Eaton listened; there was still no sound from the rest of the house.

But overhead now, he heard an almost imperceptible pattering--the sound of a bare-footed man crossing the floor; and he knew that the blind man in the bedroom above was getting up.

CHAPTER XVIII

UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS

Basil Santoine was oversensitive to sound, as are most of the blind; in the world of darkness in which he lived, sounds were by far the most significant--and almost the only--means he had of telling what went on around him; he pa.s.sed his life in listening for or determining the nature of sounds. So the struggle which ended in Eaton's crash to the floor would have waked him without the pistol-shot immediately following. That roused him wide-awake immediately and brought him sitting up in bed, forgetful of his own condition.

Santoine at once recognized the sound as a shot; but in the instant of waking, he had not been able to place it more definitely than to know that it was close. His hand went at once to the bellboard, and he rang at the same time for the nurse outside his door and for the steward.

But for a few moments after that first shot, nothing followed; there was silence. Santoine was not one of those who doubt their hearing; that was the sense in which the circ.u.mstances of his life made him implicitly trust; he had heard a shot near by; the fact that nothing more followed did not make him doubt it; it made him think to explain it.

It was plain that no one else in the house had been stirred by it; for his windows were open and other windows in bedrooms in the main part of the house were open; no one had raised any cry of alarm. So the shot was where he alone had heard it; that meant indoors, in the room below.

Santoine pressed the bells quickly again and sat up straighter and more strained; no one breaking into the house for plate or jewelry would enter through that room; he would have to break through double doors to reach any other part of the house; Santoine did not consider the possibility of robbery of that sort long enough to have been said to consider it at all; what he felt was that the threat which had been hanging vaguely over himself ever since Warden's murder was being fulfilled. But it was not Santoine himself that was being attacked; it was something Santoine possessed. There was only one sort of valuable article for which one might enter that room below. And those articles--

The blind man clenched his jaw and pressed the bells to call all the men-servants in the house and Avery also. But still he got no response.

A shot in the room below meant, of course, that in addition to the intruder there must be a defender; the defender might have been the one who fired or the one who was killed. For it seemed likely, in the complete silence now, that whoever had fired had disposed of his adversary and was undisturbed. At that moment the second shot--the first fired at Eaton--rang out below; Eaton's return fire followed nearly simultaneously, and then the shot of the third man. These explosions and the next three the blind man in bed above was able to distinguish; there were three men, at least, in the room below firing at each other; then, as the automatic revolvers roared on, he no longer could separate attack and reply; there might be three men, there might be half a dozen; the fusillade of the automatics overlapped; it was incessant. Then all at once the firing stopped; there was no sound or movement of any sort; everything seemed absolutely still below.

The blind man pressed and pressed the b.u.t.tons on his bellboard. Any further alarm, after the firing below, seemed superfluous. But his wing of the house had been built for him proof against sound in the main portion of the building; the house, therefore, was deadened to noise within the wing. Santoine, accustomed to considering the manner in which sounds came to himself, knew how these sounds would come to others. Coming from the open windows of the wing and entering the open windows of the other parts of the house, they would not appear to the household to come from within the house at all; they would appear to come from some part of the grounds or from the beach.

Yet some one or more than one from his house must be below or have been there. Santoine pressed all the bells again and then got up. He had heard absolutely no sound outside, as must be made by any one escaping from the room below; but the battle seemed over. One side must have destroyed the other. From the character of the fighting, it was most probable that some one had secretly entered the room--Santoine thought of that one definitely now as the man he was entertaining as Eaton; a servant, or some one else from the house, had surprised him in the room and was shot; other servants, roused by the alarm, rushed in and were shot. Santoine counted that, if his servants had survived, one of them must be coming to tell him what had happened. But there was no noise now nor any movement at all below. His side had been beaten, or both sides had ceased to exist. Those alternatives alone occurred to the blind man; the number of shots fired within the confines of the room below precluded any other explanation. He did not imagine the fact that the battle had been fought in the dark; himself perpetually in the dark, he thought of others always in the light.

The blind man stood barefooted on the floor, his hands clasping in one of the bitterest moments of his rebellion against, and defiance of, his helplessness of blindness. Below him--as he believed--his servants had been sacrificing life for him; there in that room he held in trust that which affected the security, the faith, the honor of others; his guarding that trust involved his honor no less. And particularly, now, he knew he was bound, at whatever cost, to act; for he did not doubt now but that his half-prisoned guest, whom Santoine had not sufficiently guarded, was at the bottom of the attack. The blind man believed, therefore, that it was because of his own retention here of Eaton that the attack had been made, his servants had been killed, the private secrets of his a.s.sociates were in danger. Santoine crossed to the door of the hall and opened it and called. No one answered immediately; he started to call again; then he checked himself and shut the door, and opened that to the top of the stairs descending to his study below.

The smoke and fumes of the firing rushed into his face; it half choked him; but it decided him. He was going to go down. Undoubtedly there was danger below; but that was why he did not call again at the other door for some one else to run a risk for him. Basil Santoine, always held back and always watched and obliged to submit to guard even of women in petty matters because of his blindness, held one thing dearer far than life--and that thing was the trust which other men reposed in him. Since it was that trust which was threatened, the impulse now, in that danger, to act for himself and not be protected and pushed back by any one who merely could see, controlled him.

He put his hand on the rail and started to descend the stairs. He was almost steady in step and he had firm grasp on the rail; he noticed that now to wonder at it. When he had aroused at the sound of firing, his blindness, as always when something was happening about him, was obtruded upon him. He felt helpless because he was blind, not because he had been injured. He had forgotten entirely that for almost two weeks he had not stirred from bed; he had risen and stood and walked, without staggering, to the door and to the top of the stairs before, now, he remembered. So what he already had done showed him that he had merely again to put his injury from his mind and he could go on. He went down the stairs almost steadily.

There was still no sound or any evidence of any one below. The gases of the firing were clearing away; the blind man could feel the slight breeze which came in through the windows of his bedroom and went with him down the stairs; and now, as he reached the lower steps, there was no other sound in the room but the tread of the blind man's bare feet on the stairs. This sound was slight, but enough to attract attention in the silence there. Santoine halted on the next to the last step--the blind count stairs, and he had gone down twenty-one--and realized fully his futility; but now he would not retreat or merely call for help.

"Who is here?" he asked distinctly. "Is any one here? Who is here?"

No one answered. And now Santoine knew by the sense which let him feel whether it was night or day, that the room was really dark--dark for others as well as for himself; the lights were not burning. So an exaltation, a sense of physical capability, came to Santoine; in the dark he was as fit, as capable as any other man--not more capable, for, though he was familiar with the room, the furniture had been moved in the struggle; he had heard the overturning of the chairs.

Santoine stepped down on the floor, and in his uncertainty as to the position of the furniture, felt along the wall. There were bookcases there, but he felt and pa.s.sed along them swiftly, until he came to the case which concealed the safe at the left side of the doors. The books were gone from that case; his bare toes struck against them where they had been thrown down on the floor. The blind man, his pulse beating tumultuously, put his hand through the case and felt the panel behind.

That was slid back exposing the safe; and the door of the safe stood open. Santoine's hands felt within the safe swiftly. The safe was empty.

He recoiled from it, choking back an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. The entry to this room had been made for the purpose which he supposed; and the thieves must have succeeded in their errand. The blind man, in his uselessness for pursuit, could delay calling others to act for him no longer. He started toward the bell, when some sc.r.a.pe on the floor--not of the sort to be accounted for by an object moved by the wind--sounded behind him.

Santoine swung toward the sound and stood listening again; and then, groping with his hands stretched out before him, he left the wall and stepped toward the center of the room. He took two steps--three, four--with no result; then his foot trod into some fluid, thick and sticky and not cold.

Santoine stooped and put a finger-tip into the fluid and brought it near his nose. It was what he supposed it must be--blood. He raised his foot and with his great toe traced the course of the blood; it led to one side, and then the blind man's toe touched some hard, metal object which was warm. He stooped and picked it up and felt over it with his fingers. It was an electric torch with the light turned on.

Santoine stood holding it with the warm end--the lighted end--turned away from him; he swiftly switched it off; what put Santoine at a disadvantage with other men was light. But since there had been this light, there might be others; there had been at least three men, perhaps, therefore, three lights. Santoine's senses could not perceive light so dim and soft; he stood trying fruitlessly to determine whether there were other lights.

He could hear now some one breathing--more than one person. From the house, still shut off by its double, sound-proof doors, he could hear nothing; but some one outside the house was hurrying up to the open window at the south end of the room.

That one came to, or just inside the window, parting the curtains. He was breathing hard from exertion or from excitement.

"Who is it?" Santoine challenged clearly.

"Basil!" Blatchford's voice exclaimed his recognition in amazement.

"Basil; that is you! What are you doing down here?" Blatchford started forward.

"Wait!" Santoine ordered sharply. "Don't come any further; stand there!"

Blatchford protested but obeyed. "What is it? What are you doing down here, Basil? What is the matter here? What has happened?"

"What brought you here?" Santoine demanded instead of reply. "You were running outside; why? What was out there? What did you see?"

"See? I didn't see anything--except the window here open when I came up. But I heard shots, Basil. I thought they were toward the road. I went out there; but I found nothing. I was coming back when I saw the window open. I'm sure I heard shots."

"They were here," Santoine said. "But you can see; and you just heard the shots. You didn't see anything!" the blind man accused. "You didn't see any one going away from here!"

"Basil, what has happened here?"

Santoine felt again the stickiness at his feet. "Three or four persons fought in this room, Wallace. Some--or one was hurt. There's blood on the floor. There are two here I can hear breathing; I suppose they're hurt. Probably the rest are gone. The room's all dark, isn't it?

That is you moving about now, Wallace?"

"Yes."

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for the light."

"Don't."

"Why, Basil?"

"Get help first. I think those who aren't hurt are gone. They must be gone. But--get help first, Wallace."

"And leave you here?" Blatchford rejoined. He had not halted again; the blind man heard his cousin still moving along the wall. The electric switch clicked, and Santoine knew that the room was flooded with light. Santoine straightened, strained, turning his head a little to better listen. With the flashing on of the light, he had heard the sharp, involuntary start of Blatchford as he saw the room; and, besides that, Santoine heard movement now elsewhere in the room. Then the blind man heard his friend's cry. "Good G.o.d!"

It was not, Santoine instantly sensed, from mere surprise or fright at finding some intruder in the room; that must have been expected. This was from something more astounding, from something incredible.

"What is it?" Santoine cried.

"Good G.o.d! Basil!"

"Who is it, Wallace?" the blind man knew now that his friend's incoherence came from recognition of some one, not alone from some sight of horror. "Who is it, Wallace?" he repeated, curbing himself.

"Basil! It is---it must be--I know him! It is--"

A shot roared in front of Santoine. The blind man, starting back at the shock of it, drew in the powder-gas with his breath; but the bullet was not for him. Instead, he heard his friend scream and choke and half call, half cough.

"Wallace!" Santoine cried out; but his voice was lost in the roar of another shot. This was not fired by the same one who had just fired; at least, it was not from the same part of the room; and instantly, from another side, a third shot came. Then, in the midst of rush and confusion, another shot roared; the light was out again; then all was gone; the noise was outside; the room was still except for a cough and choke as Blatchford--somewhere on the floor in front of the blind man--tried again to speak.