Harriet went into the house and toward her own rooms; a maid met and stopped her on the stairs.
"Mr. Santoine sent word that he wishes to see you as soon as you came in, Miss Santoine."
Harriet went on toward her father's room, without stopping at her own—wet with the drive through the damp night and shivering now with its chill. Her father's voice answered her knock with a summons to come in. As she obeyed, pushing the doors open, he dismissed the nurse; the girl, passing Harriet as she went out, returned Harriet's questioning look with a reassuring nod; Basil Santoine had endured the shock and excitement of the night better than could have been expected; he was quite himself.
As Harriet went toward the bed, her father's blind eyes turned toward her; he put out his hand and touched her, seeming startled to find her still in the robe she had worn an hour before and to feel that the robe was wet.
"Where have you been, Daughter?" he asked.
She hesitated, drawing the robe out of his hand. "I—I have been driving Mr. Eaton in a motor," she said.
"Helping him to escape?" A spasm crossed the blind man's face.
"He said not; he—he was following the men who shot Cousin Wallace."
The blind man lay for an instant still. "Tell me," he commanded finally.
She told him, beginning with her discovery of Eaton in the garage and ending with his leaving her and with Donald Avery's finding her in the motor; and now she held back one word only—his name which he had told her, Hugh. Her father listened intently; when she had finished, he made no move, no comment, no reproach. She had seated herself on the chair beside his bed; she looked away, then back to him.
"That is not all," she said; and she told him of her expedition with Eaton to the ravine before the attack in the house.
Again she waited.
"You and Mr. Eaton appear to have become rather well acquainted, Harriet," he said. "Has he told you nothing about himself which you have not told me? You have seen nothing concerning him, which you have not told?"
Her mind went quickly back to the polo game; she felt a flush, which his blind eyes could not see, dyeing her cheeks and forehead.
"No," she answered. She was aware that he did not accept the denial, that he knew she was concealing something.
"Nothing?" he asked again.
She put her hands to her face; then she drew them quickly away. "Nothing," she said steadily.
The blind man waited for a moment; he put out his hand and pressed the bell which called the steward. Neither spoke until the steward had come.
"Fairley," Santoine said then, quietly, "Miss Santoine and I have just agreed that for the present all reports regarding the pursuit of the men who entered the study last night are to be made direct to me, not through Miss Santoine or Mr. Avery."
"Very well, sir."
She still sat silent after the steward had gone; she thought for an instant her father had forgotten her presence; then he moved slightly.
"That is all, dear," he said quietly.
She got up and left him, and went to her own rooms; she did not pretend to herself that she could rest. She bathed and dressed and went downstairs. The library had windows facing to the west; she went in there and stood looking out. Somewhere to the west was Eaton, alone, wounded; she knew she need not think of him yet as actively hunted, only watched; with daylight the hunt would begin. Would he be able to avoid the watchers and escape before the actual hunt for him began?
She went out into the hall to the telephone. She could not get the use of the 'phone at once; the steward was posted there; the calls upon the 'phone were continual—from neighbors who, awakened to learn the news of Blatchford's death and the hunt for his murderer, called to offer what help they could, and from the newspapers, which somehow had been notified. The telephones in the bedrooms all were on this wire. There was a private telephone in the library; somehow she could not bring herself to enter that room, closed and to be left with everything in its disorder until the arrival of the police. The only other telephone was in her father's bedroom.
She took advantage of a momentary interruption in the calls to call up the local police station. Hearing her name, the man at the other end became deferential at once; he told her what was being done, confirming what she already knew; the roads were being watched and men had been posted at all near-by railway stations and at the stopping points of the interurban line to prevent Eaton from escaping that way. The man spoke only of Eaton; he showed the conviction—gathered, she felt sure, by telephone conversation with Donald Avery—that Eaton was the murderer.
"He ain't likely to get away, Miss Santoine," he assured her. "He's got no shoes, I understand, and he has one or maybe two shots through him."
She shrunk back and nearly dropped the 'phone at the vision which his words called up; yet there was nothing new to her in that vision—it was continually before her eyes; it was the only thing of which she could think.
"You'll call me as soon as you know anything more," she requested; "will you call me every hour?"
She hung up, on receiving assurance of this.
A servant brought a written paper. She took it before she recognized that it was not for her but for the steward. It was a short statement of the obvious physical circumstances of the murder, evidently dictated by her father and intended for the newspapers. She gave it to Fairley, who began reading it over the telephone to the newspapers. She wandered again to the west windows. She was not consciously listening to the telephone conversation in the hall; yet enough reached her to make her know that reporters were rushing from the city by train and automobile. The last city editions of the morning papers would have at least the fact of the murder; there would be later extras; the afternoon papers would have it all. There was a long list of relatives and friends to whom it was due that telegraphic announcement of Wallace Blatchford's death reach them before they read it as a sensation publicly printed. Recollection of these people at least gave her something to do.
She went up to her own room, listed the names and prepared the telegrams for them; she came down again and gave the telegrams to Fairley to transmit by telephone. As she descended the stairs, the great clock in the lower hall struck once; it was a quarter past three.
There was a stir in these lower rooms now; the officers of the local police had arrived. She went with them to the study, where they assumed charge nervously and uncertainly. She could not bear to be in that room; nevertheless she remained and answered their questions. She took them to Eaton's rooms on the floor above, where they searched through and took charge of all his things. She left them and came down again and went out to the front of the house.
The night was sharp with the chill preceding the day; it had cleared; the stars were shining. As she stood looking to the west, the lights of a motor turned into the grounds. She ran toward it, thinking it must be bringing word of some sort; but the men who leaped from it were strangers to her—they were the first of the reporters to arrive. They tried to question her, but she ran from them into the house. She watched from the windows and saw other reporters arriving. To Harriet there seemed to be scores of them. Every morning paper in Chicago, immediately upon receipt of the first flash, had sent at least three men; every evening paper seemed to have aroused half its staff from their beds and sent them racing to the blind millionaire's home on the north shore. Even men from Milwaukee papers arrived at four o'clock. Forbidden the house, they surrounded it and captured servants. They took flashlights till, driven from the lawn, they went away—many of them—to see and take part in the search through the woods for Blatchford's murderer. The murder of Santoine's cousin—the man, moreover, who had blinded Santoine—in the presence of the blind man was enough of itself to furnish a newspaper sensation; but, following so closely Santoine's visit to the Coast because of the murder of Gabriel Warden, the newspaper men sensed instantly in it the possibility of some greater sensation not yet bared.
Harriet was again summoned. A man—a stranger—was awaiting her in the hall; he was the precursor of those who would sit that day upon Wallace Blatchford's death and try to determine, formally, whose was the hand that had done it—the coroner's man. He too, she saw, was already convinced what hand it had been—Eaton's. She took him to the study, then to the room above where Wallace Blatchford lay dead. She stood by while he made his brief, conventional examination. She looked down at the dead man's face. Poor Cousin Wallace! he had destroyed his own life long before, when he had destroyed her father's sight; from that time on he had lived only to recompense her father for his blindness. Cousin Wallace's life had been a pitiable, hopeless, loving perpetuation of his penance; he had let himself hold nothing of his own in life; he had died, as she knew he would have wished to die, giving his life in service to his cousin; she was not unduly grieving over him.
She answered the man's questions, calmly and collectedly; but her mind was not upon what she was saying. Her mind was upon only one thing—even of that she could not think connectedly. Some years ago, something—she did not know what—had happened to Hugh; to-night, in some strange way unknown to her, it had culminated in her father's study. He had fought some one; he had rushed away to follow some one. Whom? Had he heard that some one in the study and gone down? Had he been fighting their battle—her father's and hers? She knew that was not so. Hugh had been fully dressed. What did it mean that he had said to her that these events would either destroy him or would send him back to her as—as something different? Her thought supplied no answer.
But whatever he had done, whatever he might be, she knew his fate was hers now; for she had given herself to him utterly. She had told that to herself as she fled and pursued with him that night; she had told it to him; she later had told it—though she had not meant to yet—to her father. She could only pray now that out of the events of this night might not come a grief to her too great for her to bear.
She went to the rooms that had been Eaton's. The police, in stripping them of his possessions, had overlooked his cap; she found the bit of gray cloth and hugged it to her. She whispered his name to herself—Hugh—that secret of his name which she had kept; she gloried that she had that secret with him which she could keep from them all. What wouldn't they give just to share that with her—his name, Hugh!
She started suddenly, looking through the window. The east, above the lake, was beginning to grow gray. The dawn was coming! It was beginning to be day!
She hurried to the other side of the house, looking toward the west. How could she have left him, hurt and bleeding and alone in the night! She could not have done that but that his asking her to go had told that it was for his safety as well as hers; she could not help him any more then; she would only have been in the way. But now— She started to rush out, but controlled herself; she had to stay in the house; that was where the first word would come if they caught him; and then he would need her, how much more! The reporters on the lawn below her, seeing her at the window, called up to her to know further particulars of what had happened and what the murder meant; she could see them plainly in the increasing light. She could see the lawn and the road before the house.
Day had come.
And with the coming of day, the uncertainty and disorder within and about the house seemed to increase.... But in the south wing, with its sound-proof doors and its windows closed against the noises from the lawn, there was silence; and in this silence, an exact, compelling, methodic machine was working; the mind of Basil Santoine was striving, vainly as yet, but with growing chances of success, to fit together into the order in which they belonged and make clear the events of the night and all that had gone before—arranging, ordering, testing, discarding, picking up again and reordering all that had happened since that other murder, of Gabriel Warden.
The blind man, lying on his bed in that darkness in which he had lived since his sixteenth year and which no daylight could lessen, felt the light and knew that day had come; he stirred impatiently. The nurse, the only other occupant of the room, moved expectantly; then she sank back; Santoine had moved but had not roused from that absorption in which he had been ever since returning to his bed. He had not slept. The connections of the electric bells had been repaired,—the wires had been found pulled from their batteries,—but Santoine had not moved a hand to touch a button. He had disregarded the warning of the doctor who had been summoned at once after the murder and had come to his room again just before dawn to warn him that after his recklessness of the night he must expect a reaction. He had given such injunctions in regard to any new development that he was certain that, even if his servants believed him asleep, they would report to him. But there had been no report; and Santoine expected none immediately. He had not lain awake awaiting anything; he felt that so much had happened, so many facts were at his command, that somewhere among them must be the key to what they meant.
The blind man knew that his daughter was concealing something from him. He could not tell what the importance of the thing she was concealing might be; but he knew his daughter was enough like himself for it to be useless for him to try to force from her something she did not mean to tell. The new intimacy of the relation between his daughter and Eaton was perfectly plain to Santoine; but it did not cause him to try to explain anything in Eaton's favor; nor did it prejudice him against him. He had appeared to accept Avery's theory of what had happened in the study because by doing so he concealed what was going on in his own mind; he actually accepted it only to the point of agreeing that Eaton must have met in the study those enemies—or some one representing the enemies—who had attacked him with the motor-car and had before attempted to attack him on the train.
Three men—at least three men—had fought in the study in Santoine's presence. Eaton, it was certain, had been the only one from the house present when the first shots were fired. Had Eaton been alone against the other two? Had Eaton been with one of the other two against the third? It appeared probable to Santoine that Eaton had been alone, or had come alone, to the study and had met his enemies there. Had these enemies surprised Eaton in the study or had he surprised them? Santoine was inclined to believe that Eaton had surprised them. The contents taken from the safe had certainly been carried away, and these would have made rather a bulky bundle. Eaton could not have carried it without Harriet knowing it. Santoine believed that, whatever knowledge his daughter might be concealing from him, she would not have concealed this. It was certain that some time had been necessary for opening the safe, before those opening it suffered interruption.
Santoine felt, therefore, that the probabilities were that Eaton's enemies had opened the safe and had been surprised by Eaton. But if they had opened the safe, they were not only Eaton's enemies; they were also Santoine's; they were the men who threatened Santoine's trust.
Those whom Eaton had fought in the room had had perfect opportunity for killing Santoine, if they wished. He had stood first in the dark with the electric torch in his hand; then he had been before them in the light after Blatchford had entered. But Santoine felt certain no one had made any attack upon him at any moment in the room; he had had no feeling, at any instant, that any of the shots fired had been directed at him. Blatchford, too, had been unattacked until he had made it plain that he had recognized one of the intruders; then, before Blatchford could call the name, he had been shot down.
It was clear, then, that what had protected Santoine was his blindness; he had no doubt that, if he had been able to see and recognize the men in the room after the lights were turned on, he would have been shot down also. But Santoine recognized that this did not fully account for his immunity. Two weeks before, an attack which had been meant for Eaton had struck down Santoine instead; and no further attempt against Eaton had been made until it had become publicly known that Santoine was not going to die. If Santoine's death would have served for Eaton's death two weeks before, why was Santoine immune now? Did possession of the contents of Santoine's safe accomplish the same thing as Santoine's death? Or more than his death for these men? For what men?
It was not, Santoine was certain, Eaton's presence in the study which had so astounded Blatchford; Wallace and Eaton had passed days together, and Blatchford was accustomed to Eaton's presence in the house. Some one whom Blatchford knew and whose name Santoine also would know and whose presence in the room was so strange and astonishing that Blatchford had tried to prepare Santoine for the announcement, had been there. The man whose name was on Blatchford's tongue, or the companion of that man, had shot Blatchford rather than let Santoine hear the name.
The blind man stirred upon his bed.
"Do you want something, Mr. Santoine?" the nurse asked. The blind man did not answer. He was beginning to find these events fit themselves together; but they fitted imperfectly as yet.
Santoine knew that he lacked the key. Many men could profit by possessing the contents of Santoine's safe and might have shot Blatchford rather than let Santoine know their presence there; it was impossible for Santoine to tell which among these many the man who had been in the study might be. Who Eaton's enemies were was equally unknown to Santoine. But there could be but one man—or at most one small group of men—who could be at the same time Eaton's enemy and Santoine's. To have known who Eaton was would have pointed this man to Santoine.
The blind man lay upon his back, his open, sightless eyes unwinking in the intensity of his thought.
Gabriel Warden had had an appointment with a young man who had come from Asia and who—Warden had told his wife—he had discovered lately had been greatly wronged. Eaton, under Conductor Connery's questioning, had admitted himself to be that young man; Santoine had verified this and had learned that Eaton was, at least, the young man who had gone to Warden's house that night. But Gabriel Warden had not been allowed to help Eaton; so far from that, he had not even been allowed to meet and talk with Eaton; he had been called out, plainly, to prevent his meeting Eaton, and killed.
Eaton disappeared and concealed himself at once after Warden's murder, apparently fearing that he would also be attacked. But Eaton was not a man whom this personal fear would have restrained from coming forward later to tell why Warden had been killed. He had been urged to come forward and promised that others would give him help in Warden's place; still, he had concealed himself. This must mean that others than Warden could not help Eaton; Eaton evidently did not know, or else could not hope to prove, what Warden had discovered.
Santoine held this thought in abeyance; he would see later how it checked with the facts.
Eaton had remained in Seattle—or near Seattle—eleven days; apparently he had been able to conceal himself and to escape attack during that time. He had been obliged, however, to reveal himself when he took the train; and as soon as possible a desperate attempt had been made against him, which, through mistake, had struck down Santoine instead of Eaton. This attack had been made under circumstances which, if it had been successful, would have made it improbable that Eaton's murderer could escape. It had not been enough, then, to watch Eaton and await opportunity to attack him; it had been necessary to attack him at once, at any cost.
The attack having reached Santoine instead of Eaton, the necessity for immediate attack upon Eaton, apparently, had ceased to exist; those who followed Eaton had thought it enough to watch him and wait for more favorable opportunity. But as soon as it was publicly known that Santoine had not been killed but was getting well, then Eaton had again been openly and daringly attacked. The reason for the desperate chances taken to attack Eaton, then, was that he was near Santoine.
Santoine's hands clenched as he recognized this. Eaton had taken the train at Seattle because Santoine was on it; he had done this at great risk to himself. Santoine had told Eaton that there were but four possible reasons why he could have taken the train in the manner he did, and two of those reasons later had been eliminated. The two possibilities which remained were that Eaton had taken the train to inform Santoine of something or to learn something from him. But Eaton had had ample opportunity since to inform Santoine of anything he wished; and he had not only not informed him of anything, but had refused consistently and determinedly to answer any of Santoine's questions. It was to learn something from Santoine, then, that Eaton had taken the train.
The blind man turned upon his bed; he was finding that these events fitted together perfectly. He felt certain now that Eaton had gone to Gabriel Warden expecting to get from Warden some information that he needed, and that to prevent Warden's giving him this, Warden had been killed. Then Warden's death had caused Santoine to go to Seattle and take charge of many of Warden's affairs; Eaton had thought that the information which had been in Warden's possession might now be in Santoine's; Eaton, therefore, had followed Santoine onto the train.
Santoine had not had the information Eaton required, and he could not even imagine yet what the nature of that information could be. This was not because he was not familiar enough with Warden's affairs; it was because he was too familiar with them. Warden had been concerned in a hundred enterprises; Santoine had no way of telling which of this hundred had concerned Eaton. He certainly could recall no case in which a man of Eaton's age and class had been so terribly wronged that double murder would have been resorted to for the concealment of the facts. But he understood that, in his familiarity with Warden's affairs, he had probably been in a position to get the information, if he had known what specific matters it concerned. That, then, had been the reason why his own death would have served for the time being in place of Eaton's.
Those who had followed Eaton had known that Santoine could get this information; that accounted for all that had taken place on the train. It accounted for the subsequent attack on Eaton when it became known that Santoine was getting well. It accounted also—Santoine was breathing quickly as he recognized this—for the invasion of his study and the forcing of the safe last night.
The inference was plain that something which would have given Santoine the information Warden had had and which Eaton now required had been brought into Santoine's house and put in Santoine's safe. It was to get possession of this "something" before it had reached Santoine that the safe had been forced.
Santoine put out his hand and pressed a bell. A servant came to the door.
"Will you find Miss Santoine," the blind man directed, "and ask her to come here?"
The servant withdrew.
Santoine waited. Presently the door again opened, and he heard his daughter's step.
"Have you listed what was taken from the safe, Harriet?" Santoine asked.
"Not yet, Father."
The blind man thought an instant. "Day before yesterday, when I asked you to take charge for the present of the correspondence Avery has looked after for me, what did you do?"
"I put it in my own safe—the one that was broken into last night. But none of it was taken; the bundles of letters were pulled out of the safe, but they had not been opened or even disturbed."
"I know. It was not that I meant." Santoine thought again. "Harriet, something has been brought into the house—or the manner of keeping something in the house had been changed—within a very few days—since the time, I think, when the attempt to run Eaton down with the motor-car was made. What was that 'something'?"
His daughter reflected. "The draft of the new agreement about the Latron properties and the lists of stockholders in the properties which came through Mr. Warden's office," she replied.
"Those were in the safe?"
"Yes; you had not given me any instructions about them, so I had put them in the other safe; but when I went to get the correspondence I saw them there and put them with the correspondence in my own safe."
Santoine lay still.
"Who besides Donald knew that you did that, daughter?" he asked.
"No one."
"Thank you."
Harriet recognized this as dismissal and went out. The blind man felt the blood beating fiercely in his temples and at his finger-tips. It amazed, astounded him to realize that Warden's murder and all that had followed it had sprung from the Latron case. The coupling of Warden's name with Latron's in the newspapers after Warden's death had seemed to him only flagrant sensationalism. He himself had known—or had thought he had known—more about the Latron case than almost any other man; he had been a witness at the trial; he had seen—or had thought he had seen—even-handed justice done there. Now, by Warden's evidence, but more still by the manner of Warden's death, he was forced to believe that there had been something unknown to him and terrible in what had been done then.
And as realization of this came to him, he recollected that he had been vaguely conscious ever since Latron's murder of something strained, something not wholly open, in his relations with those men whose interests had been most closely allied with Latron's. It had been nothing open, nothing palpable; it was only that he had felt at times in them a knowledge of some general condition governing them which was not wholly known to himself. As he pressed his hands upon his blind eyes, trying to define this feeling to himself, his thought went swiftly back to the events on the train and in the study.
He had had investigated the accounts of themselves given by the passengers to Conductor Connery; two of these accounts had proved to be false. The man who under the name of Lawrence Hillward had claimed the cipher telegram from Eaton had been one of these; it had proved impossible to trace this man and it was now certain that Hillward was not his real name; the other, Santoine had had no doubt, was the heavy-set muscular man who had tried to run Eaton down with the motor. These men, Santoine was sure, had been acting for some principal not present. One or both of these men might have been in the study last night; but the sight of neither of these could have so startled, so astounded Blatchford. Whomever Blatchford had seen was some one well known to him, whose presence had been so amazing that speech had failed Blatchford for the moment and he had feared the effect of the announcement on Santoine. This could have been only the principal himself.
Some circumstance which Santoine comprehended only imperfectly as yet had forced this man to come out from behind his agents and to act even at the risk of revealing himself. It was probably he who, finding Blatchford's presence made revealment inevitable, had killed Blatchford. But these circumstances gave Santoine no clew as to who the man might be. The blind man tried vainly to guess. The rebellion against his blindness, which had seized him the night before, again stirred him. The man had been in the light just before his face; a second of sight then and everything would have been clear; or another word from Blatchford, and he would have known. But Santoine recalled that if he had had that second of sight, and the other man had known it, or if Blatchford had spoken that next word, Santoine too would probably be dead.
The only circumstance regarding the man of which Santoine now felt sure was that he was one of the many concerned in the Latron case or with the Latron properties. Had the blood in which Santoine had stepped upon the study floor been his, or that of one of the others?
"What time is it?" the blind man suddenly asked the nurse.
"It is nearly noon, Mr. Santoine, and you have eaten nothing."
The blind man did not answer. He recalled vaguely that, several hours before, breakfast had been brought for him and that he had impatiently waved it away. In his absorption he had felt no need then for food, and he felt none now.
"Will you leave me alone for a few moments?" he directed.
He listened till he heard the door close behind the nurse; then he seized the private 'phone beside his bed and called his broker. Instinctively, in his uncertainty, Santoine had turned to that barometer which reflects day by day, even from hour to hour, the most obscure events and the most secret knowledge.
"How is the market?" he inquired.
There was something approaching to a panic on the stock-exchange, it appeared. Some movement, arising from causes not yet clear, had dropped the bottom out of a score of important stocks. The broker was only able to relate that about an hour after the opening of the exchange, selling had developed in certain issues and prices were going down in complete lack of support.
"How is Pacific Midlands?" Santoine asked.
"It led the decline."
Santoine felt the blood in his temples. "M. and N. Smelters?" he asked.
"Down seven points."
"S. F. and D.?"
"Eight points off."
Santoine's hand, holding the telephone, shook in its agitation; his head was hot from the blood rushing through it, his body was chilled. An idea so strange, so astounding, so incredible as it first had come to him that his feelings refused it though his reason told him it was the only possible condition which could account for all the facts, now was being made all but certain. He named stock after stock; all were down—seriously depressed or had been supported only by a desperate effort of their chief holders.
"A. L. & M. is down too," the broker volunteered.
"That is only sympathetic," Santoine replied.
He hung up. His hand, straining to control its agitation, reached for the bell; he rang; a servant came.
"Get me note-paper," Santoine commanded.
The servant went out and returned with paper. The nurse had followed him in; she turned the leaf of the bed-table for Santoine to write. The blind man could write as well as any other by following the position of the lines with the fingers of his left hand. He wrote a short note swiftly now, folded, sealed and addressed it and handed it to the servant.
"Have that delivered by a messenger at once," he directed. "There will be no written answer, I think; only something sent back—a photograph. See that it is brought to me at once."
He heard the servant's footsteps going rapidly away. He was shaking with anger, horror, resentment; he was almost—not quite—sure now of all that had taken place; of why Warden had been murdered, of what vague shape had moved behind and guided all that had happened since. He recalled Eaton's voice as he had heard it first on the train at Seattle; and now he was almost sure—not quite—that he could place that voice, that he knew where he had heard it before.
He lay with clenched hands, shaking with rage; then by effort of his will he put these thoughts away. The nurse reminded him again of his need for food.
"I want nothing now," he said. "Have it ready when I wake up. When the doctor comes, tell him I am going to get up to-day and dress."
He turned and stretched himself upon his bed; so, finally, he slept.
The rolling, ravine-gullied land where Harriet had left Eaton was wooded thickly with oaks, maples and ash; the ground between these trees was clear of undergrowth upon the higher parts of the land, but its lower stretches and the ravines themselves were shrouded with closely growing bushes rising higher than a man's waist, and, where they grew rankest, higher than a man's head. In summer, when trees and bushes were covered with leaves, this underbrush offered cover where a man could conceal himself perfectly; now, in the early spring before the trees had even budded, that man would be visible for some distance by day and nearly as clearly visible by night if the headlights of the motor-cars chanced to shine into the woods.
Eaton, fully realizing this chance as he left Harriet, had plunged through the bushes to conceal himself in the ravine. The glare from the burning bridge lighted the ravine for only a little way; Eaton had gained the bottom of the ravine beyond the point where this light would have made him visible and had made the best speed he could along it away from the lights and voices on the road. This speed was not very great; his stockinged feet sank to their ankles in the soft mud of the ravine; and when, realizing that he was leaving a trace easily followed even by lantern-light, he clambered to the steep side and tried to travel along its slope, he found his progress slower still. In the darkness he crashed sometimes full against the tree-trunks; bushes which he could not see seized and held him, ripping and tearing at his clothes; invisible, fallen saplings tripped him, and he stepped into unseen holes which threw him headlong, so that twice he rolled clear to the bottom of the ravine with fierce, hot pains which nearly deprived him of his senses shooting through his wounded shoulder.
When he had made, as he thought, fully three quarters of a mile in this way and must be, allowing for the winding of the ravine, at least half a mile from his pursuers, he climbed to the brink of the bank and looked back. He was not, as he had thought, half a mile from the road; he was not a quarter of a mile; he could still see plainly the lights of the three motor-cars upon the road and men moving in the flare of these lights. He was certain that he had recognized the figure of Avery among these men. Pursuit of him, however, appeared to have been checked for the moment; he heard neither voices nor any movement in the woods. Eaton, panting, threw himself down to recover breath and strength to think.
There was no question in Eaton's mind what his fate would be if he surrendered to, or was captured by, his pursuers. What he had seen in Santoine's study an hour before was so unbelievable, so completely undemonstrable unless he himself could prove his story that he felt that he would receive no credence. Blatchford, who had seen it in the light in the study, was dead; Santoine, who would have seen it if he had had eyes, was blind. Eaton, still almost stunned and yet wildly excited by that sight, felt only, in the mad confusion of his senses, the futility of telling what he had seen unless he were in a position to prove it. Those opposed to him would put his statement aside with the mere answer that he was lying; the most charitably inclined would think only that what he had been through had driven him insane.
Besides, Eaton was not at all sure that even if he had attempted to tell what he had seen he would be allowed to tell it, or, if he attempted to surrender to the men now pursuing him, he would be allowed to surrender. Donald Avery was clearly in command of those men and was directing the pursuit; in Avery, Eaton had recognized an instinctive enemy from the first; and now, since the polo game, he sensed vaguely in Avery something more than that. What Avery's exact position was in regard to himself Eaton was not at all sure; but of Avery's active hostility he had received full evidence; and he knew now—though how he knew it was not plain even to himself—that Avery would not allow him to surrender but that, if he tried to give himself up, the men under Avery's orders would shoot him down.
As Eaton watched, the motor, which from its position on the road he knew must be Harriet's, backed out from the others and went away. The other motors immediately afterward were turned and followed it. But Eaton could see that they left behind them a man standing armed near to the bridge, and that other men, also armed, passed through the light as they scrambled across the ravine and gained the road on its opposite side. The motors, too, stopped at intervals and then went on; he understood that they were posting men to watch the road. He traced the motor headlights a long way through the dark; one stopped, the other went on. He remembered vaguely a house near the place where the car he watched had stopped, and understanding that where there was a house there was a telephone, he knew that the alarm must be given still more widely now; men on all sides of him must be turning out to watch the roads. He knew they did turn out like that when the occasion demanded.
These waste places bordering upon the lake to north and south of Chicago, and within easy car-ride of the great city, had been the scene of many such man-hunts. Hobos, gypsies, broken men thrown off by the seething city, wandered through them and camped there; startling crimes took place sometimes in these tiny wildernesses; fugitives from the city police took refuge there and were hunted down by the local police, by armed details of the city police, by soldiers from Fort Sheridan. These fugitives might much better have stayed in the concealment of the human jungle of the city; these rolling, wooded, sandy vacant lands which seemed to offer refuge, in reality betrayed only into certain capture. The local police had learned the method of hunting, they had learned to watch the roads and railways to prevent escape.
Eaton understood, therefore, that his own possibility of escape was very small, even if escape had been his only object; but Eaton's problem was not one of escape—it was to find those he pursued and make certain that they were captured at the same time he was; and, as he crouched panting on the damp earth, he was thinking only of that.
The man at the bridge—Dibley—had told enough to let Eaton know that those whom Eaton pursued were no longer in the machine he had followed with Harriet. As Eaton had rushed out of Santoine's study after the two that he had fought there, he had seen that one of these men was supporting and helping the other; he had gained on them because of that. Then other men had appeared suddenly, to give their help, and he had no longer been able to gain; but he had been close enough to see that the one they dragged along and helped into the car was that enemy whose presence in the study had so amazed him. Mad exultation had seized Eaton to know that he had seriously wounded his adversary. He knew now that the man could not have got out of the car by himself—he was too badly wounded for that; he had been taken out of the car, and the other men who were missing had him in charge. The three men who had gone on in the machine had done so for their own escape, but with the added object of misleading the pursuit; the water they had got at Dibley's had been to wash the blood from the car.
And now, as Eaton recalled and realized all this, he knew where the others had left the machine. Vaguely, during the pursuit, he had sensed that Harriet was swinging their motor-car in a great circle, first to the north, then west, then to the south. Two or three miles back upon the road, before they had made their turn to the south, Eaton had lost for a few moments the track of the car they had been following. He had picked it up again at once and before he could speak of it to Harriet; but now he knew that at that point the car they were following had left the road, turning off onto the turf at the side and coming back onto the road a hundred yards beyond.
This place must be nearly due north of him. The road where he had left Harriet ran north and south; to go north he must parallel this road, but it was dangerous to move too near to it because it was guarded. The sky was covered with clouds hiding the stars; the night in the woods was intensely black except where it was lighted by the fire at the bridge. To the opposite side, a faint gray glow against the clouds, which could not be the dawn but must be the reflection of the electric lights along the public pike which followed the shore of the lake, gave Eaton inspiration. If he kept this grayness of the clouds always upon his right, he would be going north.
The wound in Eaton's shoulder still welled blood each time he moved; he tore strips from the front of his shirt, knotted them together and bound his useless left arm tightly to his side. He felt in the darkness to be sure that there was a fresh clip of cartridges in his automatic pistol; then he started forward.
For the first time now he comprehended the almost impossibility of traveling in the woods on a dark night. To try to walk swiftly was to be checked after only two or three steps by sharp collision with some tree-trunk which he could not see before he felt it, or brought to a full stop by clumps of tangled, thorny bushes which enmeshed him, or to be tripped or thrown by some inequality of the ground. When he went round any of these obstacles he lost his sense of direction and wasted minutes before he could find again the dim light against the eastern sky which gave him the compass-points.
As he struggled forward, impatient at these delays, he came several times upon narrow, unguarded roads and crossed them; at other times the little wilderness which protected him changed suddenly to a well-kept lawn where some great house with its garages and out-buildings loomed ahead, and afraid to cross these open places, he was obliged to retrace his steps and find a way round. The distance from the bridge to the place where the three men he was following had got out of their motor, he had thought to be about two miles; but when he had been traveling more than an hour, he had not yet reached it. Then, suddenly he came upon the road for which he was looking; somewhere to the east along it was the place he sought. He crouched as near to the road as he dared and where he could look up and down it. This being a main road, was guarded. A motor-car with armed men in it passed him, and presently repassed, evidently patroling the road; its lights showed him a man with a gun standing at the first bend of the road to the east. Eaton drew further back and moved parallel to the road but far enough away from it to be hidden. A quarter of a mile further he found a second man. The motor-car, evidently, was patroling only to this point; another car was on duty beyond this. As Eaton halted, this second car approached, and was halted, backed and turned.
Its headlights, as it turned, swept through the woods and revealed Eaton. The man standing in the road cried out the alarm and fired at Eaton point blank; he fired a second and third time. Eaton fled madly back into the shadow; as he did so, he heard the men crying to one another and leaping from the car and following him. He found low ground less thickly wooded, and plunged along it. It was not difficult to avoid the men in the blackness of the woods; he made a wide circuit and came back again to the road further on. He could still hear for a time the sounds of the hunt on the turf. Apparently he had not yet reached the right spot; he retreated to the woods, went further along and came back to the road, lying flat upon his face again and waiting till some other car in passing should give him light to see.
Eaton, weak and dizzy from his wounds and confused by darkness and his struggle through the woods, had no exact idea how long it had taken him to get to this place; but he knew that it could have been hardly less than two hours since he had left Harriet. The men he was following, therefore, had that much start of him, and this made him wild with impatience but did not discourage him. His own wounds, Eaton understood, made his escape practically impossible, because any one who saw him would at once challenge and detain him; and the other man was still more seriously wounded. It was not his escape that Eaton feared; it was concealment of him. The man had been taken from the car because his condition was so serious that there was no hope of hiding it; Eaton thought he must be dead. He expected to find the body concealed under dead leaves, hurriedly hidden.
The night had cleared a little; to the north, Eaton could see stars. Suddenly the road and the leafless bushes at its sides flashed out in the bright light of a motor-car passing. Eaton strained forward. He had found the place; there was no doubt a car had turned off the road some time before and stopped there. The passing of many cars had so tracked the road that none of the men in the motors seemed to have noticed anything of significance there; but Eaton saw plainly in the soft ground at the edge of the woods the footmarks of two men walking one behind the other. When the car had passed, he crept forward in the dark and I fingered the distinct heel and toe marks in the soft soil. For a little distance he could follow them by feeling; then as they led him into the edge of the woods the ground grew harder and he could no longer follow them in that way.
It was plain to him what had occurred; two men had got out of the car here and had lifted out and carried away a third. He knelt where he could feel the last footsteps he could detect and looked around. The gray of the electric lights to the east seemed growing, spreading; against this lightness in the sky he could see plainly the branches of the trees; he recognized then that the grayness was the coming of the dawn. It would be only a few minutes before he could see plainly enough to follow the tracks. He drew aside into the deeper cover of some bushes to wait.
The wound in his shoulder no longer bled, but the pain of it twinged him through and through; his head throbbed with the hurt there; his feet were raw and bleeding where sharp roots and branches had cut through his socks and torn the flesh; his skin was hot and dry with fever, and his head swam. He followed impatiently the slow whitening of the east; as soon as he could make out the ground in front of him, he crept forward again to the tracks.
There was not yet light enough to see any distance, but Eaton, accustomed to the darkness and bending close to the ground, could discern the footmarks even on the harder soil. They led away from the road into the woods. On the rotted leaves and twigs was a dark stain; a few steps beyond there was another. The stains had sunk into the damp ground but were plainer on the leaves; Eaton picking up a leaf and fingering it, knew that they were blood. So the man was not dead when he had been lifted from the car. But he had been hurt desperately, was unable to help himself, was probably dying; if there had been any hope for him, his companions would not be carrying him in this way away from any chance of surgical attention.
Eaton followed, as the tracks led through the woods. The men had gone very slowly, carrying this heavy weight; they had been traveling, as he himself had traveled, in the dark, afraid to show a light and avoiding chance of being seen by any one on the roads. They had been as uncertain of their road as he had been of his, but the general trend of their travel was toward the east, and this evidently was the direction in which they wished to go. They had stopped frequently to rest and had laid their burden down. Then suddenly he came to a place where plainly a longer halt had been made.
The ground was trampled around this spot; when the tracks went on they were changed in character. The two men were still carrying the third—a heavy man whose weight strained them and made their feet sink in deeply where the ground was soft. But now they were not careful how they carried him, but went forward merely as though bearing a dead weight. Now, too, no more stains appeared on the brown leaves where they had passed; their burden no longer bled. Eaton, realizing what this meant, felt neither exultation nor surprise. He had known that the man they carried, though evidently alive when taken from the car, was dying. But now he watched the tracks more closely even than before, looking for them to show him where the men had got rid of their burden.
It had grown easier to follow the tracks with the increase of the light, but the danger that he would be seen had also grown greater. He was obliged to keep to the hollows; twice, when he ventured onto the higher ground, he saw motor-cars passing at a distance, but near enough so that those in them could have seen him if they had been looking his way. Once he saw at the edge of the woods a little group of armed men. His dizziness and weakness from the loss of blood was increasing; he became confused at times and lost the tracks. He went forward slowly then, examining each clump of bushes, each heap of dead leaves, to see whether the men had hidden in them that of which he was in search; but always when he found the tracks again their character showed him that the men were still carrying their burden. The tracks seemed fresher now; in spite of his weakness he was advancing much faster than the others had been able to do in the darkness and heavily laden. As near as he could tell, the men had passed just before dawn. Suddenly he came upon the pike which ran parallel to the line of the lake, some hundred yards back from the shore.
He shrank back, throwing himself upon his face in the bushes; the men evidently had crossed this pike. Full day had come, and as Eaton peered out and up and down the road, he saw no one; this road appeared unguarded. Eaton, assured no one was in sight, leaped up and crossed the road. As he reached its further side, a boy carrying a fishpole appeared suddenly from behind some bushes. He stared at Eaton; then, terrified by Eaton's appearance, he dropped the fishpole and fled screaming up the road. Eaton stared dazedly after him for a fraction of an instant, then plunged into the cover. He found the tracks again, and followed them dizzily.
But the boy had given the alarm. Eaton heard the whirring of motors on the road and men shouting to one another; then he heard them beating through the bushes. The noise was at some distance; evidently the boy in his fright and confusion had not directed the men to the exact spot where Eaton had entered the woods or they in their excitement had failed to understand him. But the sounds were drawing nearer. Eaton, exhausted and dizzy, followed feverishly the footmarks on the ground. It could not be far now—the men could not have carried their burden much further than this. They must have hidden it somewhere near here. He would find it near by—must find it before these others found him. But now he could see men moving among the tree-trunks. He threw himself down among some bushes, burrowing into the dead leaves. The men passed him, one so close that Eaton could have thrown a twig and hit him. Eaton could not understand why the man did not see him, but he did not; the man stopped an instant studying the footmarks imprinted in the earth; evidently they had no significance for him, for he went on.
When the searchers had passed out of sight, Eaton sprang up and followed the tracks again. They were distinct here, plainly printed, and he followed easily. He could hear men all about him, out of sight but calling to one another in the woods. All at once he recoiled, throwing himself down again upon the ground. The clump of bushes hiding him ended abruptly only a few yards away; through their bare twigs, but far below him, the sunlight twinkled, mockingly, at him from the surface of water. It was the lake!
Eaton crept forward to the edge of the steep bluff, following the tracks. He peered over the edge. The tracks did not stop at the edge of the bluff; they went on down it. The steep sandy precipice was scarred where the men, still bearing their burden, had slipped and scrambled down it. The marks crossed the shingle sixty feet below; they were deeply printed in the wet sand down to the water's very edge. There they stopped.
Eaton had not expected this. He stared, worn out and with his senses in confusion, and overcome by his physical weakness. The sunlit water only seemed to mock and laugh at him—blue, rippling under the breeze and bearing no trail. It was quite plain what had occurred; the wet sand below was trampled by the feet of three or four men and cut by a boat's bow. They had taken the body away with them in the boat. To sink it somewhere weighted with heavy stones in the deep water? Or had it been carried away on that small, swift vessel Eaton had seen from Santoine's lawn? In either case, Eaton's search was hopeless now.
But it could not be so; it must not be so! Eaton's eyes searched feverishly the shore and the lake. But there was nothing in sight upon either. He crept back from the edge of the bluff, hiding beside a fallen log banked with dead leaves. What was it he had said to Harriet? "I will come back to you—as you have never known me before!" He rehearsed the words in mockery. How would he return to her now? As he moved, a fierce, hot pain from the clotted wound in his shoulder shot him through and through with agony and the silence and darkness of unconsciousness overwhelmed him.