PUBLICITY NOT WANTED
"Basil Santoine dying! Blind Millionaire lawyer taken ill on train!"
The alarm of the cry came to answer Eaton's question early the next
morning. As he started up in his berth, he shook himself into
realization that the shouts were not merely part of an evil dream; some
one was repeating the cry outside the car window. He threw up the
curtain and saw a vagrant newsboy, evidently passing through the
railroad yards to sell to the trainmen. Eaton's guard outside his
window was not then in sight; so Eaton lifted his window from the
screen, removed that, and hailing the boy, put out his hand for a
paper. He took it before he recalled that he had not even a cent; but
he looked for his knife in his trousers pocket and tossed it out to the
boy with the inquiry: "How'll that do?"
The boy gaped, picked it up, grinned and scampered off. Eaton spread
the news-sheet before him and swiftly scanned the lines for information
as to the fate of the man who, for four days, had been lying only forty
feet away from him at the other end of a Pullman car.
The paper--a Minneapolis one--blared at him that Santoine's condition
was very low and becoming rapidly worse. But below, under a Montana
date-line, Eaton saw it proclaimed that the blind millionaire was
merely sick; there was no suggestion anywhere of an attack. The paper
stated only that Basil Santoine, returning from Seattle with his
daughter and his secretary, Donald Avery, had been taken seriously ill
upon a train which had been stalled for two days in the snow in
Montana. The passenger from whom the information had been gained had
heard that the malady was appendicitis, but he believed that was merely
given out to cover some complication which had required surgical
treatment on the train. He was definite as regarded the seriousness of
Mr. Santoine's illness and described the measures taken to insure his
quiet. The railroad officials refused, significantly, to make a
statement regarding Mr. Santoine's present condition. There was
complete absence of any suggestion of violence having been done; and
also, Eaton found, there was no word given out that he himself had been
found on the train. The column ended with the statement that Mr.
Santoine had passed through Minneapolis and gone on to Chicago under
care of Dr. Douglas Sinclair.
Eaton stared at the newspaper without reading, after he saw that. He
thought first--or rather, he felt first--for himself. He had not
realized, until now that he was told that Harriet Santoine had
gone,--for if her father had gone on, of course she was with him,--the
extent to which he had felt her fairness, almost her friendship to him.
At least, he knew now that, since she had spoken to him after he was
first accused of the attack on her father, he had not felt entirely
deserted or friendless till now. And with this start of dread for
himself, came also feeling for her. Even if they had taken her father
from the other end of this car early in the night to remove him to
another special car for Chicago, she would be still watching beside him
on the train. Or was her watch beside the dying man over now? And
now, if her father were dead, how could Harriet Santoine feel toward
the one whom all others--if not she herself--accused of the murder of
her father? For evidently it was murder now, not just "an attack."
But why, if Santoine had been taken away, or was dead or dying, had
they left Eaton all night in the car in the yards? Since Santoine was
dying, would there be any longer an object in concealing the fact that
he had been murdered?
Eaton turned the page before him. A large print of a picture of
Harriet Santoine looked at him from the paper--her beautiful, deep eyes
gazing at him, as he often had surprised her, frankly interested,
thoughtful, yet also gay. The newspaper had made up its lack of more
definite and extended news by associating her picture with her father's
and printing also a photograph of Donald Avery--"closely associated
with Mr. Santoine in a confidential capacity and rumored to be engaged
to Miss Santoine." Under the blind man's picture was a biography of
the sort which newspaper offices hold ready, prepared for the passing
of the great.
Eaton did not read that then. The mention in the paper of an
engagement between Avery and Harriet Santoine had only confirmed the
relation which Eaton had imagined between them. Avery, therefore, must
have gone on with her; and if she still watched beside her father,
Avery was with her; and if Basil Santoine was dead, his daughter was
turning to Avery for comfort.
This feature somehow stirred Eaton so that he could not stay quiet; he
dressed and then paced back and forth the two or three steps his
compartment allowed him. He stopped now and then to listen; from
outside came the noises of the yard; but he made out no sound within
the car. If it had been occupied as on the days previous, he must have
heard some one coming to the washroom at his end. Was he alone in the
car now? or had the customary moving about taken place before he awoke?
Eaton had seen no one but the newsboy when he looked out the window,
but he felt sure that, if he had been left alone in the car, he was
being watched so that he could not escape.
His hand moved toward the bell, then checked itself. By calling any
one, he now must change his situation only for the worse; as long as
they were letting him stay there, so much the better. He realized that
it was long past the time when the porter usually came to make up his
berth and they brought him breakfast; the isolation of the car might
account for this delay, but it was more likely that he was to find
another reason.
Finally, to free himself from his nervous listening for sounds which
never came, he picked up the paper again. A column told of Santoine's
youth, his blindness, his early struggle to make a place for himself
and his final triumph--position, wealth and power gained; Eaton,
reading of Harriet Santoine's father, followed these particulars with
interest; and further down the column his interest became even greater.
He read:
The news of Mr. Santoine's visit of a week on the Coast, if not known
already in great financial circles, is likely to prove interesting
there. Troubles between little people are tried in the courts; the
powerful settle their disagreements among themselves and without appeal
to the established tribunals in which their cases are settled without
the public knowing they have been tried at all. Basil Santoine, of
late years, has been known to the public as one of the greatest and
most influential of the advisers to the financial rulers of America;
but before the public knew him he was recognized by the financial
masters as one of the most able, clear-minded and impartial of the
adjudicators among them in their own disputes. For years he has been
the chief agent in keeping peace among some of the great conflicting
interests, and more than once he has advised the declaring of financial
war when war seemed to him the correct solution. Thus, five years ago,
when the violent death of Matthew Latron threatened to precipitate
trouble among Western capitalists, Santoine kept order in what might
very well have become financial chaos. If his recent visit to the
Pacific Coast was not purely for personal reasons but was also to
adjust antagonisms such as charged by Gabriel Warden before his death,
the loss of Santoine at this time may precipitate troubles which,
living, his advice and information might have been able to prevent.
Having read and reread this long paragraph, Eaton started to tear out
the picture of Harriet Santoine before throwing the paper away; then he
desisted and thrust the sheets out the window. As he sat thinking,
with lips tight closed, he heard for the first time that morning
footsteps at his end of the car. The door of his compartment was
unlocked and opened, and he saw Dr. Sinclair.
"Mr. Santoine wants to speak to you," the surgeon announced quietly.
This startling negation of all he imagined, unnerved Eaton. He started
up, then sank back for better composure.
"Mr. Santoine is here, then?"
"Here? Of course he's here."
"And he's conscious?"
"He has been conscious for the better part of two days. Didn't they
tell you?" Sinclair frowned. "I heard Miss Santoine send word to you
by the conductor soon after her father first came to himself."
"You mean he will recover!"
"He would recover from any injury which was not inevitably fatal. He
was in perfect physical condition, and I never have known a patient to
grasp so completely the needs of his own case and to help the surgeon
as much by his control of himself."
Eaton looked toward the window, breathing hard. "I heard the
newsboys--"
Sinclair shrugged. "The papers print what they can get and in the way
which seems most effective to them," was his only comment.
Eaton pulled himself together. So Santoine was neither dead nor dying.
Therefore, at worst, the charge of murder would not be made; and at
best--what? He was soon to find out; the papers evidently were
entirely in error or falsely informed. Basil Santoine was still at the
other end of the car, and his daughter would be with him there. But as
Eaton followed Sinclair out of the compartment into the aisle, he
halted a moment--the look of the car was so entirely different from
what he had expected. A nurse in white uniform sat in one of the seats
toward the middle of the car, sewing; another nurse, likewise clothed
in white, had just come out from the drawing-room at the end of the
car; Avery and Sinclair apparently had been playing cribbage, for Avery
sat at a little table in the section which had been occupied by
Santoine, with the cards and cribbage board in front of him. The
surgeon led Eaton to the door of the drawing-room, showed him in and
left him.
Harriet Santoine was sitting on the little lounge opposite the berth
where her father lay. She was watching the face of her father, and as
Eaton stood in the door, he saw her lean forward and gently touch her
father's hand; then she turned and saw Eaton.
"Here is Mr. Eaton, Father," she said.
"Sit down," Santoine directed.
Harriet made room for Eaton upon the seat beside her; and Eaton,
sitting down, gazed across at the blind man in the berth. Santoine was
lying flat on his back, his bandaged head turned a little toward Eaton
and supported by pillows; he was not wearing his dark glasses, and his
eyes were open. Eyes of themselves are capable of no expression except
as they may be clear or bloodshot, or by the contraction or dilation of
the pupils, or as they shift or are fixed upon some object: their
"expression" is caused by movements of the lids and brows and other
parts of the face. Santoine's eyes had the motionlessness of the eyes
of those who have been long blind; seeing nothing, with pupils which
did not change in size, they had only the abstracted look which, with
men who see, accompanies deep thought. The blind man was very weak and
must stay quite still; and he recognized it; but he knew too that his
strength was more than equal to the task of recovery, and he showed
that he knew it. His mind and will were, obviously, at their full
activity, and he had fully his sense of hearing.
This explained to Eaton the better color in his daughter's face; yet
she was still constrained and nervous; evidently she had not found her
ordeal over with the start of convalescence of her father. Her lips
trembled now as she turned to Eaton; but she did not speak directly to
him yet; it was Basil Santoine who suddenly inquired:
"What is it they call you?"
"My name is Philip D. Eaton." Eaton realized as soon as he had spoken
that both question and answer had been unnecessary, and Santoine had
asked only to hear Eaton's voice.
The blind man was silent for a moment, as he seemed to consider the
voice and try again vainly to place it in his memories. Then he spoke
to his daughter.
"Describe him, Harriet."
Harriet paled and flushed.
"About thirty," she said, "--under rather than over that. Six feet or
a little more in height. Slender, but muscular and athletic. Skin and
eyes clear and with a look of health. Complexion naturally rather
fair, but darkened by being outdoors a good deal. Hair dark brown,
straight and parted at the side. Smooth shaven. Eyes blue-gray, with
straight lashes. Eyebrows straight and dark. Forehead smooth, broad
and intelligent. Nose straight and neither short nor long; nostrils
delicate. Mouth straight, with lips neither thin nor full. Chin
neither square nor pointed, and without a cleft. Face and head, in
general, of oval Anglo-American type."
"Go on," said Santoine.
Harriet was breathing quickly. "Hands well shaped, strong but without
sign of manual labor; nails cared for but not polished. Gray business
suit, new, but not made by an American tailor and of a style several
years old. Soft-bosomed shirt of plain design with soft cuffs.
Medium-height turn-down white linen collar. Four-in-hand tie, tied by
himself. Black shoes. No jewelry except watch-chain."
"In general?" Santoine suggested.
"In general, apparently well-educated, well-bred, intelligent young
American. Expression frank. Manner self-controlled and reserved.
Seems sometimes younger than he must be, sometimes older. Something
has happened at some time which has had a great effect and can't be
forgotten."
While she spoke, the blood, rising with her embarrassment, had dyed
Harriet's face; suddenly now she looked away from him and out the
window.
Her feeling seemed to be perceived by Santoine. "Would you rather I
sent for Avery, daughter?" he asked.
"No; no!" She turned again toward Eaton and met his look defiantly.
Eaton merely waited. He was confident that much of this description of
himself had been given Santoine by his daughter before the attack had
been made on him and that she had told him also as fully as she could
the two conversations she had had with Eaton. He could not, somehow,
conceive it possible that Santoine needed to refresh his memory; the
description, therefore, must have been for purposes of comparison.
Santoine, in his blindness, no doubt found it necessary to get
descriptions of the same one thing from several people, in order that
he might check one description against another. He probably had
Harriet's and Avery's description of Eaton and now was getting
Harriet's again.
"He would be called, I judge, a rather likable-looking man?" Santoine
said tentatively; his question plainly was only meant to lead up to
something else; Santoine had judged in that particular already.
"I think he makes that impression."
"Certainly he does not make the impression of being a man who could be
hired to commit a crime?"
"Very far from it."
"Or who would commit a crime for his own interest--material or
financial interest, I mean?"
"No."
"But he might be led into crime by some personal, deeper interest. He
has shown deep feeling, I believe--strong, personal feeling, Harriet?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Eaton,"--Santoine addressed him suddenly,--"I understand that you
have admitted that you were at the house of Gabriel Warden the evening
he was killed while in his car. Is that so?"
"Yes," said Eaton.
"You are the man, then, of whom Gabriel Warden spoke to his wife?"
"I believe so."
"You believe so?"
"I mean," Eaton explained quietly, "that I came by appointment to call
on Mr. Warden that night. I believe that it must have been to me that
Mr. Warden referred in the conversation with his wife which has since
been quoted in the newspapers."
"Because you were in such a situation that, if Mr. Warden defended you,
he would himself meet danger?"
"I did not say that," Eaton denied guardedly.
"What, then, was your position in regard to Mr. Warden?"
Eaton remained silent.
"You refuse to answer?" Santoine inquired.
"I refuse."
"In spite of the probability that Mr. Warden met his death because of
his intention to undertake something for you?"
"I have not been able to fix that as a probability."
The blind man stopped. Plainly he appreciated that, where Connery and
Avery had failed in their questionings, he was not likely to succeed
easily; and with his limited strength, he proceeded on a line likely to
meet less prepared resistance.
"Mr. Eaton, have I ever injured you personally--I don't mean directly,
as man to man, for I should remember that; have I ever done anything
which indirectly has worked injury on you or your affairs?"
"No," Eaton answered.
"Who sent you aboard this train?"
"Sent me? No one."
"You took the train of your own will because I was taking it?"
"I have not said I took it because you were taking it."
"That seems to be proved. You can accept it from me; it has been
proved. Did you take the train in order to attack me?"
"No."
"To spy upon me?"
"No."
Santoine was silent for an instant. "What was it you took the train to
tell me?"
"I? Nothing."
Santoine moved his head upon the pillow.
"Father!" his daughter warned.
"Oh, I am careful, Harriet; Dr. Sinclair allows me to move a little....
Mr. Eaton, in one of the three answers you have just given me, you are
not telling the truth. I defy you to find in human reasoning more than
four reasons why my presence could have made you take this train in the
manner and with the attending circumstances you did. You took it to
injure me, or to protect me from injury; to learn something from me, or
to inform me of something. I discard the second of these possibilities
because you asked for a berth in another car and for other reasons
which make it impossible. However, I will ask it of you. Did you take
the train to protect me from injury?"
"No."
"Which of your former answers do you wish to change, then?"
"None."
"You deny all four possibilities?"
"Yes."
"Then you are using denial only to hide the fact, whatever it may be;
and of the four possibilities I am obliged to select the first as the
most likely."
"You mean that I attacked you?"
"That is not what I said. I said you must have taken the train to
injure me, but that does not mean necessarily that it was to attack me
with your own hand. Any attack aimed against me would be likely to
have several agents. There would be somewhere, probably, a distant
brain that had planned it; there would be an intelligent brain near by
to oversee it; and there would be a strong hand to perform it. The
overseeing brain and the performing hand--or hands--might belong to one
person, or to two, or more. How many there were I cannot now
determine, since people were allowed to get off the train. The
conductor and Avery--"
"Father!"
"Yes, Harriet; but I expected better of Avery. Mr. Eaton, as you are
plainly withholding the truth as to your reason for taking this train,
and as I have suffered injury, I am obliged--from the limited
information I now have--to assume that you knew an attack was to be
made by some one, upon that train. In addition to the telegram,
addressed to you under your name of Eaton and informing of my presence
on the train, I have also been informed, of course, of the code message
received by you addressed to Hillward. You refused, I understand, to
favor Mr. Avery with an explanation of it; do you wish to give one now?"
"No," said Eaton.
"It has, of course, been deciphered," the blind man went on calmly.
"The fact that it was based upon your pocket English-Chinese dictionary
as a word-book was early suggested; the deciphering from that was
simply a trial of some score of ordinary enigma plans, until the
meaning appeared."
Eaton made no comment. Santoine went on:
"And that very interesting meaning presented another possible
explanation--not as to your taking the train, for as to that there can
be only the four I mentioned--but as to the attack itself, which would
exonerate you from participation in it. It is because of this that I
am treating you with the consideration I do. If that explanation were
correct, you would--"
"What?"
"You would have had nothing to do with the attack, and yet you would
know who made it."
At this, Eaton stared at the blind man and wet his lips.
"What do you mean?" he said.
Santoine did not reply to the question. "What have you been doing
yesterday and to-day?" he asked.
"Waiting," Eaton answered.
"For what?"
"For the railroad people to turn me over to the police."
"So I understood. That is why I asked you. I don't believe in
cat-and-mouse methods, Mr. Eaton; so I am willing to tell you that
there is no likelihood of your being turned over to the police
immediately. I have taken this matter out of the hands of the railroad
people. We live in a complex world, Mr. Eaton, and I am in the most
complex current of it. I certainly shall not allow the publicity of a
police examination of you to publish the fact that I have been attacked
so soon after the successful attack upon Mr. Warden--and in a similar
manner--until I know more about both attacks and about you--why you
came to see Warden that night and how, after failing to see him alive,
you followed me, and whether that fact led to the attempt at my life."
Eaton started to speak, and then stopped.
"What were you going to say?" Santoine urged.
"I will not say it," Eaton refused.
"However, I think I understand your impulse. You were about to remind
me that there has been nothing to implicate you in any guilty
connection with the murder of Mr. Warden. I do not now charge that."
He hesitated; then, suddenly lost in thought, as some new suggestion
seemed to come to him which he desired to explain alone, he motioned
with a hand in dismissal. "That is all." Then, almost immediately:
"No; wait! ... Harriet, has he made any sign while I have been
talking?"
"Not much, if any," Harriet answered. "When you said he might not have
had anything to do with the attack upon you, but in that case he must
know who it was that struck you, he shut his eyes and wet his lips."
"That is all, Mr. Eaton," Santoine repeated.
Eaton started back to his compartment. As he turned, Harriet Santoine
looked up at him and their eyes met; and her look confirmed to him what
he had felt before--that her father, now taking control of the
investigation of the attack upon himself, was not continuing it with
prejudice or predisposed desire to damage Eaton, except as the evidence
accused him. And her manner now told, even more plainly than
Santoine's, that the blind man had viewed the evidence as far from
conclusive against Eaton; and as Harriet showed that she was glad of
that, Eaton realized how she must have taken his side against Avery in
reporting to her father.
For Santoine must have depended entirely upon circumstances presented
to him by Avery and Connery and her; and Eaton was very certain that
Avery and Connery had accused him; so Harriet Santoine--it could only
be she--had opposed them in his defense. The warmth of his gratitude
to her for this suffused him as he bowed to her; she returned a frank,
friendly little nod which brought back to him their brief companionship
on the first day on the train.
And as Eaton went back to his compartment through the open car, Dr.
Sinclair looked up at him, but Avery, studying his cribbage hand,
pretended not to notice he was passing. So Avery admitted too that
affairs were turning toward the better, just now at least, for Eaton.
When he was again in his compartment, no one came to lock him in. The
porter who brought his breakfast a few minutes later, apologized for
its lateness, saying it had had to be brought from a club car on the
next track, whither the others in the car, except Santoine, had gone.
Eaton had barely finished with this tardy breakfast when a bumping
against the car told him that it was being coupled to a train. The new
train started, and now the track followed the Mississippi River.
Eaton, looking forward from his window as the train rounded curves, saw
that the Santoine car was now the last one of a train--presumably bound
from Minneapolis to Chicago.
South they went, through Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the weather grew
warmer and the spring further advanced. The snow was quite cleared
from the ground, and the willows beside the ditches in the fields were
beginning to show green sprouts. At nine o'clock in the evening, some
minutes after crossing the state line into Illinois, the train stopped
at a station where the last car was cut off.
A motor-ambulance and other limousine motor-cars were waiting in the
light from the station. Eaton, seated at the window, saw Santoine
carried out on a stretcher and put into the ambulance. Harriet
Santoine, after giving a direction to a man who apparently was a
chauffeur, got into the ambulance with her father. The surgeon and the
nurses rode with them. They drove off. Avery entered another
automobile, which swiftly disappeared. Conductor Connery came for the
last time to Eaton's door.
"Miss Santoine says you're to go with the man she's left here for you.
Here's the things I took from you. The money's all there. Mr.
Santoine says you've been his guest on this car."
Eaton received back his purse and bill-fold. He put them in his pocket
without examining their contents. The porter appeared with his
overcoat and hat. Eaton put them on and stepped out of the car. The
conductor escorted him to a limousine car. "This is the gentleman,"
Connery said to the chauffeur to whom Harriet Santoine had spoken. The
man opened the door of the limousine; another man, whom Eaton had not
before seen, was seated in the car; Eaton stepped in. Connery extended
his hand--"Good-by, sir."
"Good-by."
The motor-car drove down a wide, winding road with tall, spreading
trees on both sides. Lights shone, at intervals, from windows of what
must be large and handsome homes. The man in the car with Eaton, whose
duty plainly was only that of a guard, did not speak to Eaton nor Eaton
to him. The motor passed other limousines occasionally; then, though
the road was still wide and smooth and still bounded by great trees, it
was lonelier; no houses appeared for half a mile; then lights glowed
directly ahead; the car ran under the porte-cochere of a great stone
country mansion; a servant sprang to the door of the limousine and
opened it; another man seized Eaton's hand-baggage from beside the
chauffeur. Eaton entered a large, beamed and paneled hallway with an
immense fireplace with logs burning in it; there was a wide stairway
which the servant, who had appointed himself Eaton's guide, ascended.
Eaton followed him and found another great hall upstairs. The servant
led him to one of the doors opening off this and into a large room,
fitted for a man's occupancy, with dark furniture, cases containing
books on hunting, sports and adventure, and smoking things; off this
was a dressing room with the bath next; beyond was a bedroom.
"These are to be your rooms, sir," the servant said. A valet appeared
and unpacked Eaton's traveling bag.
"Anything else, sir?" The man, who had finished unpacking his clothes
and laying them out, approached respectfully. "I've drawn your bath
tepid, sir; is that correct?"
"Quite," Eaton said. "There's nothing else."
"Very good. Good night, sir. If there's anything else, the second
button beside the bed will bring me, sir."
When the man had withdrawn noiselessly and closed the door, Eaton stood
staring about the rooms dazedly; then he went over and tried the door.
It opened; it was not locked. He turned about and went into the
dressing room and began taking off his clothes; he stepped into the
bathroom and felt the tepid bath. In a moment he was in the bath;
fifteen minutes later he was in bed with the window open beside him,
letting in the crisp, cool breeze. But he had not the slightest idea
of sleep; he had undressed, bathed, and gone to bed to convince himself
that what he was doing was real, that he was not acting in a dream.
He got up and went to the window and looked out, but the night was
cloudy and dark, and he could see nothing except some lighted windows.
As he watched, the light was switched out. Eaton went back to bed, but
amazement would not let him sleep.
He was in Santoine's house; he knew it could be no other than
Santoine's house. It was to get into Santoine's house that he had come
from Asia; he had thought and planned and schemed all through the long
voyage on the steamer how it was to be done. He would have been
willing to cross the Continent on foot to accomplish it; no labor that
he could imagine would have seemed too great to him if this had been
its end; and here it had been done without effort on his part,
naturally, inevitably! Chance and circumstance had done it! And as he
realized this, his mind was full of what he had to do in Santoine's
house. For many days he had not thought about that; it had seemed
impossible that he could have any opportunity to act for himself. And
the return to his thoughts of possibility of carrying out his original
plan brought before him thoughts of his friends--those friends who,
through his exile, had been faithful to him but whose identity or
existence he had been obliged to deny, when questioned, to protect them
as well as himself.
As he lay on his bed in the dark, he stared upward to the ceiling, wide
awake, thinking of those friends whose devotion to him might be
justified at last; and he went over again and tested and reviewed the
plan he had formed. But it never had presumed a position for him--even
if it was the position of a semi-prisoner--inside Santoine's house.
And he required more information of the structure of the house than he
as yet had, to correct his plan further. But he could not, without too
great risk of losing everything, discover more that night; he turned
over and set himself to go to sleep.