The Blind Man's Eyes Part 49

"We've got him!" the man cried. "We've got him!"

"Him?"

"Him! Hugh Overton! Eaton, Miss Santoine. He's Hugh Overton; hadn't you heard? And we've got him!"

"Got him!"

She seemed to the man not to understand; and he had not time to explain further even to her. "Where is Mr. Avery?" he demanded. "I've got to tell Mr. Avery."

She made no response but threw herself in front of the car and clasped a wheel as the man started to throw in his gear. He cried to her and tried to get her off; but she was deaf to him. He looked in the direction of the house, shut off his power and leaped down. He left the machine and ran on the road toward the house. Harriet waited until he was away, then she sprang to the seat; she started the car and turned it back in the direction from which it had come. She speeded and soon other headlights flared at hers--a number of them; four or five cars, at least, were in file up the road and men were crowding and hors.e.m.e.n were riding beside them.

The captors of Hugh were approaching in triumphal procession. Harriet felt the wild, savage impulse to hurl her racing car headlong and at full speed among them. She rushed on so close that she saw she alarmed them; they cried a warning; the hors.e.m.e.n and the men on foot jumped from beside the road and the leading car swung to one side; but Harriet caught her car on the brakes and swung it straight across the road and stopped it; she closed the throttle and pulled the key from the starting mechanism and flung it into the woods. So she sat in the car, waiting for the captors of Hugh to come up.

These appreciated the hostility of her action without yet recognizing her. The motors stopped; the men on foot closed around. One of them cried her name and men descended from the leading car. Harriet got down from her machine and met them. The madness of the moments past was gone; as the men addressed her with astonishment but with respect, she gazed at them coolly.

"Where is he?" she asked them. "Where is he?"

They did not tell her; but reply was unnecessary. Others' eyes pointed hers to Hugh. He was in the back seat of the second machine with two men, one on each side of him. The lights from the car following and the refractions from the other lights showed him to her. He was sitting, or was being held, up straight; his arms were down at his sides. She could not see whether they were tied or not. The light did not shine so as to let her see his face clearly; but his bearing was calm, he held his head up. She looked for his hurts; there seemed to be bandages on his head but some one had given him a large cap which was pulled down so as to conceal the bandages. Plainly there had been no other capture; excitement was all centered upon him. Harriet heard people telling her name to others; and the newspaper men, who seemed to be all about, pushed back those who would interfere with her reaching the second machine.

She disregarded them and every one else but Hugh, who had seen her and had kept his gaze steadily upon her as she approached. She stopped at the side of the car where he was and she put her hand on the edge of the tonneau.

"You have been hurt again, Hugh?" she managed steadily.

"Hurt? No," he said as constrainedly. "No."

A blinding flare and an explosion startled her about. It was only a flashlight fired by one of the newspaper photographers who had placed his camera during the halt. Harriet opened the door to the tonneau.

Two men occupied the seats in the middle of the car; it was a large, seven pa.s.senger machine. "I will take this seat, please," she said to the man nearer. He got out and she sat down. Those who had been trying to start the car which she had driven across the road, had given up the task and were pushing it away to one side. Harriet sat down in front of Eaton--it was still by that name she thought of him; her feelings refused the other name, though she knew now it was his real one. She understood now her impulse which had driven her to try to block the road to her father's house if only for a moment; they were taking him there to deliver him up to Avery--to her father--who were consulting there over what his fate was to be.

She put her hand on his; his fingers closed upon it, but after his first response to her grasp he made no other; and now, as the lights showed him to her more clearly, she was terrified to see how unable he was to defend himself against anything that might be done to him. His calmness was the calmness of exhaustion; his left arm was bound tightly to his side; his eyes, dim and blank with pain and weariness, stared only dully, dazedly at all around.

The car started, and she sat silent, with her hand still upon his, as they went on to her father's house.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE FLAW IN THE LEFT EYE

Santoine, after Harriet had left the library, stood waiting until he heard the servant go out and close the door; he had instructed the man and another with him to remain in the hall. The blind man felt no physical weakness; he was wholly absorbed in the purpose for which he had dressed and come downstairs; now, as he heard Avery start forward to help him, he motioned him back. It was the rule in Santoine's house that the furniture in the rooms he frequented should be kept always in the same positions; the blind man could move about freely, therefore, in these rooms.

He walked slowly now to a large chair beside the table in the center of the room and sat down, resting his arm on the table; when he felt the familiar smoothness of the table under his finger-tips he knew he was facing the part of the room where the sound he had just heard had told him Avery must be.

"When did you learn that Eaton was Hugh Overton, Avery?" he asked.

"To-day."

"How did you discover it?"

He heard Avery, who had been standing, come forward and seat himself on the arm of the chair across the table from him; the blind man turned to face this place directly.

"It was plain from the first there was something wrong with the man,"

Avery replied; "but I had, of course, no way of placing him until he gave himself away at polo the other day."

"At polo? Then you knew about it the other day?"

"Oh, no," Avery denied. "I saw that he was pretending not to know a game which he did know; when he put over one particular stroke I was sure he knew the game very well. The number of men in this country who've played polo at all isn't very large and those who can play great polo are very few. So I sent for the polo annuals for a few years back; the ones I wanted came to the club to-day. His picture is in the group of the Spring Meadows Club; he played 'back' for them five years ago. His name was under the picture, of course."

"You didn't tell me, however, that he could play polo when you first found it out."

"No; I wanted to be sure of him before I spoke; besides, Harriet had seen it as well as I; I supposed she had told you."

"I understand. I am glad to know how it was. One less certain of your fidelity than I am might have put another construction on your silence; one less certain, Avery, might have thought that, already knowing Eaton's ident.i.ty, you preferred instead of telling it to me to have me discover it for myself and so, for that reason, you trapped him into a polo game in Harriet's presence. I, myself, do not think that. The other possibility which might occur to one not certain of your fidelity we will not now discuss."

For a moment Santoine paused; the man across from him did not speak, but--Santoine's intuition told him--drew himself suddenly together against some shock; the blind man felt that Avery was watching him now with tense questioning.

"Of course," said Santoine, "knowing who Eaton is, gives us no aid in determining who the men were that fought with him in my study last night?"

"It gives none to me, Mr. Santoine," Avery said steadily.

"It gives none to you," Santoine repeated; "and the very peculiar behavior of the stock exchange to-day, I suppose that gives you no help either. All day they have been going down, Avery--the securities, the stocks and bonds of the properties still known as the Latron properties; the very securities which five years ago stood staunch against even the shock of the death of the man whose coa.r.s.e but powerful personality had built them up into the great properties they are to-day--of Matthew Latron's death. To-day, without apparent reason, they have been going down, and that gives you no help either, Avery?"

"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."

"Yet you are a very clever man, Avery; there is no question about that.

Your friend and my friend who sent you to me five years ago was quite correct in calling you clever; I have found you so; I have been willing to pay you a good salary--a very good salary--because you are clever."

"I'm glad if you have found my work satisfactory, Mr. Santoine."

"I have even found it worth while at times to talk over with you matters--problems--which were troubling me; to consult with you. Have I not?"

"Yes."

"Very well; I am going to consult with you now. I have an infirmity, as you know, Avery; I am blind. I have just found out that for several years--for about five years, to be exact; that is, for about the same length of time that you have been with me--my blindness has been used by a certain group of men to make me the agent of a monstrous and terrible injustice to an innocent man. Except for my blindness--except for that, Avery, this injustice never could have been carried on. If you find a certain amount of bitterness in my tone, it is due to that; a man who has an infirmity, Avery, cannot well help being a little sensitive in regard to it. You are willing I should consult with you in regard to this?"

"Of course I am at your service, Mr. Santoine." Avery's voice was harsh and dry.

The blind man was silent for an instant. He could feel the uneasiness and anxiety of the man across from him mounting swiftly, and he gave it every opportunity to increase. He had told Eaton once that he did not use "cat and mouse" methods; he was using them now because that was the only way his purpose could be achieved.

"We must go back, then, Avery, to the quite serious emergency to which I am indebted for your faithful service. It is fairly difficult now for one contemplating the reverence and regard in which 'big' men are held by the public in these days of business reconstruction to recall the att.i.tude of only a few years ago. However, it is certainly true that five years ago the American people appeared perfectly convinced that the only way to win true happiness and perpetuate prosperity was to accuse, condemn and jail for life--if execution were not legal--the heads of the important groups of industrial properties. Just at that time, one of these men--one of the most efficient but also, perhaps, the one personally most obnoxious or unpopular--committed one of his gravest indiscretions. It concerned the private use of deposits in national banks; it was a federal offense of the most patent and provable kind. He was indicted. Considering the temper of any possible jury at that time, there was absolutely no alternative but to believe that the man under indictment must spend many succeeding years, if not the rest of his life, in the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta or Leavenworth.

"Now, not only the man himself but his closest a.s.sociates contemplated this certainty with dismay. The man was in complete control of a group of the most valuable and prosperous properties in America. Before his gaining control, the properties had been almost ruined by differences between the minor men who tried to run them; only the calling of Matthew Latron into control saved those men from themselves; they required him to govern them; his taking away would bring chaos and ruin among them again. They knew that. There were a number of important people, therefore, who held hope against hope that Latron would not be confined in a prison cell. Just before he must go to trial, Latron himself became convinced that he faced confinement for the rest of his life; then fate effectively intervened to end all his troubles. His body, charred and almost consumed by flames--but nevertheless the identified body of Matthew Latron--was found in the smoking ruins of his shooting lodge which burned to the ground two days before his trial. I have stated correctly these particulars, have I not, Avery?"

"Yes." Avery was no longer sitting on the arm of the chair; he had slipped into the seat--he was hunched in the seat watching the blind man with growing conviction and fear.

"There were, of course," Santoine went on, "many of the violent and pa.s.sion-inflamed who carped at this timely intervention of fate and criticised the accident which delivered Latron at this time. But these were silenced when Latron's death was shown to have been, not accident, but murder. A young man was shown to have followed Latron to the shooting lodge; a witness appeared who had seen this young man shoot Latron; a second witness had seen him set fire to the lodge. The young man--Hugh Overton--was put on trial for his life. I, myself, as a witness at the trial, supplied the motive for the crime; for, though I had never met Overton, I knew that he had lost the whole of a large fortune through investments recommended to him by Latron. Overton was convicted, sentenced to death; he escaped before the sentence was carried out--became a fugitive without a name, who if he ever reappeared would be handed over for execution. For the evidence had been perfect--complete; he had shot Latron purely for revenge, killed him in the most despicable manner. For there was no doubt Latron was dead, was there, Avery?"

Santoine waited for reply.