remember that," said Eaton; "and Mr. Avery came to you at that time?"
"Yes; just at that time I was thrown from my horse, and could not do as much as I had been doing, so Mr. Avery was sent to Father."
"Then Mr. Avery was reading to him at the time you speak of—the time of the Latron murder?"
"No; Mr. Avery came just afterward. I was reading to him at that time."
"No one but you?"
"No one. Before that he had had Mr. Blatchford read to him sometimes, but—poor Cousin Wallace!—he made a terrible mistake in reading to Father once. Father discovered it before it was too late; and he never let Cousin Wallace know. He pretends to trust Cousin Wallace now with reading some things; but he always has Mr. Avery or me go over them with him afterward."
"The papers must have been a good deal for a girl of eighteen."
"At that time, you mean? They were; but Father dared trust no one else."
"Mr. Avery handles those matters now for your father?"
"The continuation of what was going on then? Yes; he took them up at the time I was hurt and so has kept on looking after them; for there has been plenty for me to do without that; and those things have all been more or less settled now. They have worked themselves out as things do, though they seemed almost unsolvable at the time. One thing that helped in their solution was that Father was able, that time, to urge what was just, as well as what was advisable."
"You mean that in the final settlement of them no one suffered?"
"No one, I think—except, of course, poor Mr. Latron; and that was a private matter not connected in any direct way with the questions at issue. Why do you ask all this, Mr. Eaton?"
"I was merely interested in you—in what your work has been with your father, and what it is," he answered quietly.
His step had slowed, and she, unconsciously, had delayed with him. Now she realized that his manner toward her had changed from what it had been a few minutes before; he had been strongly moved and drawn toward her then, ready to confide in her; now he showed only his usual quiet reserve—polite, casual, unreadable. She halted and faced him, abruptly, chilled with disappointment.
"Mr. Eaton," she demanded, "a few minutes ago you were going to tell me something about yourself; you seemed almost ready to speak; now—"
"Now I am not, you mean?"
"Yes; what has changed you? Is it something I have said?"
He seemed to reflect. "Are you sure that anything has changed me? I think you were mistaken. You asked if I could not tell you more about myself; I said I wished I could, and that perhaps I might. I meant some time in the future; and I still hope I may—some time."
His look and tone convinced her; for she could recall nothing he had asked about herself or that she had replied to, which could have made any change in him. She studied him an instant more, fighting her disappointment and the feeling of having been rebuffed.
They had been following the edge of the road, she along a path worn in the turf, he on the edge of the road itself and nearer to the tracks of the motors. As she faced him, she was slightly above him, her face level with his. Suddenly she cried out and clutched at him. As they had stopped, she had heard the sound of a motor approaching them rapidly from behind. Except that this car seemed speeding faster than the others, she had paid no attention and had not turned. Instantaneously, as she had cried and pulled upon him, she had realized that this car was not passing; it was directly behind and almost upon him. She felt him spring to the side as quickly as he could; but her cry and pull upon him were almost too late; as he leaped, the car struck. The blow was glancing, not direct, and he was off his feet and in motion when the wheel struck; but the car hurled him aside and rolled him over and over.
As she rushed to Eaton, the two men in the rear seat of the car turned their heads and looked back.
"Are you all right?" one called to Eaton; but without checking its speed or swerving, the car dashed on and disappeared down the roadway.
She bent over Eaton and took hold of him. He struggled to his feet and, dazed, tottered so that she supported him. As she realized that he was not greatly hurt, she stared with horror at the turn in the road where the car had disappeared.
"Why, he tried to run you down! He meant to! He tried to hurt you!" she cried.
"No," Eaton denied. "Oh, no; I don't think so."
"But they went on without stopping; they didn't wait an instant. He didn't care; he meant to do it!"
"No!" Eaton unsteadily denied again. "It must have been—an accident. He was—frightened when he saw what he had done."
"It wasn't at all like an accident!" she persisted. "It couldn't have been an accident there and coming up from behind the way he did! No; he meant to do it! Did you see who was in the car—who was driving?"
He turned to her quickly. "Who?" he demanded.
"One of the people who was on the train! That man—the morning we—the morning Father was hurt—do you remember, when you came into the dining car for breakfast and the conductor wanted to seat you opposite a young man who had just spilled coffee? You sat down at our table instead. Don't you remember—a little man, nervous, but very strong; a man almost like an ape?"
He shuddered and then controlled himself. "Nothing!" he answered her clasp of concern on his arm. "Quite steady again; thanks. Just dizzy; I guess I was jarred more than I knew. Yes, I remember a fellow the conductor tried to seat me opposite."
"This was the same man!"
Eaton shook his head. "That could hardly be; I think you must be mistaken."
"I am not mistaken; it was that man!"
"Still, I think you must be," he again denied.
She stared, studying him. "Perhaps I was," she agreed; but she knew she had not been. "I am glad, whoever it was, he didn't injure you. You are all right, aren't you?"
"Quite," he assured. "Please don't trouble about it, Miss Santoine."
He dusted himself off with her help and tried to limp as little as possible; and when she insisted upon returning to the house, he made no objection, but he refused to wait while she went back for a car to take him. They walked back rather silently, she appreciating how passionately she had expressed herself for him, and he quiet because of this and other thoughts too.
They found Donald Avery in front of the house looking for them as they came up. Eaton succeeded in walking without limping; but he could not conceal the marks on his clothes.
"Harriet, I've just come from your father; he wants you to go to him at once," Avery directed. "Good morning, Eaton. What's happened?"
"Carelessness," Eaton deprecated. "Got rather in the way of a motor and was knocked over for it."
Harriet did not correct this to Avery. She went up to her father; she was still trembling, still sick with horror at what she had seen—an attempt to kill one walking at her side. She stopped outside her father's door to compose herself; then she went in.
The blind man was propped up on his bed with pillows into almost a sitting position; the nurse was with him.
"What did you want, Father?" Harriet asked.
He had recognized her step and had been about to speak to her; but at the sound of her voice he stopped the words on his lips and changed them into a direction for the nurse to leave the room.
He waited until the nurse had left and closed the door behind her. Harriet saw that, in his familiarity with her tones and every inflection of her voice, he had sensed already that something unusual had occurred; she repeated, however, her question as to what he wanted.
"That does not matter now, Harriet. Where have you been?"
"I have been walking with Mr. Eaton."
"What happened?"
She hesitated. "Mr. Eaton was almost run down by a motor-car."
"Ah! An accident?"
She hesitated again. She had seen on her father's face the slight heightening of his color which, with him, was the only outward sign that marked some triumph of his own mind; his blind eyes, abstracted and almost always motionless, never showed anything at all.
"Mr. Eaton said it was an accident," she answered.
"But you?"
"It did not look to me like an accident, Father. It—it showed intention."
"You mean it was an attack?"
"Yes; it was an attack. The man in the car meant to run Mr. Eaton down; he meant to kill him or to hurt him terribly. Mr. Eaton wasn't hurt. I called to him and pulled him—he jumped away in time."
"To kill him, Harriet? How do you know?"
She caught herself. "I—I don't know, Father. He certainly meant to injure Mr. Eaton. When I said kill him, I was telling only what I thought."
"That is better. I think so too."
"That he meant to kill Mr. Eaton?"
"Yes."
She watched her father's face; often when relating things to him, she was aware from his expression that she was telling him only something he already had figured out and expected or even knew; she felt that now.
"Father, did you expect Mr. Eaton to be attacked?"
"Expect? Not that exactly; it was possible; I suspected something like this might occur."
"And you did not warn him?"
The blind man's hands sought each other on the coverlet and clasped together. "It was not necessary to warn him, Harriet; Mr. Eaton already knew. Who was in the car?"
"Three men."
"Had you seen any of them before?"
"Yes, one—the man who drove."
"Where?"
"On the train."
The color on Santoine's face grew brighter. "Did you know who he was?"
"No, Father."
"Describe him, dear," Santoine directed.
He waited while she called together her recollections of the man.
"I can't describe him very fully, Father," she said. "He was one of the people who had berths in the forward sleeping-car. I can recall seeing him only when I passed through the car—I recall him only twice in that car and once in the diner."
"That is interesting," said Santoine.
"What, Father?"
"That in five days upon the train you saw the man only three times."
"You mean he must have kept out of sight as much as possible?"
"Have you forgotten that I asked you to describe him, Harriet?"
She checked herself. "Height about five feet, five," she said, "broad-shouldered, very heavily set; I remember he impressed me as being unusually muscular. His hair was black; I can't recall the color of his eyes; his cheeks were blue with a heavy beard closely shaved. I remember his face was prognathous, and his clothes were spotted with dropped food. I—it seems hard for me to recall him, and I can't describe him very well."
"But you are sure it was the same man in the motor?"
"Yes."
"Did he seem a capable person?"
"Exactly what do you mean?"
"Would he be likely to execute a purpose well, Harriet—either a purpose of his own, or one in which he had been instructed?"
"He seemed an animal sort of person, small, strong, and not particularly intelligent. It seems hard for me to remember more about him than that."
"That is interesting."
"What?"
"That it is hard for you to remember him very well."
"Why, Father?"
Her father did not answer. "The other men in the motor?" he asked.
"I can't describe them. I—I was excited about Mr. Eaton."
"The motor itself, Harriet?"
"It was a black touring car."
"Make and number?"
"I don't know either of those. I don't remember that I saw a number; it—it may have been taken off or covered up."
"Thank you, dear."
"You mean that is all, then?"
"No; bring Eaton to me."
"He has gone to his room to fix himself up."
"I'll send for him, then." Santoine pressed one of the buttons beside his bed to call a servant; but before the bell could be answered, Harriet got up.
"I'll go myself," she said.
She went out into the hall and closed the door behind her; she waited until she heard the approaching steps of the man summoned by Santoine's bell; then, going to meet him, she sent him to call Eaton in his rooms, and she still waited until the man came back and told her Eaton had already left his rooms and gone downstairs. She dismissed the man and went to the head of the stairs, but her steps slowed there and stopped. She was strained and nervous; often in acting as her father's "eye" and reporting to him what she saw, she felt that he found many insignificant things in her reports which were hidden from herself; and she never had had that feeling more strongly than just now as she was telling him about the attack made on Eaton. So she knew that the blind man's thought in regard to Eaton had taken some immense stride; but she did not know what that stride had been, or what was coming now when her father saw Eaton.
She went on slowly down the stairs, and when halfway down, she saw Eaton in the hall below her. He was standing beside the table which held the bronze antique vase; he seemed to have taken something from the vase and to be examining it. She halted again to watch him; then she went on, and he turned at the sound of her footsteps. She could see, as she approached him, what he had taken from the vase, but she attached no importance to it; it was only a black button from a woman's glove—one of her own, perhaps, which she had dropped without noticing. He tossed it indifferently toward the open fireplace as he came toward her.
"Father wants to see you, Mr. Eaton," she said.
He looked at her intently for an instant and seemed to detect some strangeness in her manner and to draw himself together; then he followed her up the stairs.
Basil Santoine's bedroom, like the study below it, was so nearly sound-proof that anything going on in the room could not be heard in the hall outside it, even close to the double doors. Eaton, as they approached these doors, listened vainly, trying to determine whether any one was in the room with Santoine; then he quickened his step to bring him beside Harriet.
"One moment, please, Miss Santoine," he urged.
She stopped. "What is it you want?"
"Your father has received some answer to the inquiries he has been having made about me?"
"I don't know, Mr. Eaton."
"Is he alone?"
"Yes."
Eaton thought a minute. "That is all I wanted to know, then," he said.
Harriet opened the outer door and knocked on the inner one. Eaton heard Santoine's voice at once calling them to come in, and as Harriet opened the second door, he followed her into the room. The blind man turned his sightless eyes toward them, and, plainly aware—somehow—that it was Eaton and Harriet who had come in, and that no one else was with them, he motioned Harriet to close the door and set a chair for Eaton beside the bed. Eaton, understanding this gesture, took the chair from her and set it as Santoine's motion had directed; then he waited for her to seat herself in one of the other chairs.
"Am I to remain, Father?" she asked.
"Yes," Santoine commanded.
Eaton waited while she went to a chair at the foot of the bed and seated herself—her clasped hands resting on the footboard and her chin upon her hands—in a position to watch both Eaton and her father while they talked; then Eaton sat down.
"Good morning, Eaton," the blind man greeted him.
"Good morning, Mr. Santoine," Eaton answered; he understood by now that Santoine never began a conversation until the one he was going to address himself to had spoken, and that Santoine was able to tell, by the sound of the voice, almost as much of what was going on in the mind of one he talked with as a man with eyes is able to tell by studying the face. He continued to wait quietly, therefore, glancing up once to Harriet Santoine, whose eyes for an instant met his; then both regarded again the face of the blind man on the bed.
Santoine was lying quietly upon his back, his head raised on the pillows, his arms above the bed-covers, his finger-tips touching with the fingers spread.
"You recall, of course, Eaton, our conversation on the train," Santoine said evenly.
"Yes."
"And so you remember that I gave you at that time four possible reasons—as the only possible ones—why you had taken the train I was on. I said you must have taken it to attack me, or to protect me from attack; to learn something from me, or to inform me of something; and I eliminated as incompatible with the facts, the second of these—I said you could not have taken it to protect me."
"Yes."
"Very well; the reason I have sent for you now is that, having eliminated to-day still another of those possibilities,—leaving only two,—I want to call your attention in a certain order to some of the details of what happened on the train."
"You say that to-day you have eliminated another of the possibilities?" Eaton asked uneasily.
"To-day, yes; of course. You had rather a close call this morning, did you not?"
"Rather, I was careless."
"You were careless?" Santoine smiled derisively. "Perhaps you were—in one sense. In another, however, you have been very careful, Eaton. You have been careful to act as though the attempt to run you down could not have been a deliberate attack; you were careful to call it an accident; you were careful not to recognize any of the three men in the motor."
"I had no chance to recognize any of them, Mr. Santoine," Eaton replied easily. "I did not see the car coming; I was thrown from my feet; when I got up, it was too far away for me to recognize any one."
"Perhaps so; but were you surprised when my daughter recognized one of them as having been on the train with us?"
Eaton hesitated, but answered almost immediately:
"Your question doesn't exactly fit the case. I thought Miss Santoine had made a mistake."
"But you were not surprised; no. What would have been a surprise to you, Eaton, would have been—if you had had a chance to observe the men—to have found that none of them—none of them had been on the train!"
Eaton started and felt that he had colored. How much did Santoine know? Had the blind man received, as Eaton feared, some answer to his inquiries which had revealed, or nearly revealed, Eaton's identity? Or was it merely that the attack made on Eaton that morning had given Santoine new light on the events that had happened on the train and particularly—Eaton guessed—on the cipher telegram which Santoine claimed to have translated? Whatever the case might be, Eaton knew that he must conceal from Harriet the effect the blind man's words produced on him. Santoine, of course, could not see these effects; and he had kept his daughter in the room to watch for just such things. Eaton glanced at her; she was watching him and, quite evidently, had seen his discomposure, but she made no comment. As he regained possession of himself, her gaze went back intently to her father. Eaton looked from her back to the blind man, and saw that Santoine was waiting for him to speak.
"You assume that, Mr. Santoine," he asserted, "because—" He checked himself and altered his sentence. "Will you tell me why you assume that?"
"That that would have surprised you? Yes; that is what I called you in here to tell you."
As Santoine waited a moment before going on, Eaton watched him anxiously. The blind man turned himself on his pillows so as to face Eaton more directly; his sightless, motionless eyes told nothing of what was going on in his mind.
"Just ten days ago," Santoine said evenly and dispassionately, "I was found unconscious in my berth—Section Three of the rearmost sleeper—on the transcontinental train, which I had taken with my daughter and Avery at Seattle. I had been attacked,—assailed during my sleep some time in that first night that I spent on the train,—and my condition was serious enough so that for three days afterward I was not allowed to receive any of the particulars of what had happened to me. When I did finally learn them, I naturally attempted to make certain deductions as to who it was that had attempted to murder me, and why; and ever since, I have continued to occupy myself with those questions. I am going to tell you a few of my deductions. You need not interrupt me unless you discover me to be in error, and then in error only in fact or observation which, obviously, had to be reported to me. If you fancy I am at fault in my conclusions, wait until you discover your error."
Santoine waited an instant; Eaton thought it was to allow him to speak if he wanted to, but Eaton merely waited.
"The first thing I learned," the blind man went on, "was the similarity of the attack on me to the more successful attack on Warden, twelve days previous, which had caused his death. The method of the two attacks was the same; the conditions surrounding them were very similar. Warden was attacked in his motor, in a public street; his murderer took a desperate chance of being detected by the chauffeur or by some one on the street, both when he made the attack and afterward when he escaped unobserved, as it happened, from the automobile. The attack upon me was made in the same way, perhaps even with the same instrument; my assailant took equally desperate chances. The attack on me was made on a public conveyance where the likelihood of the murderer being seen was even greater, for the train was stopped, and under conditions which made his escape almost impossible. The desperate nature of the two attacks, and their almost identical method, made it practically certain that they originated at the same source and were carried out—probably—by the same hand and for the same purpose.
"Mrs. Warden's statement to me of her interview with her husband a half-hour before his murder, made it certain that the object of the attack on him was to 'remove' him. It seemed almost inevitable, therefore, that the attack on me must have been for the same purpose. There have been a number of times in my life, Eaton, when I have known that it would be to the advantage of some one if I were 'removed'; that I do not know now any definite reason for such an act does not decrease its probability; for I do not know why Warden was 'removed.'
"I found that a young man—yourself—had acted so suspiciously both before and after the attack on me that both Avery and the conductor in charge of the train had become convinced that he was my assailant, and had segregated him from the rest of the passengers. Not only this, but—and this seemed quite conclusive to them—you admitted that you were the one who had called upon Warden the evening of his murder. Warden's statement to his wife that you were some one he was about to befriend—which had been regarded as exculpating you from share in his murder—ceased to be so conclusive now that you had been present at a second precisely similar attack; and it certainly was no proof that you had not attacked me. It seemed likely, too, that you were the only person on the train aside from my daughter and Avery who knew who I was; for I had had reason to believe from the time when I first heard you speak when you boarded the train, that you were some one with whom I had, previously, very briefly come in contact; and I had asked my daughter to find out who you were, and she had tried to do so, but without success."
Eaton wet his lips.
"Also," the blind man continued, "there was a telegram which definitely showed that there was some connection, unknown to me, between you and me, as well as a second—or rather a previous—suspicious telegram in cipher, which we were able to translate."
Eaton leaned forward, impelled to speak; but as Santoine clearly detected this impulse and waited to hear what he was going to say, Eaton reconsidered and kept silent.
"You were going to say something about that telegram in cipher?" Santoine asked.
"No," Eaton denied.
"I think you were; and I think that a few minutes ago when I said you were not surprised by the attempt made to-day to run you down, you were also going to speak of it; for that attempt makes clear the meaning of the telegram. Its meaning was not clear to me before, you understand. It said only that you were known and followed. It did not say why you were followed. I could not be certain of that; there were several possible reasons why you might be followed—even that the 'one' who 'was following' might be some one secretly interested in preventing you from an attack on me. Now, however, I know that the reason you feared the man who was following was because you expected him to attack you. Knowing that, Eaton—knowing that, I want to call your attention to the peculiarity of our mutual positions on the train. You had asked for and were occupying Section Three in the third sleeper, in order—I assume and, I believe, correctly—to avoid being put in the same car with me. In the night, the second sleeper—the car next in front of yours—was cut off from the train and left behind. That made me occupy in relation to the forward part of the train exactly the same position as you had occupied before the car ahead of you had been cut out. I was in Section Three in the third sleeper from the front."
Eaton stared at Santoine, fascinated; what had been only vague, half felt, half formed with himself, was becoming definite, tangible, under the blind man's reasoning. He was aware that Harriet Santoine was looking alternately from him to her father, herself startled by the revelation thus passionlessly recited. What her father was saying was new to her; he had not taken his daughter into his confidence to this extent.
Eaton's hands closed instinctively, in his emotion. "What do you mean?"
"You understand already," Santoine asserted. "The attack made on me was meant for you. Some one stealing through the cars from the front to the rear of the train and carrying in his mind the location Section Three in the third car, struck through the curtains by mistake at me instead of you. Who was that, Eaton?"
Eaton sat unanswering, staring.
"You did not realize before, that the man on the train meant to murder you?" Santoine demanded.
"No," said Eaton.
"I see you understand it now; and that it was the same man—or some one accompanying the man—who tried to run you down this morning. Who is that man?"
"I don't know," Eaton answered.
"You mean you prefer to shield him?"
"Shield him?"
"That is what you are doing, is it not? For, even if you don't know the man directly, you know in whose cause and under whose direction he murdered Warden—and why and for whom he is attempting to murder you."
Eaton remained silent.
In his intensity, Santoine had lifted himself from his pillows. "Who is that man?" he challenged. "And what is that connection between you and me which, when the attack found and disabled me instead of you, told him that—in spite of his mistake—his result had been accomplished? told him that, if I was dying, a repetition of the attack against you was unnecessary?"
Eaton knew that he had grown very pale; Harriet must be aware of the effect Santoine's words had on him, but he did not dare look at her now to see how much she was comprehending. All his attention was needed to defend himself against Santoine.
"I don't understand." He fought to compose himself.
"It is perfectly plain," Santoine said patiently. "It was believed at first that I had been fatally hurt; it was even reported at one time—I understand—that I was dead; only intimate friends have been informed of my actual condition. Yesterday, for the first time, the newspapers announced the certainty of my recovery; and to-day an attack is made on you."
"There has been no opportunity for an attack on me before, if this was an attack. On the train I was locked up under charge of the conductor."
"You have been off the train nearly a week."
"But I have been kept here in your house."
"You have been allowed to walk about the grounds."
"But I've been watched all the time; no one could have attacked me without being seen by your guards."
"They did not hesitate to attack you in sight of my daughter."
"But—"
"You are merely challenging my deductions! Will you reply to my questions?—tell me the connection between us?—who you are?"
"No."
"Come here!"
"What?" said Eaton.
"Come here—close to me, beside the bed."
Eaton hesitated, and then obeyed.
"Bend over!"
Eaton stooped, and the blind man's hands seized him. Instantly Eaton withdrew.
"Wait!" Santoine warned. "If you do not stay, I shall call help." One hand went to the bell beside his bed.
Harriet had risen; she met Eaton's gaze warningly and nodded to him to comply. He bent again over the bed. He felt the blind man's sensitive fingers searching his features, his head, his throat. Eaton gazed at Santoine's face while the fingers were examining him; he could see that Santoine was merely finding confirmation of an impression already gained from what had been told him about Eaton. Santoine showed nothing more than this confirmation; certainly he did not recognize Eaton. More than this, Eaton could not tell.
"Now your hands," Santoine ordered.
Eaton extended one hand and then the other; the blind man felt over them from wrists to the tips of the fingers; then he let himself sink back against the pillows, absorbed in thought.
Eaton straightened and looked to Harriet where she was standing at the foot of the bed; she, however, was intently watching her father and did not look Eaton's way.
"You may go," Santoine said at last.
"Go?" Eaton asked.
"You may leave the room. Blatchford will meet you downstairs."
Santoine reached for the house telephone beside his bed—receiver and transmitter on one light band—and gave directions to have Blatchford await Eaton in the hall below.
Eaton stood an instant longer, studying Santoine and trying fruitlessly to make out what was passing in the blind man's mind. He was distinctly frightened by the revelation he just had had of Santoine's clear, implacable reasoning regarding him; for none of the blind man's deductions about him had been wrong—all had been the exact, though incomplete, truth. It was clear to him that Santoine was close—much closer even than Santoine himself yet appreciated—to knowing Eaton's identity; it was even probable that one single additional fact—the discovery, for instance, that Miss Davis was the source of the second telegram received by Eaton on the train—would reveal everything to Santoine. And Eaton was not certain that Santoine, even without any new information, would not reach the truth unaided at any moment. So Eaton knew that he himself must act before this happened. But so long as the safe in Santoine's study was kept locked or was left open only while some one was in the room with it, he could not act until he had received help from outside; and he had not yet received that help; he could not hurry it or even tell how soon it was likely to come. He had seen Miss Davis several times as she passed through the halls going or coming for her work with Avery; but Blatchford had always been with him, and he had been unable to speak with her or to receive any signal from her.
As his mind reviewed, almost instantaneously, these considerations, he glanced again at Harriet; her eyes, this time, met his, but she looked away immediately. He could not tell what effect Santoine's revelations had had on her, except that she seemed to be in complete accord with her father. As he went toward the door, she made no move to accompany him. He went out without speaking and closed the inner and the outer doors behind him; then he went down to Blatchford.
For several minutes after Eaton had left the room, Santoine thought in silence. Harriet stayed motionless, watching him; the extent to which he had been shaken and disturbed by the series of events which had started with Warden's murder, came home strongly to her now that she saw him alone and now that his talk with Eaton had shown partly what was passing in his mind.
"Where are you, Harriet?" he asked at last.
She knew it was not necessary to answer him, but merely to move so that he could tell her position; she moved slightly, and his sightless eyes shifted at once to where she stood.
"How did he act?" Santoine asked.
She reviewed swiftly the conversation, supplementing his blind apperceptions of Eaton's manner with what she herself had seen.
"What have been your impressions of Eaton's previous social condition, Daughter?" he asked.
She hesitated; she knew that her father would not permit the vague generality that Eaton was "a gentleman." "Exactly what do you mean, Father?"
"I don't mean, certainly, to ask whether he knows which fork to use at table or enough to keep his napkin on his knee; but you have talked with him, been with him—both on the train and here: have you been able to determine what sort of people he has been accustomed to mix with? Have his friends been business men? Professional men? Society people?"
The deep and unconcealed note of trouble in her father's voice startled her, in her familiarity with every tone and every expression. She answered his question: "I don't know, Father."
"I want you to find out."
"In what way?"
"You must find a way. I shall tell Avery to help." He thought for several moments, while she stood waiting. "We must have that motor and the men in it traced, of course. Harriet, there are certain matters—correspondence—which Avery has been looking after for me; do you know what correspondence I mean?"
"Yes, Father."
"I would rather not have Avery bothered with it just now; I want him to give his whole attention to this present inquiry. You yourself will assume charge of the correspondence of which I speak, Daughter."
"Yes, Father. Do you want anything else now?"
"Not of you; send Avery to me."
She moved toward the door which led to the circular stair. Her father, she knew, seldom spoke all that was in his mind to any one, even herself; she was accustomed, therefore, to looking for meanings underneath the directions which he gave her, and his present order—that she should take charge of a part of their work which ordinarily had been looked after by Avery—startled and surprised her by its implication that her father might not trust Avery fully. But now, as she halted and looked back at him from the door and saw his troubled face and his fingers nervously pressing together, she recognized that it was not any definite distrust of Avery that had moved him, but only his deeper trust in herself. Blind and obliged to rely on others always in respect of sight, and now still more obliged to rely upon them because he was confined helpless to his bed, Santoine had felt ever since the attack on him some unknown menace over himself and his affairs, some hidden agency threatening him and, through him, the men who trusted him. So, with instinctive caution, she saw now, he had been withdrawing more and more his reliance upon those less closely bound to him—even Avery—and depending more and more on the one he felt he could implicitly trust—herself. As realization of this came to her, she was stirred deeply by the impulse to rush back to him and throw herself down beside him and assure him of her love and fealty; but seeing him again deep in thought, she controlled herself and went out.