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 passed 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 ejaculation. 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 scrape on the floor—not of the sort to be accounted for by
