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

Gabriel Warden; because Warden had tried to help him—in some way and for some reason which she did not know—Warden had been killed. And feeling that in helping him there might be danger to herself, she suddenly and eagerly welcomed that danger, and made her decision. "You'll promise, Mr. Eaton, not to try to—leave?"

"Yes."

"Let us go out," she said.

She led the way downstairs and, in the hall, picked up a cape; he threw it over her shoulders and brought his overcoat and cap. But in his absorption he forgot to put them on until, as they went out into the garden together, she reminded him; then he put on the cap. The night was clear and cool, and no one but themselves seemed to be about the house.

"Which way do you want to go?" she asked.

He turned toward the forested acres of the grounds which ran down to a ravine at the bottom of which a little stream trickled toward the lake. As they approached the side of this ravine, a man appeared and investigated them. He recognized the girl's figure and halted.

"It's all right, Willis," she said quietly.

"Yes, ma'am."

They passed the man and went down the path into the ravine and up the tiny valley. Eaton halted.

"Your man's just above there?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"He'll stay there?"

"Yes; or close by."

"Then you don't mind waiting here a few moments for me?"

"No," she said. "You will return here?"

"Yes," he said; and with that permission, he left her.

Both had spoken so that the man above could not have heard; and Harriet now noticed that, as her companion hurried ahead, he went almost noiselessly. As he disappeared, the impulse to call him back almost controlled her; then she started to follow him; but she did not. She stood still, shivering a little now in the cold; and as she listened, she no longer heard his footsteps. What she had done was done; then just as she was telling herself that it must be many moments before she would know whether he was coming back, she heard him returning; at some little distance, he spoke her name so as not to frighten her. She knew at once it was he, but a change in the tone surprised her. She stepped forward to meet him.

"You found your friend?"

"Yes."

"What did he tell you?" Her hand caught his sleeve in an impulse of concern, but she tried to make it seem as though she grasped him to guide her through the trees of the ravine. "I mean what is wrong that you did not expect?"

She heard his breath come fast.

"Nothing," he denied.

"No; you must tell me!" Her hand was still on his arm.

"I cannot."

"Why can you not?"

"Why?"

"Can't you trust me?"

"Trust you!" he cried. He turned to her and seized her hands. "You ask me to—trust you!"

"Yes; I've trusted you. Can't you believe as much in me?"

"Believe in you, Miss Santoine!" He crushed her fingers in his grasp. "Oh, my God, I wish I could!"

"You wish you could?" she echoed. The tone of it struck her like a blow, and she tore her hands away. "What do you mean by that?"

He made no reply but stood staring at her through the dark. "We must go back," he said queerly. "You're cold."

She did not answer but started back up the path to the house. He seemed to have caught himself together against some impulse that stirred him strongly. "The man out there who saw us? He will report to your father, Miss Santoine?" he asked unsteadily.

"Reports for Father are first made to me."

"I see." He did not ask her what she was going to do; if he was assuming that her permission to exceed his set limits bound her not to report to her father, she did not accept that assumption, though she would not report to the blind man to-night, for she knew he must now be asleep. But she felt that Eaton was no longer thinking of this. As they entered the house and he helped her lay off her cape, he suddenly faced her.

"We are in a strange relation to each other, Miss Santoine—stranger than you know," he said unevenly.

She waited for him to go on.

"We have talked sometimes of the likeness of the everyday life to war," he continued. "In war men and women sometimes do or countenance things they know to be evil because they believe that by means of them there is accomplished some greater good; in peace, in life, men—and women—sometimes do the same. When the time comes that you comprehend what our actual relation is, I—I want you to know that I understand that whatever you have done was done because you believed it might bring about the greater good. I—I have seen in you—in your father—only kindness, high honor, sympathy. If I did not know—"

She started, gazing at him; what he said had absolutely no meaning for her. "What is it that you know?" she demanded.

He did not reply; his hand went out to hers, seized it, crushed it, and he started away. As he went up the stair—still, in his absorption, carrying cap and overcoat—she stood staring after him in perplexity.

CHAPTER XVII THE FIGHT IN THE STUDY

Eaton dismissed the man who had been waiting in his rooms for him; he locked the door and carefully drew down all the window-shades. Then he put his overcoat, folded as he had been carrying it under his arm, on the writing table in the center of the room, and from its folds and pockets took a "breast-drill" such as iron workers use in drilling steel, an automatic pistol with three clips of cartridges, an electric flashlight and a little bottle of nitroglycerine. He loaded the pistol and put it in his pocket; then he carefully inspected the other things.

The room he was in, the largest of his suite, resembled Santoine's study on the floor below in the arrangement of its windows, though it was smaller than the study. The writing-desk in its center occupied much the position of Santoine's large desk; he moved it slightly to make the relative positions coincide. The couch against the end wall represented the position of the study's double doors. Eaton switched out the lights, and starting at the windows, he crossed the room in the darkness, avoiding the desk, and stopping a few feet to the right of the couch; here he flashed his light upon the wall at the height of the little wall-safe to the right of the doors in the study below. A dozen times he did this, passing from the windows to the position of the wall-safe and only momentarily flashing his light.

He assured himself thus of being able to pass in the dark from the windows of Santoine's study to the wall-safe. As the study was larger than this room, he computed that he must add two steps to what he took here in each direction. He paid no attention to the position of the safe to the left of the doors, for he had kept watch of the vase on the table in the lower hall, and the only sign he had found there had told him that what he wanted was in the safe to the right.

He raised a shade and window, then, and sat in the dark. The night was cloudy and very dark; and the lake was smooth with barely a ripple. Near at hand a steamer passed, blazing with lights, and further out he saw the mast-head light of some other steamer. The lake was still ice-locked at its northern end, and so the farther of these steamers, he knew, was bound to some southern Michigan port; the nearer was one of the Chicago-Milwaukee boats. For some moments after it had passed, the waves of its wake washed in and sounded on the shore at the foot of the bluff. Next Eaton made out the hum of a motor-car approaching the house. It was Avery, who evidently had been out and was now returning; the chauffeur spoke the name in his reply to some question as the car swung away to the garage. Eaton still sat in the dark. By degrees all noises ceased in the house, even in the servants' quarters. Twice Eaton leaned forward looking out of the window and found all quiet; but both times he settled back in his chair and waited.

The wash of waves, as from a passing boat, sounded again on the shore. Eaton leaned nearer the window and stared out. There was no light in sight showing any boat; but the waves on the shore were distinct; indeed, they had been more distinct than those from the steamer. They must have been made by a large vessel or from a small ship close in and moving fast. The waves came in first on the north and swept south; Eaton strained his eyes and now saw a vague blur off to the south and within half a mile of shore—a boat without lights. If it had passed at high speed, it had stopped now. He watched this for some time; but he could make out no more, and soon he could not be sure even that the blur was there.

He gazed at the south wing of the house; it was absolutely dark and quiet; the windows of the first floor were closed and the curtains drawn; but to-night there was no light in the room. The windows of the room on the second floor were open; Basil Santoine was undoubtedly asleep. Eaton gazed again at the lower room. Then in the dark he moved to the table where he had left his overcoat, and distributed in his pockets and within his clothing the articles he had brought; and now he felt again in the overcoat and brought out a short, strong bar of steel curved and flattened at one end—a "jimmy" for forcing the windows.

Eaton slipped off his shoes and went to his room door; he opened the door and found the hall dark and quiet. He stepped out, closing his door carefully behind him, and with great caution he descended the stairs. Below, all was quiet; the red embers and glowing charcoal of wood fires which had blazed on the hearths gave the only light. Eaton crept to the doors of the blind man's study and softly tried them. They were, as he had expected, locked. He went to a window in the drawing-room which was set in a recess and so placed that it was not visible from other windows in the house. He opened this window and let himself down upon the lawn.

There he stood still for a moment, listening. There was no alarm of any sort. He crept along beside the house till he came to the first windows of the south wing. He tried these carefully and then went on. He gained the south corner of the wing, unobserved or at least without sign that he had been seen, and went on around it.

He stopped at the first high French window on the south. It was partly hidden from view from south and west by a column of the portico, and was the one he had selected for his operations; as he tried to slip his jimmy under the bottom of the sash, the window, to his amazement, opened silently upon its hinges; it had not been locked. The heavy curtains within hung just in front of him; he put out his hand and parted them. Then he started back in astonishment and crouched close to the ground; inside the room was a man moving about, flashing an electric torch before him and then exploring an instant in darkness and flashing his torch again.

The unexpectedness of this sight took for an instant Eaton's breath and power of moving; he had not been at all prepared for this; now he knew suddenly that he ought to have been prepared for it. If the