The Blind Man's Eyes Part 17

Eaton jumped up, and as he saw the girl's pale face, the color left his own.

"Miss Santoine has asked to speak to you," Connery announced; and he admitted Harriet Santoine and Avery, and himself remaining outside in the aisle, closed the door upon them.

"How is your father?" Eaton asked the girl.

"He seems just the same; at least, I can't see any change, Mr. Eaton."

She said something in a low tone to Avery, who nodded; then she sat down opposite Eaton, and Avery seated himself on the arm of the seat beside her.

"Can Dr. Sinclair see any difference?" Eaton asked.

"Dr. Sinclair will not commit himself except to say that so far as he can tell, the indications are favorable. He seems to think--" The girl choked; but when she went on, her blue eyes were very bright and her lips did not tremble. "Dr. Sinclair seems to think, Mr. Eaton, that Father was found just in time, and that whatever chance he has for recovery came from you. Mr. Avery and I had pa.s.sed by the berth; other people had gone by. Sometimes Father had insomnia and wouldn't get to sleep till late in the morning; so I--and Mr. Avery too--would have left him undisturbed until noon. Dr. Sinclair says that if he had been left as long as that, he would have had no chance at all for life."

"He has a chance, then, now?"

"Yes; but we don't know how much. The change Dr. Sinclair is expecting may be either for better or worse. I--I wanted you to know, Mr. Eaton, that I recognize--that the chance Father may have came through you, and that I am trying to think of you as the one who gave him the chance."

The warm blood flooded Eaton's face, and he bowed his head. She, then, was not wholly hostile to him; she had not been completely convinced by Avery.

"What was it you wanted to tell Miss Santoine?" Avery challenged.

"What did Miss Santoine want to tell me?"

"What she has just told you."

Eaton thought for a moment. The realization that had come to him just now that something had kept the girl from condemning him as Avery and Connery had condemned him, and that somehow, for some reason, she must have been fighting within herself to-day and last night against the proof of his guilt, flushed him with grat.i.tude and changed the att.i.tude he had thought it was going to be necessary for him to take in this talk with her. As he looked up, her eyes met his; then she looked quickly away. Avery moved impatiently and repeated his question:

"What was it you wanted to say?"

"Are they looking for any one, Miss Santoine--any one besides me in connection with the attack upon your father?"

She glanced at Avery and did not answer. Avery's eyes narrowed. "We are quite satisfied with what we have been doing," he answered.

"Then they are not looking, Miss Santoine!"

Her lips pressed together, and again it was Avery who answered. "We have not said so."

"I must a.s.sume it, then," Eaton said to the girl without regarding Avery. "I have been watching as well as I could since they shut me up here, and I have listened, but I haven't found any evidence that anything more is being done. So I'm obliged to a.s.sume that nothing is being done. The few people who know about the attack on your father are so convinced and satisfied that I am the one who did it that they aren't looking any further. Among the people moving about on the train, the--the man who made the attack is being allowed to move about; he could even leave the train, if he could do so without being seen and was willing to take his chance in the snow; and when the train goes on, he certainly will leave it!"

Harriet Santoine turned questioningly to Avery again.

"I am not asking anything of you, you see," Eaton urged. "I'm not asking you to let me go or to give me any--any increase of liberty which might make it possible for me to escape. I--I'm only warning you that Mr. Avery and the conductor are making a mistake; and you don't have to have any faith in me or any belief that I'm telling the truth when I say that I didn't do it! I'm only warning you, Miss Santoine, that you mustn't let them stop looking! Why, if I had done it, I might very likely have had an accomplice whom they are going to let escape.

It's only common sense, you see."

"That is what you wanted to say?" Avery asked.

"That is it," Eaton answered.

"We can go, then, Harriet."

But she made no move to go. Her eyes rested upon Eaton steadily; and while he had been appealing to her, a flush had come to her cheeks and faded away and come again and again with her impulses as he spoke.

"If you didn't do it, why don't you help us?" she cried.

"Help you?"

"Yes: tell us who you are and what you are doing? Why did you take the train because Father was on it, if you didn't mean any harm to him?

Why don't you tell us where you are going or where you have been or what you have been doing? What did your appointment with Mr. Warden mean? And why, after he was killed, did you disappear until you followed Father on this train? Why can't you give the name of anybody you know or tell us of any one who knows about you?"

Eaton sank back against the seat away from her, and his eyes shifted to Avery standing ready to go, and then fell.

"I might ask you in return," Eaton said, "why you thought it worth while, Miss Santoine, to ask so much about myself when you first met me and before any of this had happened? You were not so much interested then in me personally as that; and it was not because you could have suspected I had been Mr. Warden's friend; for when the conductor charged that, it was a complete surprise to you."

"No; I did not suspect that."

"Then why were you curious about me?"

Before Avery could speak or even make a gesture, Harriet seemed to come to a decision. "My Father asked me to," she said.

"Your father? Asked you to do what?"

"To find out about you."

"Why?"

As she hesitated, Avery put his hand upon her shoulder as though warning her to be still; but she went on, after only an instant.

"I promised Mr. Avery and the conductor," she said, "that if I saw you I would listen to what you had to say but would not answer questions without their consent; but I seem already to have broken that promise.

I have been wondering, since we have found out what we have about you, whether Father could possibly have suspected that you were Mr. Warden's friend; but I am quite sure that was not the original reason for his inquiring about you. My Father thought he recognized your voice, Mr.

Eaton, when you were speaking to the conductor about your tickets. He thought he ought to know who you were. He knew that some time and somewhere he had been near you before, and had heard you speak; but he could not tell where or when. And neither Mr. Avery nor I could tell him who you were; so he asked us to find out. I do not know whether, after we had described you to Father, he may have connected you with Mr. Warden or not; but that could not have been in his mind at first."

Eaton had paled; Avery had seemed about to interrupt her, but watching Eaton, he suddenly had desisted.

"You and Mr. Avery?" Eaton repeated. "He sent you to find out about me?"

"Sent me--in this case--more than Mr. Avery; because he thought it would be easier for me to do it." Harriet had reddened under Eaton's gaze. "You understand, Mr. Eaton, it was--was entirely impersonal with me. My Father, being blind, is obliged to use the eyes of others--mine, for one; he has trained me to see for him ever since we used to take walks together when I was a little girl, and he has made me learn to tell him what I see in detail, in the way that he would see it himself; and for helping him to see other things on which I might be unable to report so definitely and clearly, he has Mr. Avery. He calls us his eyes, sometimes; and it was only--only because I had been commissioned to find out about you that I was obliged to show so much curiosity."

"I understand," said Eaton quietly. "Your report to your father, I suppose, convinced him that he had been mistaken in thinking he knew my voice."

"No--not that. He knew that he had heard it; for sounds have so much meaning to him that he never neglects or forgets them, and he carries in his mind the voices of hundreds of different people and almost never makes a mistake among them. It did make him surer that you were not any one with whose voice he ought to have been familiar, but only some one whom he had heard say something--a few words or sentences, maybe--under conditions which impressed your voice upon his mind. And he told Mr. Avery so, and that has only made Mr. Avery and the conductor more certain that you must be the--one. And since you will not tell--"

"To tell would only further confirm them--"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean they would be more certain it was I who--" Eaton, as he blundered with the words and checked himself, looked up apprehensively at Avery; but Avery, if he had thought that it was worth while to let this conversation go on in the expectation that Eaton might let slip something which could be used against himself, now had lost that expectation.

"Come, Harry," he said.

Harriet arose, and Eaton got up as she did and stood as she went toward the door.