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's
traveling bag and put it down.
"You understand," said the conductor, "that when a train is stalled
like this it is considered as if under way. So I have local police
power, and I haven't exceeded my rights in putting you under arrest."
"I don't recall that I have questioned your right," Eaton answered
shortly.
"I thought you might question it now. I'm going to search you. Are
you going to make trouble or needn't I send for help?"
"I'll help you." Eaton took off his coat and vest and handed them
over. The conductor put them on a seat while he felt over his prisoner
for weapons or other concealed objects. Eaton handed him a
pocket-knife, and the key to his traveling-bag--he had no other
keys--from his trousers pockets. The conductor discovered nothing
else. He found a pencil--but no papers or memorandum book--a plain
gold watch, unengraved, and a bill-fold containing seven hundred
dollars in United States bank-notes in the vest. Connery wrote out a
receipt for the money and handed it to his prisoner. He returned the
other articles. In the coat, the conductor found a handkerchief and in
another pocket the torn scraps of the telegram delivered to Eaton in
his berth.
"That's the one we had the fuss over in the dining car," Eaton
volunteered, 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 had
a copy anyway."
"You might have wanted to get rid of it since the discovery of the
murder."
"Murder?"
"I guess it's the same thing." The conductor dropped the scraps into
an envelope and put it in his pocket. He examined the coat for a
tailor'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 so
it wouldn't be copied too," Eaton remarked in explanation of the lack
of any mark. Connery handed back the coat, went out and locked the
door behind him.
Eaton opened his traveling bag and checked over the contents. He could
tell that everything in it had been again carefully examined, but
nothing more had been taken except the small Chinese-English
dictionary; that was now gone. There had been nothing in the bag to
betray any other identity than the one he had given. Eaton put the bag
away and went back to his seat by the window.
The clear, bright day was drawing toward its dusk: there had been no
movement or attempt to move the train all day. About six o'clock, as
people began passing forward to the diner, Connery appeared again with
a waiter from the dining car bearing a tray with dinner.
"This is 'on' the Department of Justice, Conductor?" Eaton tried to ask
lightly.
"The check is a dollar twenty. If you want this, I'll charge it
against your money which I have."
"Make it a dollar, forty-five then," Eaton directed. "Remember the
waiter."
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 in
again. At ten, Connery came once more with the porter of the car, and
the conductor stood by silently while the porter made up the berth.
Eaton went to bed with the car absolutely still, with only the wall of
snow outside his window and no evidence of any one about but a subdued
step occasionally passing his door. Though he had had nothing to do
all the long, lonely hours of the evening but to think, Eaton lay awake
thinking. He understood definitely now that whatever action was to be
taken following his admission of his presence at Warden's, a charge of
murder or of assault to kill--dependent upon whether Santoine died or
seemed likely to recover--would be made against him at the first city
they reached after the train had started again. He would be turned
over to the police; inquiry would be made; then--he shrank from going
further with these thoughts.
The night again was very cold; it was clear, with stars shining; toward
midnight wind came; but little snow drifted now, for the cold had
frozen a crust. In the morning, from somewhere over the snow-covered
country, a man and a boy appeared at the top of the shining bank beside
the train. They walked beside the sleepers to the dining car, where,
apparently, they disposed of whatever they had brought in the bags they
carried; they came back along the cars and then disappeared.
As he watched them, Eaton felt the desperate impulse to escape through
the window and follow them; but he knew he surely would be seen; and
even if he could get away unobserved, he would freeze; his overcoat and
hat had been kept by Connery. The conductor came after a time and let
in the porter, who unmade the berth and carried away the linen; and
later, Connery came again with the waiter bringing breakfast. He had
brought a magazine, which he dropped upon the seat beside Eaton; and he
stood 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," he
bade 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 request
and was again refused; but less than an hour afterward Connery came to
his door again, and behind Connery, Eaton saw Harriet Santoine and
Avery.
Eaton jumped up, and as he saw the girl's pale face, the color left his
own.
"Miss Santoine has asked to speak to you," Connery announced; and he
admitted Harriet Santoine and Avery, and himself remaining outside in
the 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 sat
down opposite Eaton, and Avery seated himself on the arm of the seat
beside her.
"Can Dr. Sinclair see any difference?" Eaton asked.
"Dr. Sinclair will not commit himself except to say that so far as he
can tell, the indications are favorable. He seems to think--" The
girl choked; but when she went on, her blue eyes were very bright and
her lips did not tremble. "Dr. Sinclair seems to think, Mr. Eaton,
that Father was found just in time, and that whatever chance he has for
recovery came from you. Mr. Avery and I had passed by the berth; other
people had gone by. Sometimes Father had insomnia and wouldn't get to
sleep till late in the morning; so I--and Mr. Avery too--would have
left him undisturbed until noon. Dr. Sinclair says that if he had been
left 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 expecting
may 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, and
that 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 by
Avery.
"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 just
now that something had kept the girl from condemning him as Avery and
Connery had condemned him, and that somehow, for some reason, she must
have been fighting within herself to-day and last night against the
proof of his guilt, flushed him with gratitude and changed the attitude
he had thought it was going to be necessary for him to take in this
talk with her. As he looked up, her eyes met his; then she looked
quickly 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 in
connection with the attack upon your father?"
She glanced at Avery and did not answer. Avery's eyes narrowed. "We
are 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. "We
have not said so."
"I must assume it, then," Eaton said to the girl without regarding
Avery. "I have been watching as well as I could since they shut me up
here, and I have listened, but I haven't found any evidence that
anything more is being done. So I'm obliged to assume that nothing is
being done. The few people who know about the attack on your father
are so convinced and satisfied that I am the one who did it that they
aren't looking any further. Among the people moving about on the
train, 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 and
was 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 not
asking you to let me go or to give me any--any increase of liberty
which might make it possible for me to escape. I--I'm only warning you
that Mr. Avery and the conductor are making a mistake; and you don't
have to have any faith in me or any belief that I'm telling the truth
when 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 might
very 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; and
while he had been appealing to her, a flush had come to her cheeks and
faded 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 the
train 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 or
what you have been doing? What did your appointment with Mr. Warden
mean? And why, after he was killed, did you disappear until you
followed Father on this train? Why can't you give the name of anybody
you know or tell us of any one who knows about you?"
Eaton sank back against the seat away from her, and his eyes shifted to
Avery standing ready to go, and then fell.
"I might ask you in return," Eaton said, "why you thought it worth
while, Miss Santoine, to ask so much about myself when you first met me
and before any of this had happened? You were not so much interested
then in me personally as that; and it was not because you could have
suspected I had been Mr. Warden's friend; for when the conductor
charged 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 come
to 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 though
warning 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 you
I would listen to what you had to say but would not answer questions
without 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's
friend; but I am quite sure that was not the original reason for his
inquiring about you. My Father thought he recognized your voice, Mr.
Eaton, when you were speaking to the conductor about your tickets. He
thought he ought to know who you were. He knew that some time and
somewhere he had been near you before, and had heard you speak; but he
could not tell where or when. And neither Mr. Avery nor I could tell
him 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 with
Mr. 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 watching
Eaton, he suddenly had desisted.
"You and Mr. Avery?" Eaton repeated. "He sent you to find out about
me?"
"Sent me--in this case--more than Mr. Avery; because he thought it
would be easier for me to do it." Harriet had reddened under Eaton's
gaze. "You understand, Mr. Eaton, it was--was entirely impersonal with
me. My Father, being blind, is obliged to use the eyes of
others--mine, for one; he has trained me to see for him ever since we
used to take walks together when I was a little girl, and he has made
me learn to tell him what I see in detail, in the way that he would see
it himself; and for helping him to see other things on which I might be
unable to report so definitely and clearly, he has Mr. Avery. He calls
us his eyes, sometimes; and it was only--only because I had been
commissioned to find out about you that I was obliged to show so much
curiosity."
"I understand," said Eaton quietly. "Your report to your father, I
suppose, convinced him that he had been mistaken in thinking he knew my
voice."
"No--not that. He knew that he had heard it; for sounds have so much
meaning to him that he never neglects or forgets them, and he carries
in his mind the voices of hundreds of different people and almost never
makes a mistake among them. It did make him surer that you were not
any one with whose voice he ought to have been familiar, but only some
one whom he had heard say something--a few words or sentences,
maybe--under conditions which impressed your voice upon his mind. And
he told Mr. Avery so, and that has only made Mr. Avery and the
conductor more certain that you must be the--one. And since you will
not 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 he
blundered with the words and checked himself, looked up apprehensively
at Avery; but Avery, if he had thought that it was worth while to let
this conversation go on in the expectation that Eaton might let slip
something which could be used against himself, now had lost that
expectation.
"Come, Harry," he said.
Harriet arose, and Eaton got up as she did and stood as she went toward
the 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, to
make certain, how far Harriet Santoine believed him to have been
concerned in the attack upon her father. And suddenly he found that he
did not need to ask. He knew; and with this sudden realization he all
at once understood why she had not been convinced in spite of the
conviction of the others--why, as, flushing and paling, she had just
now talked with him, her manner had been a continual denial of the
suspicion against him.
To Avery and to Connery the attack upon Santoine was made a vital and
important thing by the prominence of Santoine and their own
responsibility toward him, but after all there was nothing surprising
in there having been an attack. Even to Harriet Santoine it could not
be a matter of surprise; she knew--she must know--that the father whom
she loved and thought of as the best of men, could not have
accomplished all he had done without making enemies; but she could
conceive of an attack upon him being made only by some one roused to
insane and unreasoning hate against him or by some agent wicked and
vile enough to kill for profit. She could not conceive of its having
been 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. The
accusation of the second telegram had overwhelmed her for a time, and
had driven her from the defense of him which she had made after he had
admitted his connection with Gabriel Warden; but now, Eaton felt, the
impulse in his favor had returned. She must have talked over with her
father many times the matter of the man whom Warden had determined to
befriend; and plainly she had become so satisfied that he deserved
consideration rather than suspicion that Connery's identification of
Eaton now was to his advantage. Harriet Santoine could not yet answer
the accusation of the second telegram against him, but--in reason or
out of reason--her feelings refused acceptance of it.
It was her feelings that were controlling her now, as suddenly she
faced him, flushed and with eyes suffused, waiting for the end of the
sentence he could not finish. And as his gaze met hers, he realized
that life--the life that held Harriet Santoine, however indefinite the
interest might be that she had taken in him--was dearer to him than he
had 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 door
shut upon him and braced his foot against it. He would be able to hold
it thus for several moments before they could force it open.
"Miss Santoine," he pleaded, his voice hoarse with his emotion, "for
God's sake, make them think what they are doing before they make a
public accusation against me--before they charge me with this to others
not on this train! I can't answer what you asked; I can't tell you now
about myself; there is a reason--a fair and honest reason, and one
which means life or death to me. It will not be merely accusation they
make against me--it will be my sentence! I shall be sentenced before I
am tried--condemned without a chance to defend myself! That is the
reason I could not come forward after the murder of Mr. Warden. I
could not have helped him--or aided in the pursuit of his enemies--if I
had appeared; I merely would have been destroyed myself! The only
thing I could hope to accomplish has been in following my present
course--which, I swear to you, has had no connection with the attack
upon your father. What Mr. Avery and Connery are planning to do to me,
they cannot undo. They will merely complete the outrage and injustice
already done me,--of which Mr. Warden spoke to his wife,--and they will
not help your father. For God's sake, keep them from going further!"
Her color deepened, and for an instant, he thought he saw full belief
in him growing in her eyes; but if she could not accept the charge
against him, neither could she consciously deny it, and the hands she
had 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 they
took her from the room and left him alone again. But there was
something left with him which they could not take away; for in the
moment he had stood alone with her and passionately pleading, something
had passed between them--he could give no name to it, but he knew that
Harriet Santoine never could think of him again without a stirring of
her pulses which drew her toward him. And through the rest of the
lonely day and through the sleepless night, he treasured this and
thought 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 watched
from his window men struggling in the snow about the forward end of the
train; then the train moved forward past the shoveled and trampled snow
where rock and pieces of the snowplow were piled beside the
track--stopped, waited; finally it went on again and began to take up
its steady progress.
The attack upon Santoine having taken place in Montana, Eaton thought
that 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 train
slowed at Simons, he saw the town was nothing more than a little hamlet
beside a side-track. They surely could not deliver him to the village
authorities here. The observation car and the Santoine car were
uncoupled here and the train made up again with the Santoine car as the
last car of the train and the observation car ahead of it. This,
evidently, was to stop the passing of passengers through the Santoine
car. 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 saw
standing outside his window and keeping watch upon him during the
switching of the cars; but he knew that the conductor would not answer
him.
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 railroad
and checked off the names of the towns they would pass through. Nearly
all the names set in the bold-face letters which denoted the cities and
larger towns ahead of them were, he found, toward the eastern end of
the State; the nearest--and the one, therefore, at which he thought he
would be given up--was several hours away. At long intervals the train
passed villages all but buried in the snow; the inhabitants of these,
gathered at the stations, stared in on him as they looked in on any
other passenger; and at each of these stops Connery stood outside his
window 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 in
bold-face had made him sure that it was the one where he would be given
to 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 is
unsealed, you'll take it upon yourself to read it."
The conductor looked puzzled, but sent the porter for some of the
stationery the railroad furnished for passengers. The negro brought
paper, 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 are
going to find answered very soon--within a very few hours, it may be,
certainly within a few days--though they are not going to be answered
by me. When they are answered, you are going to think me the most
despicable kind of man; you are not going to doubt, then,--for the
answers will not let you doubt,--that I was the one who hurt your
father. You, and every one else, are going to feel--not only because
of that, but because of what you will learn about me--that nothing that
may happen to me will be more than I justly deserve.
I don't seem to care very much what people other than you may think; as
the time grows nearer, I feel that I care less and less about that; but
I do care very much--and more and more--that you are going to think of
me in this way. It is very hard for me to know that you are going to
regret that you ever let me talk with you in the friendly way you did,
or that you let me walk beside you on the station platform at Spokane,
and that you are going to shrink with horror when you recollect that
you let me touch you and put my hand upon your arm. I feel that you do
not yet believe that it was I who attacked your father; and I ask
you--even in face of the proof which you are so soon to receive--not to
believe it. I took this train--
He stopped writing, recollecting that the letter was to be given to
Connery unsealed and that Connery might read it; he scratched out the
sentence he had begun; then he thought a moment and went on:
I ask you not to believe that. More than that, I ask you--when you
have learned who I am--still to believe in me. I don't ask you to
defend me against others; you could not do that, for you will see no
one who will not hate and despise me. But I beg of you, in all honesty
and faith, not to let yourself feel as they do toward me. I want you
to believe--
He stopped again, but not because he felt that Harriet Santoine would
not believe what he was asking her to believe; instead, it was because
he knew she would. Mechanically he opened his traveling-bag and got
out a cigar, bit off the end and forgetting in his absorption to light
it, puffed and sucked at it. The future was sure ahead of him; he
foresaw it plainly, in detail even, for what was happening to him was
only the fulfillment of a threat which had been over him ever since he
landed at Seattle. He was going out of life--not only Harriet
Santoine's life, but all life, and the letter he was writing would make
Harriet Santoine believe his death to have been an act of injustice, of
cruelty. She could not help but feel that she herself had been in a
way instrumental in his death, since it was the accusation of violence
against her father which was going to show who he was and so condemn
him. Dared he, dying, leave a sting like that in the girl's life?
He continued to puff at the unlighted cigar; then, mechanically, he
struck a match to light it. As the match flared up, he touched it to
the sheet on which he had been writing, held the paper until the
written part was all consumed, and dropped it on the floor of the car,
smiling down at it wryly and grimly. He would go out of Harriet
Santoine's life as he had come into it--no, not that, for he had come
into it as one who excited in her a rather pleasing doubt and
curiosity, but he would go out of it as a man whom she must hate and
condemn; to recall him would be only painful to her, so that she would
try to kill within her all memory of him.
As he glanced to the window, he saw that they were passing through the
outskirts of some place larger than any they had stopped at before; and
realizing that this must be the place he had picked out on the map as
the one where they would give him to the police, he closed his
traveling bag and made ready to go with them. The train drew into the
station and stopped; the porter, as it slowed, had unlocked and opened
the door of his compartment, and he saw Connery outside upon the
platform; but this was no different from their procedure at every stop.
Several people got on the train here; others got off; so Connery,
obviously, was not preventing those who had been on the train when
Santoine was struck, from leaving it now. Eaton, as he saw Connery
make the signal for the train to go ahead, sank back suddenly,
conscious of the suspense he had been under.
He got out the railroad folder and looked ahead to the next town where
he might be given up to the authorities; but when they rolled into this
in the late afternoon the proceedings were no different. Eaton could
not understand. He saw by studying the time-table that some time in
the night they would pass the Montana state line into North Dakota.
Didn't they intend to deliver him to the State authorities in Montana?
When the waiter brought his supper, Connery came with him.
"You wrote something to-day?" the conductor asked.
"I destroyed it."
Connery looked keenly around the compartment. "You brought me two
envelopes; there they are. You brought three sheets of paper; here are
two, and there's what's left of the other on the floor."
Connery seemed satisfied.
"Why haven't you jailed me?" Eaton asked.
"We're waiting to see how things go with Mr. Santoine."
"Has he been conscious?"
Connery did not answer; and through the conductor's silence Eaton
sensed suddenly what the true condition of affairs must be. To give
him up to the police would make public the attack upon Santoine; and
until Santoine either died or recovered far enough to be consulted by
them, neither Avery nor Connery--nor Connery's superiors,
apparently--dared to take the responsibility of doing this. So Eaton
would be carried along to whatever point they might reach when Santoine
died or became fully conscious. Where would that be? Clear to Chicago?
It made no material difference to him, Eaton realized, whether the
police took him in Montana or Chicago, since in either case recognition
of him would be certain in the end; but in Chicago this recognition
must be immediate, complete, and utterly convincing.
The next day the weather had moderated, or--here in North Dakota--it
had been less severe; the snow was not deep except in the hollows, and
on the black, windswept farmlands sprouts of winter wheat were faintly
showing. The train was traveling steadily and faster than its regular
schedule; it evidently was running as a special, some other train
taking the ordinary traffic; it halted now only at the largest cities.
In the morning it crossed into Minnesota; and in the late afternoon,
slowing, it rolled into some large city which Eaton knew must be
Minneapolis or St. Paul. All day he had listened for sounds in the
Santoine car, but had heard nothing; the routine which had been
established to take care of him had gone on through the day, and he had
seen no one but Connery and the negro, and his questions to them had
been unanswered.
The car here was uncoupled from the train and picked up by a switch
engine; as dusk fell, Eaton, peering out of his window, could see that
they had been left lying in the railroad yards; and about midnight,
awakening in his berth, he realized that the car was still motionless.
He could account for this stoppage in their progress only by some
change in the condition of Santoine. Was Santoine sinking, so that
they no longer dared to travel? Was he, perhaps--dead?
No sounds came to him from the car to confirm Eaton in any conclusion;
there was nothing to be learned from any one outside the car. A
solitary man, burly and alert, paced quietly back and forth below
Eaton's window. He was a guard stationed to prevent any escape while
the car was motionless in the yard.
Eaton lay for a long time, listening for other sounds and wondering
what was occurring--or had occurred--at the other end of his car.
Toward morning he fell asleep.