The Blind Man's Eyes (July 1916)/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
QUESTIONS
CONNERY pulled aside the curtain of the washroom at the end of the Santoine car—the end furthest from the drawing-room where Santoine lay.
"Step in here, sir," he directed. "Sit down, if you want. We're far enough from the drawing-room not to disturb Mr. Santoine."
Eaton, seating himself in the corner of the leather seat built against two walls of the room, and looking up, saw that Avery had come into the room with them. The girl followed. With her entrance into the room came to him—not any sound from her or anything which he could describe to himself as either audible or visual—but a strange sensation which exhausted his breath and stopped his pulse for a beat. To be accused—even to be suspected—of the crime against Santoine was to have attention brought to him which—with his unsatisfactory account of himself—threatened ugly complications. Yet, at this moment of realization, that did not fill his mind. Whether his long dwelling close to death had numbed him to his own danger, however much more immediate it had become, he could not know; probably he had prepared himself so thoroughly, had inured himself so to expect arrest and imminent destruction, that now his finding himself confronted with accusers in itself failed to stir new sensation; but till this day, he had never imagined or been able to prepare himself for accusation before one like Harriet Santoine; so, for a moment, thought solely of himself was a subcurrent. Of his conscious feelings, the terror that she would be brought to believe with the others that he had struck the blow against her father was the most poignant.
Harriet Santoine was not looking at him; but as she stood by the door, she was gazing intently at Avery; and she spoke first:
"I don't believe it, Don!"
Eaton felt the warm blood flooding his face and his heart throb with gratitude toward her.
"You don't believe it because you don't understand yet, dear," Avery declared. "We are going to make you believe it by proving to you it is true."
Avery pulled forward one of the leather chairs for her to seat herself and set another for himself facing Eaton. Eaton, gazing across steadily at Avery, was chilled and terrified as he now fully realized for the first time the element which Avery's presence added. What the relations were between Harriet Santoine and Avery he did not know, but clearly they were very close; and it was equally clear that Avery had noticed and disliked the growing friendship between her and Eaton. Eaton sensed now with a certainty that left no doubt in his own mind that as he himself had realized only a moment before that his strongest feeling was the desire to clear himself before Harriet Santoine, so Avery now was realizing that—since some one on the train had certainly made the attack on Santoine—he hoped he could prove before her that that person was Eaton.
"Why did you ring the bell in Mr. Santoine's berth?" Avery directed the attack upon him suddenly.
"To call help," Eaton answered.
Question and answer, Eaton realized, had made some effect upon Harriet Santoine, as he did not doubt Avery intended they should; yet he could not look toward her to learn exactly what this effect was but kept his eyes on Avery.
"You had known, then, that he needed help?"
"I knew it—saw it then, of course."
"When?"
"When I found him."
"'Found' him?"
"Yes."
"When was that?"
"When I went forward to look for the conductor to ask him about taking a walk on the roof of the cars."
"You found him then—that way, the way he was?"
"That way? Yes."
"How?"
"How?" Eaton iterated.
"Yes; how, Mr. Eaton, or Hillward, or whatever your name is? How did you find him? The curtains were open, perhaps; you saw him as you went by, eh?"
Eaton shook his head. "No; the curtains weren't open; they were closed."
"Then why did you look in?"
"I saw his hand in the aisle."
"Go on."
"When I came back it didn't look right to me; its position had not been changed at all, and it hadn't looked right to me before. So I stopped and touched it, and I found that it was cold."
"Then you looked into the berth?"
"Yes."
"And having looked in and seen Mr. Santoine injured and lying as he was, you did not call any one, you did not bring help—you merely leaned across him and pushed the bell and went on quickly out of the car before any one could see you?"
"Yes; but I waited on the platform of the next car to see that help did come; and the conductor passed me, and I knew that he and the porter must find Mr. Santoine as they did."
"Do you expect us to believe that very peculiar action of yours was the act of an innocent man?"
"If I had been guilty of the attack on Mr. Santoine, I'd not have stopped or looked into the berth at all."
"If you are innocent, you had, of course, some reason for acting as you did. Will you explain what it was?"
"No—I cannot explain."
With a look almost of triumph Avery turned to Harriet Santoine, and Eaton felt his flesh grow warm with gratitude again as he saw her meet Avery's look with no appearance of being convinced.
"Mr. Eaton spoke to me about that," she said quietly.
"You mean he told you he was the one who rang the bell?"
"No; he told me we must not attach too much importance to the ringing of the bell in inquiring into the attack on Father."
Avery smiled grimly. "He did, did he? Don't you see that that only shows more surely that he did not want the ringing of the bell investigated because it would lead us to himself? He did not happen to tell you, did he, that the kind and size of socks he wears and carries in his traveling-bag are very nearly the same as the black sock in which the bar was wrapped with which your father was struck?"
"It was you, then, who took the sock from my bag?" Eaton demanded.
"It was the conductor, and I can assure you, Mr. Eaton-Hillward, that we are preserving it very carefully along with the one which was found in the snow."
"But the socks were not exactly the same, were they?" Harriet Santoine asked.
Avery made a vexed gesture, and turned to Connery. "Tell her the rest of it," he directed.
Connery, who had remained standing back of the two chairs, moved slightly forward. His responsibility in connection with the crime that had been carried out on his train had weighed heavily on the conductor; he was worn and nervous.
"Where shall I begin?" he asked of Avery; he was looking not at the girl but at Eaton.
"At the beginning," Avery directed.
"Mr. Eaton, when you came to this train, the gateman at Seattle called my attention to you," Connery began. "I didn't attach enough importance, I see now, to what he said; I ought to have watched you closer and from the first. Old Sammy has recognized men with criminal records time and time again. He's got seven rewards out of it."
Eaton felt his pulses close with a shock. "He recognized me?" he asked quietly.
"No, he didn't; he couldn't place you," Connery granted. "He couldn't tell whether you were somebody that was 'wanted' or some one well known—some one famous, maybe; but I ought to have kept my eye on you because of that, from the very start. Now this morning you claim a telegram meant for another man—a man named Hillward, on this train, who seems to be all right—that is, by his answers and his account of himself he seems to be exactly what he claims to be."
"Did he read the telegram to you?" Eaton asked. "It was in code. If it was meant for him, he ought to be able to read it."
"No, he didn't. Will you?"
Eaton halted while he recalled the exact wording of the message. "No."
Connery also paused.
"Is this all you have against me?" Eaton asked.
"No; it's not. Mr. Avery's already told you the next thing, and you've admitted it. But we'd already been able by questioning the porter of this car and the ones in front and back of it to narrow down the time of the ringing of Mr. Santoine's bell not to quarter-hours but to minutes; and to find out that during those few minutes you were the only one who passed through the car. So there's no use of my going into that." Connery paused and looked to Avery and the girl. "You'll wait a minute, Mr. Avery; and you, Miss Santoine. I won't be long."
He left the washroom, and the sound of the closing of a door which came to Eaton a half-minute later told that he had gone out the front end of the car.
As the three sat waiting in the washroom, no one spoke. Eaton, looking past Avery, gazed out the window at the bank of snow. Eaton understood fully that the manner in which the evidence against him was being presented to him was not with any expectation that he could defend himself; Avery and Connery were obviously too certain of their conclusion for that; rather, as it was being given thus under Avery's direction, it was for the effect upon Harriet Santoine and to convince her fully. But Eaton had understood this from the first. It was for this reason he had not attempted to deny having rung Santoine's bell, realizing that if he denied it and it afterwards was proved, he would appear in a worse light than by his inability to account for or assign a reason for his act. And he had proved right in this; for the girl had not been convinced. So now he comprehended that something far more convincing and more important was to come; but what that could be, he could not guess.
As he glanced at her, he saw her sitting with hands clasped in her lap, pale, and merely waiting. Avery, as though impatient, had got up and gone to the door, where he could look out into the passage. From time to time people had passed through the car, but no one had stopped at the washroom door or looked in; the voices in the washroom had not been raised, and even if what was going on there could have attracted momentary attention, the instructions to pass quickly through the car would have prevented any one from stopping to gratify his curiosity. Eaton's heart-beat quickened as, listening, he heard the car door open and close again and footsteps, coming to them along the aisle, which he recognized as those of Conductor Connery and some one else with him.
Avery returned to his seat, as the conductor appeared in the door of the washroom followed by the Englishman from Eaton's car, Henry Standish. Connery carried the sheet on which he had written the questions he had asked Eaton, and Eaton's answers.
"What name were you using, Mr. Eaton, when you came from Asia to the United States?" the conductor demanded.
Eaton reflected. "My own," he said. "Philip D. Eaton."
Connery brought the paper nearer to the light of the window, running his finger down it till he found the note he wanted. "When I asked this afternoon where you came from in Asia, Mr. Eaton, you answered me something like this: You said you could give me no address abroad; you had been traveling most of the time; you could not be placed by inquiring at any city or hotel; you came to Seattle by the Asiatic steamer and took this train. That was your reply, was it not?"
"Yes," Eaton answered.
"The 'Asiatic steamer'—the Tamba Maru that was, Mr. Eaton."
Eaton looked up quickly and was about to speak; but from Connery his gaze shifted swiftly to the Englishman, and checking himself, he said nothing.
"Mr. Standish,"—Connery faced the Englishman,—"you came from Yokohama to Seattle on the Tamba Maru, didn't you?"
"I did, yes."
"Do you remember this Mr. Eaton among the passengers?"
"No."
"Do you know he was not among the passengers?"
"Yes, I do."
"How do you know?"
The Englishman took a folded paper from his pocket, opened it and handed it to the conductor. Connery, taking it, held it out to Eaton.
"Here, Mr. Eaton," he said, "is the printed passenger-list of the people aboard the Tamba Maru prepared after leaving Yokohama for distribution among the passengers. It's unquestionably correct. Will you point out your name on it?"
Eaton made no move to take the paper; and after holding it long enough to give him full opportunity, Connery handed it back to the Englishman.
"That's all, Mr. Standish," he said.
Eaton sat silent as the Englishman, after staring curiously around at them with his bulging, interested eyes, left the washroom.
"Now, Mr. Eaton," Connery said, as the sound of Standish's steps became inaudible, "either you were not on the Tamba Maru or you were on it under some other name than Eaton. Which was it?"
"I never said I was on the Tamba Maru," Eaton returned steadily. "I said I came from Asia by steamer. You yourself supplied the name Tamba Maru."
"In case of questioning like that, Mr. Eaton, it makes no difference whether you said it or I supplied it in your hearing. If you didn't correct me, it was because you wanted me to get a wrong impression about you. You can take notice that the only definite fact about you put down on this paper has proved to be incorrect. You weren't on the Tamba Maru, were you?"
"No, I was not."
"Why didn't you say so while Mr. Standish was here?"
"I didn't know how far you had taken him into your confidence in this matter."
"You did come from Asia, though, as your railroad ticket seemed to show?"
"Yes."
"From where?"
Eaton did not answer.
"From Yokohama?"
"The last port we stopped at before sailing for Seattle was Yokohama—yes."
Connery reflected. "You had been in Seattle, then, at least five days; for the last steamer you could have come on docked five days before the Tamba Maru."
"You assume that; I do not tell you so."
"I assume it because it must be so. You'd been in Seattle—or at least you had been in America—for not less than five days. In fact, Mr. Eaton, you had been on this side of the water for as many as eleven days, had you not?"
"Eleven days?" Eaton repeated.
"Yes; for it was just eleven days before this train left Seattle that you came to the house of Mr. Gabriel Warden and waited there for him till he was brought home dead!"
Eaton, sitting forward a little, looked up at the conductor; his glance caught Avery's an instant; he gazed then to Harriet Santoine. At the charge, she had started; but Avery had not. The identification, therefore, was Connery's, or had been agreed upon by Connery and Avery between them; suggestion of it had not come from the Santoines. And Connery had made the charge without being certain of it; he was watching the effect, Eaton now realized, to see if what he had accused was correct.
"What do you mean by that?" Eaton returned.
"What I said. You came to see Gabriel Warden in Seattle eleven days ago," Connery reasserted. "You are the man who waited in his house that night and whom every one has been looking for since!"
"Well?" inquired Eaton.
"Isn't that so?" Connery demanded. "Or do you want to deny that too and have it proved on you later?"
Again for a moment Eaton sat silent. "No," he decided, "I do not deny that."
"Then you are the man who was at Warden's the night he was murdered?"
"Yes," said Eaton, "I was there that evening. I was the one who came there by appointment and waited till after Mr. Warden was brought home dead."
"So you admit that?" Connery gloated; but he could not keep from Eaton a sense that, by Eaton's admission of the fact, Connery had been disappointed. Avery too plainly had expected Eaton to deny it; the identification of Eaton with the man who had waited at Warden's was less a triumph to Avery, now that it was confessed. Indeed, Eaton's heart leaped with quick gratitude as he now met Harriet Santoine's eyes and as he heard her turning it into a fact in his favor.
"All you have brought against Mr. Eaton is that he has been indefinite in his replies to your questions or has refused answers; isn't that all, Don?" she said. "So if Mr. Eaton is the one who had the appointment with Mr. Warden that night, does not that explain his silence?"
"Explain it?" Avery demanded. "How?"
"We have Mr. Warden's word that Mr. Eaton came that night because he was in trouble—he had been outrageously wronged, Don. He was in danger. Because of that danger, undoubtedly, he has not made himself known since. May not that be the only reason he has avoided answering your questions now?"
"No!" Avery jerked out shortly.
Eaton's heart, from pulsating fast with Harriet Santoine's attempt at his defense, now constricted with a sudden increase of his terror and anxiety.
"All right, Mr. Eaton!" Connery now returned to his charge. "You are that man. So besides whatever else that means, you'd been in Seattle eleven days and yet you were the last person to get aboard this train, which left a full hour after its usual starting time. Who were you waiting to see get on the train before you yourself took it?"
Eaton wet his lips. To what was Connery working up? The probability, now rapidly becoming certainty, that in addition to the recognition of him as the man who had waited at Warden's—which fact any one at any time might have charged—Connery knew something else which the conductor could not have been expected to know—this dismayed Eaton the more by its indefiniteness. And he saw, as his gaze shifted to Avery, that Avery knew this thing also. All that had gone before had been only preliminary, then; they had been leading up step by step to the circumstance which had finally condemned him in their eyes and was to condemn him in the eyes of Harriet Santoine.
She, he saw, had also sensed the feeling that something else more definite and conclusive was coming. She had paled after the flush in which she had spoken in Eaton's defense, and her hands in her lap were clenched so tightly that the knuckles showed only as spots of white.
Eaton controlled himself to keep his voice steady.
"What do you mean by that question?" he asked.
"I mean that—however innocent or guilty may be the chance of your being at Mr. Warden's the night he was killed—you'll have a hard time proving that you did not wait and watch and take this train because Basil Santoine had taken it; and that you were not following him. Do you deny it?"
Eaton was silent.
"You asked the Pullman conductor for a Section Three after hearing him assign Mr. Santoine to Section Three in this car. Do you deny that you did this so as not to be put in the same car with him?"
Eaton, in his uncertainty, still said nothing. Connery, bringing the paper in his hand nearer to the window again, glanced down once more at the statement Eaton had made. "I asked you who you knew in Chicago," he said, "and you answered 'No one.' That was your reply, was it not?"
"Yes."
"You still make the same statement?"
"Yes."
"You know no one in Chicago?"
"No one," Eaton repeated.
"And certainly no one there knows you well enough to follow your movements in relation to Mr. Santoine. That's a necessary assumption from the fact that you know no one at all there."
The conductor pulled a telegram from his pocket and handed it to Avery, who, evidently having already seen it, passed it on to Harriet Santoine. She took it, staring at it mechanically and vacantly; then suddenly she shivered, and the yellow paper which she had read slipped from her hand and fluttered to the floor. Connery stooped and picked it up and handed it toward Eaton.
"This is yours," he said.
Eaton had sensed already what the nature of the message must be, though as the conductor held it out to him he could read only his name at the top of the sheet and did not know yet what the actual wording was below. Acceptance of it must mean arrest, indictment for the crime against Basil Santoine; and that, whether or not he later was acquitted, must destroy him; but denial of the message now would be hopeless.
"It is yours, isn't it?" Connery urged.
"Yes; it's mine," Eaton admitted; and to make his acceptance definite, he took the paper from Connery. As he looked dully down at it, he read:
He is on your train under the name of Dorne.
The message was not signed.
Connery touched him on the shoulder. "Come with me, Mr. Eaton."
Eaton got up slowly and mechanically and followed the conductor. At the door he halted and looked back; Harriet Santoine was not looking; her face was covered with her hands; Eaton hesitated; then he went on. Connery threw open the door of the compartment next to the washroom and corresponding to the drawing-room at the other end of the car, but smaller.
"You'll do well enough in here." He looked over Eaton deliberately. "Judging from your manner, I suppose there's not much use expecting you to answer anything more about yourself—either in relation to the Warden murder or this?"
"No," said Eaton, "there is not."
"You prefer to make us find out anything more?"
Eaton made no answer.
"All right," Connery concluded. "But if you change your mind for the better, or if you want anything bad enough to send for me, ring for the porter and he'll get me."
He closed the door upon Eaton and locked it. As Eaton stood staring at the floor, he could hear through the metal partition of the washroom the nervous, almost hysterical weeping of an overstrained girl. The thing was done; in so far as the authorities on the train were concerned, it was known that he was the man who had had the appointment with Gabriel Warden and had disappeared; and in so far as the train officials could act, he was accused and confined for the attack upon Basil Santoine. But besides being overwhelmed with the horror of this position, the manner in which he had been accused had roused him to helpless anger, to rage at his accusers which still increased as he heard the sounds on the other side of the partition where Avery was now trying to silence Harriet Santoine and lead her away.
Why had Avery gone at his accusation of him in that way? Connery had had the telegram in his pocket from the start of the questioning in the washroom; Avery had seen and read it; they could have condemned him with whomever they wished, merely by showing it. Why, then, had Avery chosen to drag this girl—strained and upset already by the attack upon her father and with long hours of nursing ahead of her before expert help could be got—step by step through their accusation of him? Eaton saw that—whatever Harriet Santoine's casual interest in himself might be—this showed at least that Avery's relation to her was not so completely accepted by her and so definite as appeared on the surface, since Avery thought it necessary to convince her rather than merely tell her. And what sent the blood hot and throbbing into Eaton's temples was the cruelty of Avery's action.
So Avery was that kind of a man! The kind that, when an end is to be attained, is ready to ignore as though unimportant the human side of things. Concurrently with these thoughts—as always with all his thoughts—was running the memory of his own experience—that experience of which Eaton had not spoken and of which he had avoided speaking at any cost; and as he questioned now whether Avery might be one of those men who to gain an end they deem necessary are ready to disregard humanity,—to inflict suffering, wrong, injustice,—he realized that he was beginning to hate Avery for himself, for what he was, aside from the accusation he brought.
No sounds came to him now from the washroom—the girl must have controlled herself; footsteps passing the door of his compartment told him then that the two had gone out into the open car.