The Blind Man's Eyes Part 11

She looked at Eaton, but did not speak as she pa.s.sed; she went directly to the door of the drawing-room, opened it and went in, followed by Avery. The door closed, and for a moment Eaton could hear voices inside the room--Harriet Santoine's, Sinclair's, Connery's. The conductor then came to the door of the drawing-room and sent the porter for water and clean linen; Eaton heard the rip of linen being torn, and the car became filled with the smell of antiseptics.

Donald Avery came out of the drawing-room and dropped into the seat across from Eaton. He seemed deeply thoughtful--so deeply, indeed, as to be almost unaware of Eaton's presence. And Eaton, observing him, again had the sense that Avery's absorption was completely in consequences to himself of what was going on behind the door--in how Basil Santoine's death or continued existence would affect the fortunes of Donald Avery.

"Is he going to operate?" Eaton asked.

"Operate? Yes; he's doing it," Avery replied shortly.

"And Miss Santoine?"

"She's helping--handing instruments and so on."

Avery could not have replied, as he did, if the strain this period must impose upon Harriet Santoine had been much in his mind. Eaton turned from him and asked nothing more. A long time pa.s.sed--how long, Eaton could not have told; he noted only that during it the shadows on the s...o...b..nk outside the window appreciably changed their position. Once during this time, the door of the drawing-room was briefly opened, while Connery handed something out to the porter, and the smell of the antiseptics grew suddenly stronger; and Eaton could see behind Connery the surgeon, coatless and with shirt-sleeves rolled up, bending over the figure on the bed. Finally the door opened again, and Harriet Santoine came out, paler than before, and now not quite so steady.

Eaton rose as she approached them; and Avery leaped up, all concern and sympathy for her immediately she appeared. He met her in the aisle and took her hand.

"Was it successful, dear?" Avery asked.

She shut her eyes before she answered, and stood holding to the back of a seat; then she opened her eyes, saw Eaton and recognized him and sat down in the seat where Avery had been sitting.

"Dr. Sinclair says we will know in four or five days," she replied to Avery; she turned then directly to Eaton. "He thought there probably was a clot under the skull, and he operated to find it and relieve it.

There was one, and we have done all we can; now we may only wait. Dr.

Sinclair has appointed himself nurse; he says I can help him, but not just yet. I thought you would like to know."

"Thank you; I did want to know," Eaton acknowledged. He moved away from them, and sat down in one of the seats further down the car.

Connery came out from the drawing-room, went first to one end of the car, then to the other; and returning with the Pullman conductor, began to oversee the transfer of the baggage of all other pa.s.sengers than the Santoine party to vacant sections in the forward sleepers. People began to pa.s.s through the aisle; evidently the car doors had been unlocked. Eaton got up and left the car, finding at the door a porter from one of the other cars stationed to warn people not to linger or speak or make other noises in going through the car where Santoine was.

As the door was closing behind Eaton, a sound came to his ears from the car he just had left--a young girl suddenly crying in abandon. Harriet Santoine, he understood, must have broken down for the moment, after the strain of the operation; and Eaton halted as though to turn back, feeling the blood drive suddenly upon his heart. Then, recollecting that he had no right to go to her, he went on.

CHAPTER VIII

SUSPICION FASTENS ON EATON

As he entered his own car, Eaton halted; that part of the train had taken on its usual look and manner, or as near so, it seemed, as the stoppage in the snow left possible. Knowing what he did, Eaton stared at first with astonishment; and the irrational thought came to him that the people before him were acting. Then he realized that they were almost as usual because they did not know what had happened; the fact that Basil Santoine had been attacked--or that he was on the train--still had been carefully kept secret by the spreading of some other explanation of the trouble in the car behind. So now, in their section, Amy and Constance were reading and knitting; their parents had immersed themselves in double solitaire; the Englishman looked out the window at the snow with no different expression than that with which he would have surveyed a landscape they might have been pa.s.sing.

Sinclair's section, of course, remained empty; and a porter came and transferred the surgeon's handbag and overcoat to the car behind in which he was caring for Santoine.

Eaton found his car better filled than it had been before, for the people shifted from the car behind had been scattered through the train. He felt a hand on his arm as he started to go to his seat, and turned and faced Connery.

"If you must say anything, say it was appendicitis," the conductor warned when he had brought Eaton back to the vestibule. "Mr. Dorne--if a name is given, it is that--was suddenly seized with a recurrence of an attack of appendicitis from which he had been suffering. An immediate operation was required to save him; that was what Dr.

Sinclair did."

Eaton reaffirmed his agreement to give no information. He learned by the conversation of the pa.s.sengers that Connery's version of what had happened had been easily received; some one, they said, had been taken suddenly and seriously ill upon the train. Their speculation, after some argument, had pitched on the right person; it was the tall, distinguished-looking man in the last car who wore gla.s.ses. At noon, food was carried into the Santoine car.

Keeping himself to his section, Eaton watched the car and outside the window for signs of what investigation Connery and Avery were making.

What already was known had made it perfectly clear that whoever had attacked Santoine must still be upon the train; for no one could have escaped through the snow. No one could now escape. Avery and Connery and whoever else was making investigation with them evidently were not letting any one know that an investigation was being made. A number of times Eaton saw Connery and the Pullman conductor pa.s.s through the aisles. Eaton went to lunch; on his way back from the diner, he saw the conductors with papers in their hands questioning a pa.s.senger.

They evidently were starting systematically through the cars, examining each person; they were making the plea of necessity of a report to the railroad offices of names and addresses of all held up by the stoppage of the train. As Eaton halted at his section, the two conductors finished with the man from the rear who had been installed in Section One, and they crossed to the Englishman opposite. Eaton heard them explain the need of making a report and heard the Englishman's answer, with his name, his address and particulars as to who he was, where he was coming from and whither he was going.

Eaton started on toward the rear of the train.

"A moment, sir!" Connery called.

Eaton halted. The conductors confronted him.

"Your name, sir?" Connery asked.

"Philip D. Eaton."

Connery wrote down the answer. "Your address?"

"I--have no address."

"You mean you don't want to give it?"

"No, I have none. I was going to a hotel in Chicago--which one I hadn't decided yet."

"Where are you coming from?"

"From Asia."

"That's hardly an address, Mr. Eaton!"

"I can give you no address abroad. I had no fixed address there. I was traveling most of the time. You could not reach me or place me by means of any city or hotel there. I arrived in Seattle by the Asiatic steamer and took this train."

"Ah! you came on the _Tamba Maru_."

Connery made note of this, as he had made note of all the other questions and answers. Then he said something to the Pullman conductor, who replied in the same low tone; what they said was not audible to Eaton.

"You can tell us at least where your family is, Mr. Eaton," Connery suggested.

"I have no family."

"Friends, then?"

"I--I have no friends."

"What?"

"I say that I can refer you to no friends."

"Nowhere?"

"Nowhere."

Connery pondered for several moments. "The Mr. Hillward--Lawrence Hillward, to whom the telegram was addressed which you claimed this morning, your a.s.sociate who was to have taken this train with you--will you give me his address?"

"I thought you had decided the telegram was not meant for me."