The Blind Man's Eyes - William MacHarg (best books to read now txt) 📗

pleaded.

"What is it you want, Don?" she asked.

"Only to see you, dea—Harry." He took her hand again; she resisted and withdrew it. "I can't do any more work to-night, Harry. I find the correspondence I expected to go over this evening isn't here; your father has it, I suppose."

"No; I have it, Don."

"You?"

"Yes; Father didn't want you bothered by that work just now. Didn't he tell you?"

"He told me that, of course, Harry, and that he had asked you to relieve me as much as you could; he didn't say he had told you to take charge of the papers. Did he do that?"

"I thought that was implied. If you need them, I'll get them for you, Don. Do you want them?"

She got up and went toward the safe where she had put them; suddenly she stopped. What it was that she had felt under his tone and manner, she could not tell; it was probably only irritation at having important work taken out of his hands. But whatever it was, he was not openly expressing it—he was even being careful that it should not be expressed. And now suddenly, as he followed and came close behind her and her mind went swiftly to her father lying helpless upstairs, and her father's trust in her, she halted.

"We must ask Father first," she said.

"Ask him!" he ejaculated. "Why?"

She faced him uncertainly, not answering.

"That's rather ridiculous, Harry, especially as it is too late to ask him to-night." His voice was suddenly rough in his irritation. "I have had charge of those very things for years; they concern the matters in which your father particularly confides in me. It is impossible that he meant you to take them out of my hands like this. He must have meant only that you were to give me what help you could with them!"

She could not refute what he said; still, she hesitated.

"When did you find out those matters weren't in your safe, Don?" she asked.

"Just now."

"Didn't you find out this afternoon—before dinner?"

"That's what I said—just now this afternoon, when I came back to the house before dinner, as you say." Suddenly he seized both her hands, drawing her to him and holding her in front of him. "Harry, don't you see that you are putting me in a false position—wronging me? You are acting as though you did not trust me!"

She drew away her hands. "I do trust you, Don; at least I have no reason to distrust you. I only say we must ask Father."

"They're in your little safe?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"And you'll not give them to me?"

"No."

He stared angrily; then he shrugged and laughed and went back to his desk and began gathering up his scattered papers. She stood indecisively watching him. Suddenly he looked up, and she saw that he had quite conquered his irritation, or at least had concealed it; his concern now seemed to be only over his relations with herself.

"We've not quarreled, Harry?" he asked.

"Quarreled? Not at all, Don," she replied.

She moved toward the door; he followed and let her out, and she went back to her own rooms.

CHAPTER XVI SANTOINE'S "EYES" FAIL HIM

Eaton, coming down rather late the next morning, found the breakfast room empty. He chose his breakfast from the dishes on the sideboard, and while the servant set them before him and waited on him, he inquired after the members of the household. Miss Santoine, the servant said, had breakfasted some time before and was now with her father; Mr. Avery also had breakfasted; Mr. Blatchford was not yet down. As Eaton lingered over his breakfast, Miss Davis passed through the hall, accompanied by a maid. The maid admitted her into the study and closed the door; afterward, the maid remained in the hall busy with some morning duty, and her presence and that of the servant in the breakfast room made it impossible for Eaton to attempt to go to the study or to risk speaking to Miss Davis. A few minutes later, he heard Harriet Santoine descending the stairs; rising, he went out into the hall to meet her.

"I don't ask you to commit yourself for longer than to-day, Miss Santoine," he said, when they had exchanged greetings, "but—for to-day—what are the limits of my leash?"

"Mr. Avery is going to the country-club for lunch; I believe he intends to ask you if you care to go with him."

He started and looked at her in surprise. "That's rather longer extension of the leash than I expected," he replied.

He stood an instant thoughtful. Did the invitation imply merely that he was to have greater freedom now?

"Do you wish me to go?" he asked.

Her glance wavered and did not meet his. "You may go if you please."

"And if I do not?"

"Mr. Blatchford will lunch with you here."

"And you?"

"Yes, I shall lunch here too, probably. This morning I am going to be busy with Miss Davis on some work for my father; what I do depends on how I get along with that."

"Thank you," Eaton acknowledged.

She turned away and went into the study, closing the door behind her. Eaton, although he had finished his breakfast, went back into the breakfast room. He did not know whether he would refuse or accept Avery's invitation; suddenly he decided. After waiting for some five minutes there over a second cup of coffee, he got up and crossed to the study door and knocked. The door was opened by Miss Davis; looking past her, he could see Harriet Santoine seated at one of the desks.

"I beg pardon, Miss Santoine," he explained his interruption, "but you did not tell me what time Mr. Avery is likely to want me to be ready to go to the country club."

"About half-past twelve, I think."

"And what time shall we be coming back?"

"Probably about five."

He thanked her and withdrew. As Miss Davis stood holding open the door, he had not looked to her, and he did not look back now as she closed the door behind him; their eyes had not met; but he understood that she had comprehended him fully. To-day he would be away from the Santoine house, and away from the guards who watched him, for at least four hours, under no closer espionage than that of Avery; this offered opportunity—the first opportunity he had had—for communication between him and his friends outside the house.

He went to his room and made some slight changes in his dress; he came down then to the library, found a book and settled himself to read. Toward noon Avery looked in on him there and rather constrainedly proffered his invitation; Eaton accepted, and after Avery had gone to get ready, Eaton put away his book. Fifteen minutes later, hearing Avery's motor purring outside, Eaton went into the hall; a servant brought his coat and hat, and taking them, he went out to the motor. Avery appeared a moment later, with Harriet Santoine.

She stood looking after them as they spun down the curving drive and onto the pike outside the grounds; then she went back to the study. The digest Harriet had been working on that morning and the afternoon before was finished; Miss Davis, she found, was typewriting its last page. She dismissed Miss Davis for the day, and taking the typewritten sheets and some other papers her father had asked to have read to him, she went up to her father.

Basil Santoine was alone and awake; he was lying motionless, with the cord and electric button in his hand which served to start and stop the phonograph, with its recording cylinder, beside his bed. His mind, even in his present physical weakness, was always working, and he kept this apparatus beside him to record his directions as they occurred to him. As she entered the room, he pressed the button and started the phonograph, speaking into it; then, as he recognized his daughter's presence, the cylinder halted; he put down the cord and motioned her to seat herself beside the bed.

"What have you, Harriet?" he asked.

She sat down and glancing through the papers in her hand, gave him the subject of each; then at his direction she began to read them aloud. She read slowly, careful not to demand straining of his attention; and this slowness leaving her own mind free in part to follow other things, her thoughts followed Eaton and Avery. As she finished the third page, he interrupted her.

"Where is it you want to go, Harriet?"

"Go? Why, nowhere, Father!"

"Has Avery taken Eaton to the country-club as I ordered?"

"Yes."

"I shall want you to go out there later in the afternoon; I would trust your observation more than Avery's to determine whether Eaton has been used to such surroundings. They are probably at luncheon now; will you lunch with me here, dear?"

"I'll be very glad to, Father."

He reached for the house telephone and gave directions for the luncheon in his room.

"Go on until they bring it," he directed.

She read another page, then broke off suddenly.

"Has Donald asked you anything to-day, Father?"

"In regard to what?"

"I thought last night he seemed disturbed about my relieving him of part of his work."

"Disturbed? In what way?"

She hesitated, unable to define even to herself the impression Avery's manner had made on her. "I understood he was going to ask you to leave it still in his hands."

"He has not done so yet."

"Then probably I was mistaken."

She began to read again, and she continued now until the luncheon was served. At meal-time Basil Santoine made it a rule never to discuss topics relating to his occupation in working hours, and in his present weakness, the rule was rigidly enforced; father and daughter talked of gardening and the new developments in aviation. She read again for half an hour after luncheon, finishing the pages she had brought.

"Now you'd better go to the club," the blind man directed.

She put the reports and letters away in the safe in the room below, and going to her own apartments, she dressed carefully for the afternoon. The day was a warm, sunny, early spring day, with the ground fairly firm. She ordered her horse and trap, and leaving the groom, she drove to the country-club beyond the rise of ground back from the lake. Her pleasure in the drive and the day was diminished by her errand. It made her grow uncomfortable and flush warmly as she recollected that—if Eaton's secrecy regarding himself was accounted for by the unknown injury he had suffered—she was the one sent to "spy" upon him.

As she drove down the road, she passed the scene of the attempt by the men in the motor to run Eaton down. The indefiniteness of her knowledge by whom or why the attack had been made only made it seem more terrible to her. Unquestionably, he was in constant danger of its repetition, and especially when—as to-day—he was outside her father's grounds. Instinctively she hurried her horse. The great white club-house stood above the gentle slope of the valley to the west; beyond it, the golf-course was spotted by a few figures of men and girls out for early-season play. And further off and to one side of the course, she saw mounted men scurrying up and down the polo field in practice. A number of people were standing watching, and a few motors and traps were halted beside the barriers. Harriet stopped at the club-house only to make certain that Mr. Avery and his guest were not there; then she drove on to the polo field.

As she approached, she recognized Avery's lithe, alert figure on one of the ponies; with a deft, quick stroke he cleared the ball from before the feet of an opponent's pony, then he looked up and nodded to her. Harriet drove up and stopped beside the barrier; people hailed her from all sides, and for a moment the practice was stopped as the players trotted over to speak to her. Then play began again, and she had