CHAPTER XIV

IT GROWS PLAINER

Basil Santoine's bedroom, like the study below it, was so nearly sound-proof that anything going on in the room could not be heard in the hall outside it, even close to the double doors. Eaton, as they approached these doors, listened vainly, trying to determine whether any one was in the room with Santoine; then he quickened his step to bring him beside Harriet.

"One moment, please, Miss Santoine," he urged.

She stopped. "What is it you want?"

"Your father has received some answer to the inquiries he has been having made about me?"

"I don't know, Mr. Eaton."

"Is he alone?"

"Yes."

Eaton thought a minute. "That is all I wanted to know, then," he said.

Harriet opened the outer door and knocked on the inner one. Eaton heard Santoine's voice at once calling them to come in, and as Harriet opened the second door, he followed her into the room. The blind man turned his sightless eyes toward them, and, plainly aware--somehow--that it was Eaton and Harriet who had come in, and that no one else was with them, he motioned Harriet to close the door and set a chair for Eaton beside the bed. Eaton, understanding this gesture, took the chair from her and set it as Santoine's motion had directed; then he waited for her to seat herself in one of the other chairs.

"Am I to remain, Father?" she asked.

"Yes," Santoine commanded.

Eaton waited while she went to a chair at the foot of the bed and seated herself--her clasped hands resting on the footboard and her chin upon her hands--in a position to watch both Eaton and her father while they talked; then Eaton sat down.

"Good morning, Eaton," the blind man greeted him.

"Good morning, Mr. Santoine," Eaton answered; he understood by now that Santoine never began a conversation until the one he was going to address himself to had spoken, and that Santoine was able to tell, by the sound of the voice, almost as much of what was going on in the mind of one he talked with as a man with eyes is able to tell by studying the face. He continued to wait quietly, therefore, glancing up once to Harriet Santoine, whose eyes for an instant met his; then both regarded again the face of the blind man on the bed.

Santoine was lying quietly upon his back, his head raised on the pillows, his arms above the bed-covers, his finger-tips touching with the fingers spread.

"You recall, of course, Eaton, our conversation on the train," Santoine said evenly.

"Yes."

"And so you remember that I gave you at that time four possible reasons--as the only possible ones--why you had taken the train I was on. I said you must have taken it to attack me, or to protect me from attack; to learn something from me, or to inform me of something; and I eliminated as incompatible with the facts, the second of these--I said you could not have taken it to protect me."

"Yes."

"Very well; the reason I have sent for you now is that, having eliminated to-day still another of those possibilities,--leaving only two,--I want to call your attention in a certain order to some of the details of what happened on the train."

"You say that to-day you have eliminated another of the possibilities?"

Eaton asked uneasily.

"To-day, yes; of course. You had rather a close call this morning, did you not?"

"Rather, I was careless."

"You were careless?" Santoine smiled derisively. "Perhaps you were--in one sense. In another, however, you have been very careful, Eaton.

You have been careful to act as though the attempt to run you down could not have been a deliberate attack; you were careful to call it an accident; you were careful not to recognize any of the three men in the motor."

"I had no chance to recognize any of them, Mr. Santoine," Eaton replied easily. "I did not see the car coming; I was thrown from my feet; when I got up, it was too far away for me to recognize any one."

"Perhaps so; but were you surprised when my daughter recognized one of them as having been on the train with us?"

Eaton hesitated, but answered almost immediately:

"Your question doesn't exactly fit the case. I thought Miss Santoine had made a mistake."

"But you were not surprised; no. What would have been a surprise to you, Eaton, would have been--if you had had a chance to observe the men--to have found that none of them--none of them had been on the train!"

Eaton started and felt that he had colored. How much did Santoine know? Had the blind man received, as Eaton feared, some answer to his inquiries which had revealed, or nearly revealed, Eaton's ident.i.ty? Or was it merely that the attack made on Eaton that morning had given Santoine new light on the events that had happened on the train and particularly--Eaton guessed--on the cipher telegram which Santoine claimed to have translated? Whatever the case might be, Eaton knew that he must conceal from Harriet the effect the blind man's words produced on him. Santoine, of course, could not see these effects; and he had kept his daughter in the room to watch for just such things.

Eaton glanced at her; she was watching him and, quite evidently, had seen his discomposure, but she made no comment. As he regained possession of himself, her gaze went back intently to her father.

Eaton looked from her back to the blind man, and saw that Santoine was waiting for him to speak.

"You a.s.sume that, Mr. Santoine," he a.s.serted, "because--" He checked himself and altered his sentence. "Will you tell me why you a.s.sume that?"

"That that would have surprised you? Yes; that is what I called you in here to tell you."

As Santoine waited a moment before going on, Eaton watched him anxiously. The blind man turned himself on his pillows so as to face Eaton more directly; his sightless, motionless eyes told nothing of what was going on in his mind.

"Just ten days ago," Santoine said evenly and dispa.s.sionately, "I was found unconscious in my berth--Section Three of the rearmost sleeper--on the transcontinental train, which I had taken with my daughter and Avery at Seattle. I had been attacked,--a.s.sailed during my sleep some time in that first night that I spent on the train,--and my condition was serious enough so that for three days afterward I was not allowed to receive any of the particulars of what had happened to me. When I did finally learn them, I naturally attempted to make certain deductions as to who it was that had attempted to murder me, and why; and ever since, I have continued to occupy myself with those questions. I am going to tell you a few of my deductions. You need not interrupt me unless you discover me to be in error, and then in error only in fact or observation which, obviously, had to be reported to me. If you fancy I am at fault in my conclusions, wait until you discover your error."

Santoine waited an instant; Eaton thought it was to allow him to speak if he wanted to, but Eaton merely waited.

"The first thing I learned," the blind man went on, "was the similarity of the attack on me to the more successful attack on Warden, twelve days previous, which had caused his death. The method of the two attacks was the same; the conditions surrounding them were very similar. Warden was attacked in his motor, in a public street; his murderer took a desperate chance of being detected by the chauffeur or by some one on the street, both when he made the attack and afterward when he escaped un.o.bserved, as it happened, from the automobile. The attack upon me was made in the same way, perhaps even with the same instrument; my a.s.sailant took equally desperate chances. The attack on me was made on a public conveyance where the likelihood of the murderer being seen was even greater, for the train was stopped, and under conditions which made his escape almost impossible. The desperate nature of the two attacks, and their almost identical method, made it practically certain that they originated at the same source and were carried out--probably--by the same hand and for the same purpose.

"Mrs. Warden's statement to me of her interview with her husband a half-hour before his murder, made it certain that the object of the attack on him was to 'remove' him. It seemed almost inevitable, therefore, that the attack on me must have been for the same purpose.

There have been a number of times in my life, Eaton, when I have known that it would be to the advantage of some one if I were 'removed'; that I do not know now any definite reason for such an act does not decrease its probability; for I do not know why Warden was 'removed.'

"I found that a young man--yourself--had acted so suspiciously both before and after the attack on me that both Avery and the conductor in charge of the train had become convinced that he was my a.s.sailant, and had segregated him from the rest of the pa.s.sengers. Not only this, but--and this seemed quite conclusive to them--you admitted that you were the one who had called upon Warden the evening of his murder.

Warden's statement to his wife that you were some one he was about to befriend--which had been regarded as exculpating you from share in his murder--ceased to be so conclusive now that you had been present at a second precisely similar attack; and it certainly was no proof that you had not attacked me. It seemed likely, too, that you were the only person on the train aside from my daughter and Avery who knew who I was; for I had had reason to believe from the time when I first heard you speak when you boarded the train, that you were some one with whom I had, previously, very briefly come in contact; and I had asked my daughter to find out who you were, and she had tried to do so, but without success."

Eaton wet his lips.

"Also," the blind man continued, "there was a telegram which definitely showed that there was some connection, unknown to me, between you and me, as well as a second--or rather a previous--suspicious telegram in cipher, which we were able to translate."

Eaton leaned forward, impelled to speak; but as Santoine clearly detected this impulse and waited to hear what he was going to say, Eaton reconsidered and kept silent.

"You were going to say something about that telegram in cipher?"

Santoine asked.

"No," Eaton denied.