The Blind Man's Eyes Part 6

"Oh, thank you; then that's mine." He put his hand out between the curtains to take the yellow envelope.

Connery held back. "I thought your name was Eaton."

"It is. Mr. Hillward--Lawrence Hillward--is an a.s.sociate of mine who expected to make this trip with me but could not. So I should have telegrams or other communications addressed to him. Is there anything to sign?"

"No, sir--train delivery. It's not necessary."

Eaton drew his curtains close again and ripped the envelope open; but before reading the message, he observed with alarm that his pajama jacket had opened across the chest, and a small round scar, such as that left by a high-powered bullet penetrating, was exposed. He gasped almost audibly, realizing this, and clapped his hand to his chest and b.u.t.toned his jacket. The message--nine words without signature--lay before him:

Thicket knot youngster omniscient issue foliage lecture tragic instigation.

It was some code which Eaton recognized but could not decipher at once.

It was of concern, but at that instant, less of concern than to know whether his jacket had been open and his chest exposed when he took the message. The conductor was still standing in the aisle.

"When did you get this?" Eaton asked, looking out.

"Just now."

"How could you get it here?" Eaton questioned, watching the conductor's face.

"We've had train instruments--the emergency telegraph--on the wires since four o'clock and just got talking with the stations east; wires are still down to the west. That message came through yesterday some time and was waiting for you at Simons; when we got them this morning, they sent it on."

"I see; thanks." Eaton, a.s.sured that if the conductor had seen anything, he suspected no significance in what he saw, closed his curtains and b.u.t.toned them carefully. The conductor moved on. Eaton took a small English-Chinese pocket-dictionary from his vest pocket and opened it under cover of the blanket; counting five words up from _thicket_ he found _they_; five down from _knot_ gave him _know_; six up from _youngster_ was _you_; six down from _omniscient_ was _one_; seven up from _issue_ was _is_; and so continuing, he translated the nine words to:

"They know you. One is following. Leave train instantly."

Eaton, nervous and jerky, as he completed the first six words, laughed as he compiled the final three. "Leave train instantly!" The humor of that advice in his present situation, as he looked out the window at the solid bank of snow, appealed to him. He slapped the little dictionary shut and returned it to his pocket. A waiter from the dining car came back, announcing the first call for breakfast, and spurred him into action. Pa.s.sengers from the Pullman at the rear pa.s.sed Eaton's section for the diner. He glanced out at the first two or three; then he heard Harriet Dorne's voice in some quiet, conventional remark to the man who followed her. Eaton started at it; then he dressed swiftly and hurried into the now deserted washroom and then on to breakfast.

The dining car, all gleaming crystal and silver and white covers within, also was surrounded by snow. The s.p.a.ce outside the windows seemed somewhat wider than that about the sleeping car. And a moment before Eaton went forward, the last cloud had cleared and the sun had come out bright. The train was still quite motionless; the great drifts of snow, even with the tops of the cars on either side, made perfectly plain how hopeless it would be to try to proceed without the plow; and the heavy white frost which had not yet cleared from some of the window-panes, told graphically of the cold without. But the dining car was warm and cheerful, and it gave a.s.surance that, if the train was helpless to move, it at least offered luxuries in its idleness. As Eaton stepped inside the door, the car seemed all cheer and good spirits.

Fresh red carnations and ruddy roses were, as usual, in the cut-gla.s.s vases on the white cloths; the waiters bore steaming pots of coffee and bowls of hot cereals to the different tables. These, as usual, were ten in number--five with places for four persons each, on one side of the aisle, and five, each with places for two persons, beside the windows on the other side of the car.

Harriet Dorne was sitting facing the door at the second of the larger tables; opposite her, and with his back to Eaton, sat Donald Avery. A third place was laid beside the girl, as though they expected Dorne to join them; but they had begun their fruit without waiting. The girl glanced up as Eaton halted in the doorway; her blue eyes brightened with a look part friendliness, part purpose. She smiled and nodded, and Avery turned about.

"Good morning, Mr. Eaton," the girl greeted.

"Good morning, Miss Dorne," Eaton replied collectedly. He nodded also to Avery, who, stiffly returning the nod, turned back again to Miss Dorne.

Amy and Constance, with their parents, occupied the third large table; the other three large tables were empty. "D. S." was alone at the furthest of the small tables; a traveling-salesman-looking person was washing down creamed Finnan haddock with coffee at the next; the pa.s.senger who had been alone in the second car was at the third; the Englishman, Standish, was beginning his iced grape-fruit at the table opposite Miss Dorne; and at the place nearest the door, an insignificant broad-shouldered and untidy young man, who had boarded the train at Spokane, had just spilled half a cup of coffee over the egg spots on his lapels as his unsteady and nicotine-stained fingers all but dropped the cup.

The dining car conductor, in accordance with the general determination to reserve the larger tables for parties traveling together, pulled back the chair opposite the untidy man; but Eaton, with a sharp sense of disgust, went past to the chair opposite the Englishman.

As he was about to seat himself there, the girl again looked up. "Oh, Mr. Eaton," she smiled, "wouldn't you like to sit with us? I don't think Father is coming to breakfast now; and if he does, of course there's still room."

She pulled back the chair beside her enticingly; and Eaton accepted it.

"Good morning, Mr. Avery," he said to Miss Dorne's companion formally as he sat down, and the man across the table murmured something perforce.

As Eaton ordered his breakfast, he appreciated for the first time that his coming had interrupted a conversation--or rather a sort of monologue of complaint on the part of Standish addressed impersonally to Avery.

"Extraordinarily exposed in these sleeping cars of yours, isn't one, wouldn't you say?" the Englishman appealed across the aisle.

"Exposed?" Avery repeated, more inclined to encourage the conversation.

"I say, is it quite the custom for a train servant--whenever he fancies he should--to reach across one, sleeping?"

"He means the porter closed his window during the night," Eaton explained to Avery.

"Quite so; and I knew nothing about it--nothing at all. Fancy! There was I in the bunk, and the beggar comes along, pulls my curtains aside, reaches across me--"

"It got very cold in the night," Avery offered.

"I know; but is that any reason for the beggar invading my bunk that way? He might have done anything to me! Any one in the car might have done anything to me! Any one in your bally corridor-train might have done anything. There was I, asleep--quite unconscious; people pa.s.sing up and down the aisle just the other side of a foolish fall of curtain!

How does any one know one of those people might not be an enemy of mine? Remarkable people, you Americans--inconsistent, I say. Lock your homes with most complicated fastenings--greatest lock-makers in the world--burglar alarms on windows; but when you travel, expose yourselves as one wouldn't dream of exposing oneself elsewhere.

Amazing places, your Pullman coaches! Why, any one might do anything to any one! What's to stop him, what?"

Eaton, suddenly reminded of his telegram, put a hand into his pocket and fingered the torn sc.r.a.ps; he had meant to remove and destroy them, but had forgotten. He glanced at Harriet Dorne.

"What he says is quite true," she observed. She was smiling, however, as most of the other pa.s.sengers were, at the Englishman's vehemence.

They engaged in conversation as they breakfasted--a conversation in which Avery took almost no part, though Miss Dorne tried openly to draw him in; then the sudden entrance of Connery, followed closely by a stout, brusque man who belonged to the rear Pullman, took Eaton's attention and hers.

Other pa.s.sengers also looked up; and the nervous, untidy young man at the table near the door again slopped coffee over himself as the conductor gazed about.

"Which is him?" the man with Connery demanded loudly.

Connery checked him, but pointed at the same time to Eaton.

"That's him, is it?" the other man said. "Then go ahead."

Eaton observed that Avery, who had turned in his seat, was watching this diversion on the part of the conductor with interest. Connery stopped beside Eaton's seat.

"You took a telegram for Lawrence Hillward this morning," he a.s.serted.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it was mine, or meant for me, as I said at the time. My name is Eaton; but Mr. Hillward expected to make this trip with me."

The stout man with the conductor forced himself forward.

"That's pretty good, but not quite good enough!" he charged.

"Conductor, get that telegram for me!"

Eaton got up, controlling himself under the insult of the other's manner.