"Will you tell me, Mr. Eaton--or whatever else your name may be--what it is that you have been asking Miss Santoine?" Avery demanded harshly.

Eaton felt his blood surge at the tone. Harriet Santoine had turned, and sensing the strangeness of Avery's manner, she whitened. "What is it, Don?" she cried. "What is the matter? Is something wrong with Father?"

"No, dear; no! Harry, what has this man been saying to you?"

"Mr. Eaton?" Her gaze went wonderingly from Avery to Eaton and back again. "Why--why, Don! He has only been asking me what we had found out about the attack on Father!"

"And you told him?" Avery swung toward Eaton. "You dog!" he mouthed.

"Harriet, he asked you that because he needed to know--he had to know!

He had to know how much we had found out, how near we were getting to him! Harry, this is the man that did it!"

Eaton's fists clenched; but suddenly, recollecting, he checked himself.

Harriet, not yet comprehending, stood staring at the two; then Eaton saw the blood rush to her face and dye forehead and cheek and neck as she understood.

"Not here, Mr. Avery; not here!" Conductor Connery had stepped forward, glancing back into the car to a.s.sure himself the disturbance on the platform had not attracted the attention of the pa.s.sengers in the observation-room. He put his hand on Eaton's arm. "Come with me, sir," he commanded.

Eaton thought anxiously for a moment. He looked to Harriet Santoine as though about to say something to her, but he did not speak; instead, he quietly followed the conductor. As they pa.s.sed through the observation-car into the car ahead, he heard the footsteps of Harriet Santoine and Avery close behind them.

CHAPTER IX

QUESTIONS

Connery pulled aside the curtain of the washroom at the end of the Santoine car--the end furthest from the drawing-room where Santoine lay.

"Step in here, sir," he directed. "Sit down, if you want. We're far enough from the drawing-room not to disturb Mr. Santoine."

Eaton, seating himself in the corner of the leather seat built against two walls of the room, and looking up, saw that Avery had come into the room with them. The girl followed. With her entrance into the room came to him--not any sound from her or anything which he could describe to himself as either audible or visual--but a strange sensation which exhausted his breath and stopped his pulse for a beat. To be accused--even to be suspected--of the crime against Santoine was to have attention brought to him which--with his unsatisfactory account of himself--threatened ugly complications. Yet, at this moment of realization, that did not fill his mind. Whether his long dwelling close to death had numbed him to his own danger, however much more immediate it had become, he could not know; probably he had prepared himself so thoroughly, had inured himself so to expect arrest and imminent destruction, that now his finding himself confronted with accusers in itself failed to stir new sensation; but till this day, he had never imagined or been able to prepare himself for accusation before one like Harriet Santoine; so, for a moment, thought solely of himself was a subcurrent. Of his conscious feelings, the terror that she would be brought to believe with the others that he had struck the blow against her father was the most poignant.

Harriet Santoine was not looking at him; but as she stood by the door, she was gazing intently at Avery; and she spoke first:

"I don't believe it, Don!"

Eaton felt the warm blood flooding his face and his heart throb with grat.i.tude toward her.

"You don't believe it because you don't understand yet, dear," Avery declared. "We are going to make you believe it by proving to you it is true."

Avery pulled forward one of the leather chairs for her to seat herself and set another for himself facing Eaton. Eaton, gazing across steadily at Avery, was chilled and terrified as he now fully realized for the first time the element which Avery's presence added. What the relations were between Harriet Santoine and Avery he did not know, but clearly they were very close; and it was equally clear that Avery had noticed and disliked the growing friendship between her and Eaton.

Eaton sensed now with a certainty that left no doubt in his own mind that as he himself had realized only a moment before that his strongest feeling was the desire to clear himself before Harriet Santoine, so Avery now was realizing that--since some one on the train had certainly made the attack on Santoine--he hoped he could prove before her that that person was Eaton.

"Why did you ring the bell in Mr. Santoine's berth?" Avery directed the attack upon him suddenly.

"To call help," Eaton answered.

Question and answer, Eaton realized, had made some effect upon Harriet Santoine, as he did not doubt Avery intended they should; yet he could not look toward her to learn exactly what this effect was but kept his eyes on Avery.

"You had known, then, that he needed help?"

"I knew it--saw it then, of course."

"When?"

"When I found him."

"'Found' him?"

"Yes."

"When was that?"

"When I went forward to look for the conductor to ask him about taking a walk on the roof of the cars."

"You found him then--that way, the way he was?"

"That way? Yes."

"How?"

"How?" Eaton iterated.

"Yes; how, Mr. Eaton, or Hillward, or whatever your name is? How did you find him? The curtains were open, perhaps; you saw him as you went by, eh?"

Eaton shook his head. "No; the curtains weren't open; they were closed."

"Then why did you look in?"

"I saw his hand in the aisle."

"Go on."

"When I came back it didn't look right to me; its position had not been changed at all, and it hadn't looked right to me before. So I stopped and touched it, and I found that it was cold."

"Then you looked into the berth?"

"Yes."

"And having looked in and seen Mr. Santoine injured and lying as he was, you did not call any one, you did not bring help--you merely leaned across him and pushed the bell and went on quickly out of the car before any one could see you?"

"Yes; but I waited on the platform of the next car to see that help did come; and the conductor pa.s.sed me, and I knew that he and the porter must find Mr. Santoine as they did."

"Do you expect us to believe that very peculiar action of yours was the act of an innocent man?"

"If I had been guilty of the attack on Mr. Santoine, I'd not have stopped or looked into the berth at all."

"If you are innocent, you had, of course, some reason for acting as you did. Will you explain what it was?"

"No--I cannot explain."