CHAPTER X
THE BLIND MAN'S EYES
Half an hour later, Connery unlocked the door of Eaton's compartment,entered and closed the door behind him. He had brought in Eaton'straveling bag and put it down.
"You understand," said the conductor, "that when a train is stalledlike this it is considered as if under way. So I have local policepower, and I haven't exceeded my rights in putting you under arrest."
"I don't recall that I have questioned your right," Eaton answeredshortly.
"I thought you might question it now. I'm going to search you. Areyou going to make trouble or needn't I send for help?"
"I'll help you." Eaton took off his coat and vest and handed themover. The conductor put them on a seat while he felt over his prisonerfor weapons or other concealed objects. Eaton handed him apocket-knife, and the key to his traveling-bag--he had no otherkeys--from his trousers pockets. The conductor discovered nothingelse. He found a pencil--but no papers or memorandum book--a plaingold watch, unengraved, and a bill-fold containing seven hundreddollars in United States bank-notes in the vest. Connery wrote out areceipt for the money and handed it to his prisoner. He returned theother articles. In the coat, the conductor found a handkerchief and inanother pocket the torn scraps of the telegram delivered to Eaton inhis berth.
"That's the one we had the fuss over in the dining car," Eatonvolunteered, as the conductor began fitting the scraps together.
"You forgot to completely destroy it, eh?"
"What was the use?" Eaton took up the other's point of view. "You hada copy anyway."
"You might have wanted to get rid of it since the discovery of themurder."
"Murder?"
"I guess it's the same thing." The conductor dropped the scraps intoan envelope and put it in his pocket. He examined the coat for atailor's name.
"That coat was copied by a Chinaman in Amoy from the coat I had before.Before the new one was made, I took out the name of the other tailor soit wouldn't be copied too," Eaton remarked in explanation of the lackof any mark. Connery handed back the coat, went out and locked thedoor behind him.
Eaton opened his traveling bag and checked over the contents. He couldtell that everything in it had been again carefully examined, butnothing more had been taken except the small Chinese-Englishdictionary; that was now gone. There had been nothing in the bag tobetray any other identity than the one he had given. Eaton put the bagaway and went back to his seat by the window.
The clear, bright day was drawing toward its dusk: there had been nomovement or attempt to move the train all day. About six o'clock, aspeople began passing forward to the diner, Connery appeared again witha waiter from the dining car bearing a tray with dinner.
"This is 'on' the Department of Justice, Conductor?" Eaton tried to asklightly.
"The check is a dollar twenty. If you want this, I'll charge itagainst your money which I have."
"Make it a dollar, forty-five then," Eaton directed. "Remember thewaiter."
The black boy grinned and spread the table.
"How is Mr.--" Eaton began.
"Dorne?" Connery put in sharply.
"Thanks," said Eaton. "I understand. How is he?"
Connery did not answer, and with the waiter left him, locking him inagain. At ten, Connery came once more with the porter of the car, andthe conductor stood by silently while the porter made up the berth.Eaton went to bed with the car absolutely still, with only the wall ofsnow outside his window and no evidence of any one about but a subduedstep occasionally passing his door. Though he had had nothing to doall the long, lonely hours of the evening but to think, Eaton lay awakethinking. He understood definitely now that whatever action was to betaken following his admission of his presence at Warden's, a charge ofmurder or of assault to kill--dependent upon whether Santoine died orseemed likely to recover--would be made against him at the first citythey reached after the train had started again. He would be turnedover to the police; inquiry would be made; then--he shrank from goingfurther with these thoughts.
The night again was very cold; it was clear, with stars shining; towardmidnight wind came; but little snow drifted now, for the cold hadfrozen a crust. In the morning, from somewhere over the snow-coveredcountry, a man and a boy appeared at the top of the shining bank besidethe train. They walked beside the sleepers to the dining car, where,apparently, they disposed of whatever they had brought in the bags theycarried; they came back along the cars and then disappeared.
As he watched them, Eaton felt the desperate impulse to escape throughthe window and follow them; but he knew he surely would be seen; andeven if he could get away unobserved, he would freeze; his overcoat andhat had been kept by Connery. The conductor came after a time and letin the porter, who unmade the berth and carried away the linen; andlater, Connery came again with the waiter bringing breakfast. He hadbrought a magazine, which he dropped upon the seat beside Eaton; and hestood by until Eaton had breakfasted and the dishes were carried away.
"Want to talk yet?" he asked.
"No."
"Is there anything else you want?" he asked.
"I'd like to see Miss Santoine."
Connery turned away.
"You will tell Miss Santoine I have something I want to say to her?"Eaton asked more definitely.
Connery turned back. "If you've anything to say, tell it to me," hebade curtly.
"It will do no good to tell it to you. Will you tell her what I asked?"
"No," said Connery.
At noon, when they brought Eaton's luncheon, he repeated his requestand was again refused; but less than an hour afterward Connery came tohis door again, and behind Connery, Eaton saw Harriet Santoine andAvery.
Eaton jumped up, and as he saw the girl's pale face, the color left hisown.
"Miss Santoine has asked to speak to you," Connery announced; and headmitted Harriet Santoine and Avery, and himself remaining outside inthe aisle, closed the door upon them.
"How is your father?" Eaton asked the girl.
"He seems just the same; at least, I can't see any change, Mr. Eaton."She said something in a low tone to Avery, who nodded; then she satdown opposite Eaton, and Avery seated himself on the arm of the seatbeside her.
"Can Dr. Sinclair see any difference?" Eaton asked.
"Dr. Sinclair will not commit himself except to say that so far as hecan tell, the indications are favorable. He seems to think--" Thegirl choked; but when she went on, her blue eyes were very bright andher lips did not tremble. "Dr. Sinclair seems to think, Mr. Eaton,that Father was found just in time, and that whatever chance he has forrecovery came from you. Mr. Avery and I had passed by the berth; otherpeople had gone by. Sometimes Father had insomnia and wouldn't get tosleep till late in the morning; so I--and Mr. Avery too--would haveleft him undisturbed until noon. Dr. Sinclair says that if he had beenleft as long as that, he would have had no chance at all for life."
"He has a chance, then, now?"
"Yes; but we don't know how much. The change Dr. Sinclair is expectingmay be either for better or worse. I--I wanted you to know, Mr. Eaton,that I recognize--that the chance Father may have came through you, andthat I am trying to think of you as the one who gave him the chance."
The warm blood flooded Eaton's face, and he bowed his head. She, then,was not wholly hostile to him; she had not been completely convinced byAvery.
"What was it you wanted to tell Miss Santoine?" Avery challenged.
"What did Miss Santoine want to tell me?"
"What she has just told you."
Eaton thought for a moment. The realization that had come to him justnow that something had kept the girl from condemning him as Avery andConnery had condemned him, and that somehow, for some reason, she musthave been fighting within herself to-day and last night against theproof of his guilt, flushed him with gratitude and changed the attitudehe had thought it was going to be necessary for him to take in thistalk with her. As he looked up, her e
yes met his; then she lookedquickly away. Avery moved impatiently and repeated his question:
"What was it you wanted to say?"
"Are they looking for any one, Miss Santoine--any one besides me inconnection with the attack upon your father?"
She glanced at Avery and did not answer. Avery's eyes narrowed. "Weare quite satisfied with what we have been doing," he answered.
"Then they are not looking, Miss Santoine!"
Her lips pressed together, and again it was Avery who answered. "Wehave not said so."
"I must assume it, then," Eaton said to the girl without regardingAvery. "I have been watching as well as I could since they shut me uphere, and I have listened, but I haven't found any evidence thatanything more is being done. So I'm obliged to assume that nothing isbeing done. The few people who know about the attack on your fatherare so convinced and satisfied that I am the one who did it that theyaren't looking any further. Among the people moving about on thetrain, the--the man who made the attack is being allowed to move about;he could even leave the train, if he could do so without being seen andwas willing to take his chance in the snow; and when the train goes on,he certainly will leave it!"
Harriet Santoine turned questioningly to Avery again.
"I am not asking anything of you, you see," Eaton urged. "I'm notasking you to let me go or to give me any--any increase of libertywhich might make it possible for me to escape. I--I'm only warning youthat Mr. Avery and the conductor are making a mistake; and you don'thave to have any faith in me or any belief that I'm telling the truthwhen I say that I didn't do it! I'm only warning you, Miss Santoine,that you mustn't let them stop looking! Why, if I had done it, I mightvery likely have had an accomplice whom they are going to let escape.It's only common sense, you see."
"That is what you wanted to say?" Avery asked.
"That is it," Eaton answered.
"We can go, then, Harriet."
But she made no move to go. Her eyes rested upon Eaton steadily; andwhile he had been appealing to her, a flush had come to her cheeks andfaded away and come again and again with her impulses as he spoke.
"If you didn't do it, why don't you help us?" she cried.
"Help you?"
"Yes: tell us who you are and what you are doing? Why did you take thetrain because Father was on it, if you didn't mean any harm to him?Why don't you tell us where you are going or where you have been orwhat you have been doing? What did your appointment with Mr. Wardenmean? And why, after he was killed, did you disappear until youfollowed Father on this train? Why can't you give the name of anybodyyou know or tell us of any one who knows about you?"
Eaton sank back against the seat away from her, and his eyes shifted toAvery standing ready to go, and then fell.
"I might ask you in return," Eaton said, "why you thought it worthwhile, Miss Santoine, to ask so much about myself when you first met meand before any of this had happened? You were not so much interestedthen in me personally as that; and it was not because you could havesuspected I had been Mr. Warden's friend; for when the conductorcharged that, it was a complete surprise to you."
"No; I did not suspect that."
"Then why were you curious about me?"
Before Avery could speak or even make a gesture, Harriet seemed to cometo a decision. "My Father asked me to," she said.
"Your father? Asked you to do what?"
"To find out about you."
"Why?"
As she hesitated, Avery put his hand upon her shoulder as thoughwarning her to be still; but she went on, after only an instant.
"I promised Mr. Avery and the conductor," she said, "that if I saw youI would listen to what you had to say but would not answer questionswithout their consent; but I seem already to have broken that promise.I have been wondering, since we have found out what we have about you,whether Father could possibly have suspected that you were Mr. Warden'sfriend; but I am quite sure that was not the original reason for hisinquiring about you. My Father thought he recognized your voice, Mr.Eaton, when you were speaking to the conductor about your tickets. Hethought he ought to know who you were. He knew that some time andsomewhere he had been near you before, and had heard you speak; but hecould not tell where or when. And neither Mr. Avery nor I could tellhim who you were; so he asked us to find out. I do not know whether,after we had described you to Father, he may have connected you withMr. Warden or not; but that could not have been in his mind at first."
Eaton had paled; Avery had seemed about to interrupt her, but watchingEaton, he suddenly had desisted.
"You and Mr. Avery?" Eaton repeated. "He sent you to find out aboutme?"
"Sent me--in this case--more than Mr. Avery; because he thought itwould be easier for me to do it." Harriet had reddened under Eaton'sgaze. "You understand, Mr. Eaton, it was--was entirely impersonal withme. My Father, being blind, is obliged to use the eyes ofothers--mine, for one; he has trained me to see for him ever since weused to take walks together when I was a little girl, and he has mademe learn to tell him what I see in detail, in the way that he would seeit himself; and for helping him to see other things on which I might beunable to report so definitely and clearly, he has Mr. Avery. He callsus his eyes, sometimes; and it was only--only because I had beencommissioned to find out about you that I was obliged to show so muchcuriosity."
"I understand," said Eaton quietly. "Your report to your father, Isuppose, convinced him that he had been mistaken in thinking he knew myvoice."
"No--not that. He knew that he had heard it; for sounds have so muchmeaning to him that he never neglects or forgets them, and he carriesin his mind the voices of hundreds of different people and almost nevermakes a mistake among them. It did make him surer that you were notany one with whose voice he ought to have been familiar, but only someone whom he had heard say something--a few words or sentences,maybe--under conditions which impressed your voice upon his mind. Andhe told Mr. Avery so, and that has only made Mr. Avery and theconductor more certain that you must be the--one. And since you willnot tell--"
"To tell would only further confirm them--"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean they would be more certain it was I who--" Eaton, as heblundered with the words and checked himself, looked up apprehensivelyat Avery; but Avery, if he had thought that it was worth while to letthis conversation go on in the expectation that Eaton might let slipsomething which could be used against himself, now had lost thatexpectation.
"Come, Harry," he said.
Harriet arose, and Eaton got up as she did and stood as she went towardthe door.
"You said Mr. Avery and the conductor believe--" he began impulsively,in answer to the something within him which was urging him to know, tomake certain, how far Harriet Santoine believed him to have beenconcerned in the attack upon her father. And suddenly he found that hedid not need to ask. He knew; and with this sudden realization he allat once understood why she had not been convinced in spite of theconviction of the others--why, as, flushing and paling, she had justnow talked with him, her manner had been a continual denial of thesuspicion against him.
To Avery and to Connery the attack upon Santoine was made a vital andimportant thing by the prominence of Santoine and their ownresponsibility toward him, but after all there was nothing surprisingin there having been an attack. Even to Harriet Santoine it could notbe a matter of surprise; she knew--she must know--that the father whomshe loved and thought of as the best of men, could not haveaccomplished all he had done without making enemies; but she couldconceive of an attack upon him being made only by some one roused toinsane and unreasoning hate against him or by some agent wicked andvile enough to kill for profit. She could not conceive of its havingbeen done by a man whom, little as she had known him, she had liked,with whom she had chatted and laughed upon terms of equality. Theaccusation of the second telegram had overwhelmed her for a time, andhad driven her from the defense of him which she had made after he hadadmitted his co
nnection with Gabriel Warden; but now, Eaton felt, theimpulse in his favor had returned. She must have talked over with herfather many times the matter of the man whom Warden had determined tobefriend; and plainly she had become so satisfied that he deservedconsideration rather than suspicion that Connery's identification ofEaton now was to his advantage. Harriet Santoine could not yet answerthe accusation of the second telegram against him, but--in reason orout of reason--her feelings refused acceptance of it.
It was her feelings that were controlling her now, as suddenly shefaced him, flushed and with eyes suffused, waiting for the end of thesentence he could not finish. And as his gaze met hers, he realizedthat life--the life that held Harriet Santoine, however indefinite theinterest might be that she had taken in him--was dearer to him than hehad thought.
Avery had reached the door, holding it open for her to go out.Suddenly Eaton tore the handle from Avery's grasp, slammed the doorshut upon him and braced his foot against it. He would be able to holdit thus for several moments before they could force it open.
"Miss Santoine," he pleaded, his voice hoarse with his emotion, "forGod's sake, make them think what they are doing before they make apublic accusation against me--before they charge me with this to othersnot on this train! I can't answer what you asked; I can't tell you nowabout myself; there is a reason--a fair and honest reason, and onewhich means life or death to me. It will not be merely accusation theymake against me--it will be my sentence! I shall be sentenced before Iam tried--condemned without a chance to defend myself! That is thereason I could not come forward after the murder of Mr. Warden. Icould not have helped him--or aided in the pursuit of his enemies--if Ihad appeared; I merely would have been destroyed myself! The onlything I could hope to accomplish has been in following my presentcourse--which, I swear to you, has had no connection with the attackupon your father. What Mr. Avery and Connery are planning to do to me,they cannot undo. They will merely complete the outrage and injusticealready done me,--of which Mr. Warden spoke to his wife,--and they willnot help your father. For God's sake, keep them from going further!"
Her color deepened, and for an instant, he thought he saw full beliefin him growing in her eyes; but if she could not accept the chargeagainst him, neither could she consciously deny it, and the hands shehad been pressing together suddenly dropped.
"I--I'm afraid nothing I could say would have much effect on them,knowing as little about--about you as I do!"
They dashed the door open then--silenced and overwhelmed him; and theytook her from the room and left him alone again. But there wassomething left with him which they could not take away; for in themoment he had stood alone with her and passionately pleading, somethinghad passed between them--he could give no name to it, but he knew thatHarriet Santoine never could think of him again without a stirring ofher pulses which drew her toward him. And through the rest of thelonely day and through the sleepless night, he treasured this andthought of it again and again.
The following morning the relieving snowplows arrived from the east,and Eaton felt it was the beginning of the end for him. He watchedfrom his window men struggling in the snow about the forward end of thetrain; then the train moved forward past the shoveled and trampled snowwhere rock and pieces of the snowplow were piled beside thetrack--stopped, waited; finally it went on again and began to take upits steady progress.
The attack upon Santoine having taken place in Montana, Eaton thoughtthat he would be turned over to the police somewhere within that State,and he expected it would be done at the first stop; but when the trainslowed at Simons, he saw the town was nothing more than a little hamletbeside a side-track. They surely could not deliver him to the villageauthorities here. The observation car and the Santoine car wereuncoupled here and the train made up again with the Santoine car as thelast car of the train and the observation car ahead of it. This,evidently, was to stop the passing of passengers through the Santoinecar. Did it mean that the change in Santoine's condition which Dr.Sinclair had been expecting had taken place and was for the worse?Eaton would have liked to ask about this of Connery, whom he sawstanding outside his window and keeping watch upon him during theswitching of the cars; but he knew that the conductor would not answerhim.
He rang, instead, for the porter and asked him for a railway folder,and when this had been brought, he opened it to the map of the railroadand checked off the names of the towns they would pass through. Nearlyall the names set in the bold-face letters which denoted the cities andlarger towns ahead of them were, he found, toward the eastern end ofthe State; the nearest--and the one, therefore, at which he thought hewould be given up--was several hours away. At long intervals the trainpassed villages all but buried in the snow; the inhabitants of these,gathered at the stations, stared in on him as they looked in on anyother passenger; and at each of these stops Connery stood outside hiswindow guarding against possibility of his escape. Each time, too,that the train slowed, the porter unlocked the door of the compartment,opened it and stood waiting until the train had regained its speed;plainly they were taking no chances of his dropping from the window.
Early in the afternoon, as they approached the town whose name inbold-face had made him sure that it was the one where he would be givento the police, Eaton rang for the porter again.
"Will you get me paper and an envelope?" he asked.
The negro summoned the conductor.
"You want to write?" Connery asked.
"Yes."
"You understand that anything you write must be given to me unsealed."
"That's satisfactory to me. I don't believe that, even though it isunsealed, you'll take it upon yourself to read it."
The conductor looked puzzled, but sent the porter for some of thestationery the railroad furnished for passengers. The negro broughtpaper, and pen and ink, and set up the little table in front of Eaton;and when they had left him and had locked the door, Eaton wrote:
Miss Santoine:
The questions--all of them--that you and others have asked me you aregoing to find answered very soon--within a very few hours, it may be,certainly within a few days--though they are not going to be answeredby me. When they are answered, you are going to think me the mostdespicable kind of man; you are not going to doubt, then,--for theanswers will not let you doubt,--that I was the one who hurt yourfather. You, and every one else, are going to feel--not only becauseof that, but because of what you will learn about me--that nothing thatmay happen to me will be more than I justly deserve.
I don't seem to care very much what people other than you may think; asthe time grows nearer, I feel that I care less and less about that; butI do care very much--and more and more--that you are going to think ofme in this way. It is very hard for me to know that you are going toregret that you ever let me talk with you in the friendly way you did,or that you let me walk beside you on the station platform at Spokane,and that you are going to shrink with horror when you recollect thatyou let me touch you and put my hand upon your arm. I feel that you donot yet believe that it was I who attacked your father; and I askyou--even in face of the proof which you are so soon to receive--not tobelieve it. I took this train--
He stopped writing, recollecting that the letter was to be given toConnery unsealed and that Connery might read it; he scratched out thesentence he had begun; then he thought a moment and went on:
I ask you not to believe that. More than that, I ask you--when youhave learned who I am--still to believe in me. I don't ask you todefend me against others; you could not do that, for you will see noone who will not hate and despise me. But I beg of you, in all honestyand faith, not to let yourself feel as they do toward me. I want youto believe--
He stopped again, but not because he felt that Harriet Santoine wouldnot believe what he was asking her to believe; instead, it was becausehe knew she would. Mechanically he opened his traveling-bag and gotout a cigar, bit off the end and forgetting in his absorption to lightit, puffed and sucked at it. The f
uture was sure ahead of him; heforesaw it plainly, in detail even, for what was happening to him wasonly the fulfillment of a threat which had been over him ever since helanded at Seattle. He was going out of life--not only HarrietSantoine's life, but all life, and the letter he was writing would makeHarriet Santoine believe his death to have been an act of injustice, ofcruelty. She could not help but feel that she herself had been in away instrumental in his death, since it was the accusation of violenceagainst her father which was going to show who he was and so condemnhim. Dared he, dying, leave a sting like that in the girl's life?
He continued to puff at the unlighted cigar; then, mechanically, hestruck a match to light it. As the match flared up, he touched it tothe sheet on which he had been writing, held the paper until thewritten part was all consumed, and dropped it on the floor of the car,smiling down at it wryly and grimly. He would go out of HarrietSantoine's life as he had come into it--no, not that, for he had comeinto it as one who excited in her a rather pleasing doubt andcuriosity, but he would go out of it as a man whom she must hate andcondemn; to recall him would be only painful to her, so that she wouldtry to kill within her all memory of him.
As he glanced to the window, he saw that they were passing through theoutskirts of some place larger than any they had stopped at before; andrealizing that this must be the place he had picked out on the map asthe one where they would give him to the police, he closed histraveling bag and made ready to go with them. The train drew into thestation and stopped; the porter, as it slowed, had unlocked and openedthe door of his compartment, and he saw Connery outside upon theplatform; but this was no different from their procedure at every stop.Several people got on the train here; others got off; so Connery,obviously, was not preventing those who had been on the train whenSantoine was struck, from leaving it now. Eaton, as he saw Connerymake the signal for the train to go ahead, sank back suddenly,conscious of the suspense he had been under.
He got out the railroad folder and looked ahead to the next town wherehe might be given up to the authorities; but when they rolled into thisin the late afternoon the proceedings were no different. Eaton couldnot understand. He saw by studying the time-table that some time inthe night they would pass the Montana state line into North Dakota.Didn't they intend to deliver him to the State authorities in Montana?
When the waiter brought his supper, Connery came with him.
"You wrote something to-day?" the conductor asked.
"I destroyed it."
Connery looked keenly around the compartment. "You brought me twoenvelopes; there they are. You brought three sheets of paper; here aretwo, and there's what's left of the other on the floor."
Connery seemed satisfied.
"Why haven't you jailed me?" Eaton asked.
"We're waiting to see how things go with Mr. Santoine."
"Has he been conscious?"
Connery did not answer; and through the conductor's silence Eatonsensed suddenly what the true condition of affairs must be. To givehim up to the police would make public the attack upon Santoine; anduntil Santoine either died or recovered far enough to be consulted bythem, neither Avery nor Connery--nor Connery's superiors,apparently--dared to take the responsibility of doing this. So Eatonwould be carried along to whatever point they might reach when Santoinedied or became fully conscious. Where would that be? Clear to Chicago?
It made no material difference to him, Eaton realized, whether thepolice took him in Montana or Chicago, since in either case recognitionof him would be certain in the end; but in Chicago this recognitionmust be immediate, complete, and utterly convincing.
The next day the weather had moderated, or--here in North Dakota--ithad been less severe; the snow was not deep except in the hollows, andon the black, windswept farmlands sprouts of winter wheat were faintlyshowing. The train was traveling steadily and faster than its regularschedule; it evidently was running as a special, some other traintaking the ordinary traffic; it halted now only at the largest cities.In the morning it crossed into Minnesota; and in the late afternoon,slowing, it rolled into some large city which Eaton knew must beMinneapolis or St. Paul. All day he had listened for sounds in theSantoine car, but had heard nothing; the routine which had beenestablished to take care of him had gone on through the day, and he hadseen no one but Connery and the negro, and his questions to them hadbeen unanswered.
The car here was uncoupled from the train and picked up by a switchengine; as dusk fell, Eaton, peering out of his window, could see thatthey had been left lying in the railroad yards; and about midnight,awakening in his berth, he realized that the car was still motionless.He could account for this stoppage in their progress only by somechange in the condition of Santoine. Was Santoine sinking, so thatthey no longer dared to travel? Was he, perhaps--dead?
No sounds came to him from the car to confirm Eaton in any conclusion;there was nothing to be learned from any one outside the car. Asolitary man, burly and alert, paced quietly back and forth belowEaton's window. He was a guard stationed to prevent any escape whilethe car was motionless in the yard.
Eaton lay for a long time, listening for other sounds and wonderingwhat was occurring--or had occurred--at the other end of his car.Toward morning he fell asleep.