CHAPTER XVII
THE FIGHT IN THE STUDY
Eaton dismissed the man who had been waiting in his rooms for him; helocked the door and carefully drew down all the window-shades. Then heput his overcoat, folded as he had been carrying it under his arm, onthe writing table in the center of the room, and from its folds andpockets took a "breast-drill" such as iron workers use in drillingsteel, an automatic pistol with three clips of cartridges, an electricflashlight and a little bottle of nitroglycerine. He loaded the pistoland put it in his pocket; then he carefully inspected the other things.
The room he was in, the largest of his suite, resembled Santoine'sstudy on the floor below in the arrangement of its windows, though itwas smaller than the study. The writing-desk in its center occupiedmuch the position of Santoine's large desk; he moved it slightly tomake the relative positions coincide. The couch against the end wallrepresented the position of the study's double doors. Eaton switchedout the lights, and starting at the windows, he crossed the room in thedarkness, avoiding the desk, and stopping a few feet to the right ofthe couch; here he flashed his light upon the wall at the height of thelittle wall-safe to the right of the doors in the study below. A dozentimes he did this, passing from the windows to the position of thewall-safe and only momentarily flashing his light.
He assured himself thus of being able to pass in the dark from thewindows of Santoine's study to the wall-safe. As the study was largerthan this room, he computed that he must add two steps to what he tookhere in each direction. He paid no attention to the position of thesafe to the left of the doors, for he had kept watch of the vase on thetable in the lower hall, and the only sign he had found there had toldhim that what he wanted was in the safe to the right.
He raised a shade and window, then, and sat in the dark. The night wascloudy and very dark; and the lake was smooth with barely a ripple.Near at hand a steamer passed, blazing with lights, and further out hesaw the mast-head light of some other steamer. The lake was stillice-locked at its northern end, and so the farther of these steamers,he knew, was bound to some southern Michigan port; the nearer was oneof the Chicago-Milwaukee boats. For some moments after it had passed,the waves of its wake washed in and sounded on the shore at the foot ofthe bluff. Next Eaton made out the hum of a motor-car approaching thehouse. It was Avery, who evidently had been out and was now returning;the chauffeur spoke the name in his reply to some question as the carswung away to the garage. Eaton still sat in the dark. By degrees allnoises ceased in the house, even in the servants' quarters. TwiceEaton leaned forward looking out of the window and found all quiet; butboth times he settled back in his chair and waited.
The wash of waves, as from a passing boat, sounded again on the shore.Eaton leaned nearer the window and stared out. There was no light insight showing any boat; but the waves on the shore were distinct;indeed, they had been more distinct than those from the steamer. Theymust have been made by a large vessel or from a small ship close in andmoving fast. The waves came in first on the north and swept south;Eaton strained his eyes and now saw a vague blur off to the south andwithin half a mile of shore--a boat without lights. If it had passedat high speed, it had stopped now. He watched this for some time; buthe could make out no more, and soon he could not be sure even that theblur was there.
He gazed at the south wing of the house; it was absolutely dark andquiet; the windows of the first floor were closed and the curtainsdrawn; but to-night there was no light in the room. The windows of theroom on the second floor were open; Basil Santoine was undoubtedlyasleep. Eaton gazed again at the lower room. Then in the dark hemoved to the table where he had left his overcoat, and distributed inhis pockets and within his clothing the articles he had brought; andnow he felt again in the overcoat and brought out a short, strong barof steel curved and flattened at one end--a "jimmy" for forcing thewindows.
Eaton slipped off his shoes and went to his room door; he opened thedoor and found the hall dark and quiet. He stepped out, closing hisdoor carefully behind him, and with great caution he descended thestairs. Below, all was quiet; the red embers and glowing charcoal ofwood fires which had blazed on the hearths gave the only light. Eatoncrept to the doors of the blind man's study and softly tried them.They were, as he had expected, locked. He went to a window in thedrawing-room which was set in a recess and so placed that it was notvisible from other windows in the house. He opened this window and lethimself down upon the lawn.
There he stood still for a moment, listening. There was no alarm ofany sort. He crept along beside the house till he came to the firstwindows of the south wing. He tried these carefully and then went on.He gained the south corner of the wing, unobserved or at least withoutsign that he had been seen, and went on around it.
He stopped at the first high French window on the south. It was partlyhidden from view from south and west by a column of the portico, andwas the one he had selected for his operations; as he tried to slip hisjimmy under the bottom of the sash, the window, to his amazement,opened silently upon its hinges; it had not been locked. The heavycurtains within hung just in front of him; he put out his hand andparted them. Then he started back in astonishment and crouched closeto the ground; inside the room was a man moving about, flashing anelectric torch before him and then exploring an instant in darkness andflashing his torch again.
The unexpectedness of this sight took for an instant Eaton's breath andpower of moving; he had not been at all prepared for this; now he knewsuddenly that he ought to have been prepared for it. If the man withinthe room was not the one who had attacked him with the motor, he wasclosely allied with that man, and what he was after now was the samething Eaton was after. Eaton looked about behind him; no oneapparently had been left on watch outside. He drew his pistol, andloosing the safety, he made it ready to fire; with his left hand, heclung to the short, heavy jimmy. He stepped into the great roomthrough the curtains, taking care they did not jingle the rings fromwhich they hung; he carefully let the curtains fall together behindhim, and treading noiselessly in his stocking feet, he advanced uponthe man, moving forward in each period of darkness between the flashesof the electric torch.
The man, continuing to flash his light about, plainly had heardnothing, and the curtains had prevented him from being warned by thechill of the night air that the window was open; but now, at thefurther side of the room, another electric torch flashed out. Anotherman had been in the room; he neither alarmed nor was alarmed by the manflashing the first light; each had known the other's presence before.There were at least two men in the room, working together--or rather,one was working, the other supervising; for Eaton heard now a steady,almost inaudible grinding noise as the second man worked. Eaton haltedagain and waited; if there were two, there might be others.
The discovery of the second man had not made Eaton afraid; his pulseswere beating faster and hotter, and he felt the blood rushing to hishead and his hands growing cold with his excitement; but he wasconscious of no fear. He crouched and crept forward noiselessly again.No other light appeared in the room, and there was no sound elsewherefrom the darkness; but the man who supervised had moved closer to theother. The grinding noise had stopped; it was followed by a sharpclick; the men, side by side, were bending over something; and thelight of the man who had been working, for a fraction of a second shotinto the face of the other. It did not delay at all; it was a purelyaccidental flash and could not have been said to show the features atall--only a posture, an expression, a personality of a strong and cruelman. He muttered some short, hoarse imprecation at the other; butbefore Eaton heard the voice, he had stopped as if struck, and hisbreath had gone from him.
His instant's glimpse of that face astounded, stunned, stupefied him.He could not have seen that man! The fact was impossible! He musthave been mad; his mind must have become unreliable to let him evenimagine it. Then came the sound of the voice--the voice of the manwhose face he had seen! It was he! And, in place of the paralysis
ofthe first instant, now a wild, savage throe of passion seized Eaton;his pulses leaped so it seemed they must burst his veins, and he gulpedand choked. He had not filled in with insane fancy the features of theman whom he had seen; the voice witnessed too that the man in the darkby the wall was he whom Eaton--if he could have dreamed such a fact asnow had been disclosed--would have circled the world to catch anddestroy; yet now with the destruction of that man in his power--for hehad but to aim and empty his automatic pistol at five paces--suchdestruction at this moment could not suffice; mere shooting that manwould be petty, ineffectual. Eaton's fingers tightened on the handleof his pistol, but he held it now not as a weapon to fire but as a dullweight with which to strike. The grip of his left hand clamped ontothe short steel bar, and with lips parted--breathing once, it seemed,for each heartbeat and yet choking, suffocating--he leaped forward.
At the same instant--so that he could not have been alarmed by Eaton'sleap--the man who had been working moved his torch, and the light fellupon Eaton.
"Look out!" the man cried in alarm to his companion; with the word thelight of the torch vanished.
The man toward whom Eaton rushed did not have time to switch off hislight; he dropped it instead; and as Eaton sprang for him, he crouched.Eaton, as he struck forward, found nothing; but below his knees, Eatonfelt a man's powerful arms tackling him; as he struggled to freehimself, a swift, savage lunge lifted him from his feet; he was thrownand hurled backwards.
Eaton ducked his head forward and struggled to turn, as he went down,so that a shoulder and not his head or back would strike the floorfirst. He succeeded in this, though in his effort he dropped thejimmy. He clung with his right hand to the pistol, and as he struckthe floor, the pistol shot off; the flash of flame spurted toward theceiling. Instantly the grip below his knees was loosed; the man whohad tackled him and hurled him back had recoiled in the darkness.Eaton got to his feet but crouched and crept about behind a table,aiming his pistol over it in the direction in which he supposed theother men must be. The sound of the shot had ceased to roar throughthe room; the gases from the powder only made the air heavier. Theother two men in the room also waited, invisible and silent. The onlylight, in the great curtained room, came from the single electric torchlying on the floor. This lighted the legs of a chair, a corner of adesk and a circle of books in the cases on the wall. As Eaton's eyesbecame more accustomed to the darkness, he could see vague shapes offurniture. If a man moved, he might be made out; but if he stayedstill, probably he would remain indistinguishable.
The other men seemed also to have recognized this; no one moved in theroom, and there was complete silence.
Eaton knelt on one knee behind his table; now he was wildly, exultantlyexcited; his blood leaped hotly to his hand pointing his pistol; hepanted, almost audibly, for breath, but though his pulse throbbedthrough his head too, his mind was clear and cool as he reckoned hissituation and his chances. He had crossed the Pacific, the Continent,he had schemed and risked everything with the mere hope of getting intothis room to discover evidence with which to demand from the worldrighting of the wrong which had driven him as a fugitive for fiveyears; and here he found the man who was the cause of it all, beforehim in the same room a few paces away in the dark!
For it was impossible that this was not that man; and Eaton knew nowthat this was he who must have been behind and arranging and directingthe attacks upon him, Eaton had not only seen him and heard his voice,but he had felt his grasp; that sudden, instinctive crouch before acharge, and the savage lunge and tackle were the instant, natural actsof an old linesman on a championship team in the game of football as itwas played twenty years before. That lift of the opponent off his feetand the heavy lunge hurling him back to fall on his head was what oneman--in the rougher, more cruel days of the college game--had beenfamous for. On the football field that throw sufficed to knock ahelmeted opponent unconscious; here it was meant, beyond doubt, to domore.
Upon so much, at least, Eaton's mind at once was clear; here was hisenemy whom he must destroy if he himself were not first destroyed.Other thoughts, recasting of other relations altered or overturned intheir bearing by the discovery of this man here--everything else couldand must wait upon the mighty demand of that moment upon Eaton todestroy this enemy now or be himself destroyed.
Eaton shook in his passion; yet coolly he now realized that his leftshoulder, which had taken the shock of his fall, was numb. He shiftedhis pistol to cover a vague form which had seemed to move; but, if ithad stirred, it was still again now. Eaton strained to listen.
It seemed certain that the noise of the shot, if not the sound of thestruggle which preceded it, must have raised an alarm, though the roomwas in a wing and shut off by double doors from the main part of thehouse; it was possible that the noise had not gone far; but it musthave been heard in the room directly above and connected with the studyby a staircase at the head of which was a door. Basil Santoine, asEaton knew, slept above; a nurse must be waiting on duty somewherenear. Eaton had seen the row of buttons which the blind man had withinarm's-length with which he must be able to summon every servant in thehouse. So it could not last much longer now--this deadlock in thedark--the two facing one, and none of them daring to move. And one ofthe two, at least, seemed to have recognized that.
Eaton had moved, warily and carefully, but he had moved; a revolverflashed before him. Instantly and without consciousness that hisfinger pulled the trigger, Eaton's pistol flashed back. In front ofhim, the flame flashed again, and another spurt of fire spat at oneside.
Eaton fired back at this--he was prostrate on the floor now, andwhether he had been hit or not he did not yet know, or whether theblood flowing down his face was only from a splinter sprayed from thetable behind which he had hid. He fired again, holding his pistol farout to one side to confuse the aim of the others; he thought that theytoo were doing the same and allowed for it in his aim. He pulled histrigger a ninth time--he had not counted his shots, but he knew he hadhad seven cartridges in the magazine and one in the barrel--and thepistol clicked without discharging. He rolled over further away fromthe spot where he had last fired and pulled an extra clip of cartridgesfrom his pocket.
The blood was flowing hot over his face. He made no effort to staunchit or even to feel with his fingers to find exactly where or how badlyhe had been hit. He jerked the empty cartridge clip from his pistolbutt and snapped in the other. He swept his sleeve over his face toclear the blood from his brows and eyes and stared through the darkwith pistol at arm's-length loaded and ready. Blood spurted over hisface again; another sweep of his sleeve cleared it; and he moved hispistol-point back and forth in the dark. The flash of the firing fromthe other two revolvers had stopped; the roar of the shots had ceasedto deafen. Eaton had not counted the shots at him any better than hehad kept track of his own firing; but he knew now that the other twomust have emptied their magazines as well as he. It was possible, ofcourse, that he had killed one of them or wounded one mortally; but hehad no way to know that. He could hear the click as one of the mensnapped his revolver shut again after reloading; then another clickcame. Both the others had reloaded.
"All right?" the voice which Eaton knew questioned the other.
"All right," came the reply.
But, if they were all right, they made no offer to fire first again.Nor yet did they dare to move. Eaton knew they lay on the floor likehimself. They lay with fingers on trigger, as he also lay, waitingagain for him to move so they could shoot at him. But surely now thesound of the firing in that room must have reached the man in the roomabove; surely he must be summoning his servants!
Eaton listened; there was still no sound from the rest of the house.But overhead now, he heard an almost imperceptible pattering--the soundof a bare-footed man crossing the floor; and he knew that the blind manin the bedroom above was getting up.