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

was running the car now at very high speed; the tiny electric light above the speedometer showed they were running at forty-five miles an hour and the strip was still turning to higher figures.

Suddenly he caught her arm. The road had forked, and he pointed to the left; she swung the car that way, again seeing as they made the turn, the tire-tracks they were following. She was not able now to watch these tracks; she could watch only the road and car; but she was aware that the way they were following had led them into and out of private grounds. Plainly the men they were following knew the neighborhood well and had chosen this road in advance as avoiding the more public roads which might be watched. She noted they were turning always to the left; now she understood that they were making a great circle to west and north and returning toward, but well west of, her father's house; thus she knew that those they were following had made this circuit to confuse pursuit and that their objective was the great city to the south.

They were racing now over a little used road which bisected a forested section still held as acreage; old, rickety wooden bridges spanned the ravines. One of these appeared in the radiance of the headlight a hundred yards ahead; the next instant the car was dashing upon it. Harriet could feel the shake and tremble of the loosely nailed boards as the driving wheels struck; there was a crash as some strut, below, gave way; the old bridge bent but recoiled; the car bounded across it, the rear wheels skidding in the moist earth as they swung off the boards.

Harriet felt Eaton grab her arm.

"You mustn't do that again!"

"Why?"

"You mustn't do that again!" he repeated the order; it was too obvious to tell her it was not safe.

She laughed. Less than five minutes before, as she stood outside the room where her father's cousin had just been murdered, it had seemed she could never laugh again. The car raced up a little hill and now again was descending; the headlights showed another bridge over a ravine.

"Slow! Stop!" her companion commanded.

She paid no attention and raced the car on; he put his hand on the wheel and with his foot tried to push hers from the accelerator; but she fought him; the car swayed and all but ran away as they approached the bridge. "Give it to me!" she screamed to him and wrenched the car about. It was upon the bridge and across it; as they skidded upon the mud of the road again, they could hear the bridge cracking behind.

"Harriet!" he pleaded with her.

She steered the car on, recklessly, her heart thumping with more than the thrill of the chase. "They're the men who tried to kill you, aren't they?" she rejoined. The speed at which they were going did not permit her to look about; she had to keep her eyes on the road at that moment when she knew within herself and was telling the man beside her that she from that moment must be at one with him. For already she had said it; as she risked herself in the pursuit, she thought of the men they were after not chiefly as those who had killed her cousin but as those who had threatened Eaton. "What do I care what happens to me, if we catch them?" she cried.

"Harriet!" he repeated her name again.

"Philip!"

She felt him shrink and change as she called the name. It had been clear to her, of course, that, since she had known him, the name he had been using was not his own. Often she had wondered what his name was; now she had to know. "What should I call you?" she demanded of him.

"My name," he said, "is Hugh."

"Hugh!" she called it.

"Yes."

"Hugh—" She waited for the rest; but he told no more. "Hugh!" she whispered to herself again his name now. "Hugh!"

Her eyes, which had watched the road for the guiding of the car, had followed his gesture from time to time pointing out the tracks made by the machine they were pursuing. These tracks still ran on ahead; as she gazed down the road, a red glow beyond the bare trees was lighting the sky. A glance at Hugh told that he also had seen it.

"A fire?" she referred to him.

"Looks like it."

They said no more as they rushed on; but the red glow was spreading, and yellow flames soon were in sight shooting higher and higher; these were clouded off for an instant only to appear flaring higher again, and the breeze brought the smell of seasoned wood burning.

"It's right across the road!" Hugh announced as they neared it.

"It's the bridge over the next ravine," Harriet said. Her foot already was bearing upon the brake, and the power was shut off; the car coasted on slowly. For both could see now that the wooden span was blazing from end to end; it was old wood, swift to burn and going like tinder. There was no possible chance for the car to cross it. The girl brought the machine to a stop fifty feet from the edge of the ravine; the fire was so hot that the gasoline tank would not be safe nearer. She gazed down at the tire-marks on the road.

"They crossed with their machine," she said to Hugh.

"And fired the bridge behind. They must have poured gasoline over it and lighted it at both ends."

She sat with one hand still straining at the driving wheel, the other playing with the gear lever.

"There's no other way across that ravine, I suppose," Hugh questioned her.

"The other road's back more than a mile, and two miles about." She threw in the reverse and started to turn. Hugh shook his head. "That's no use."

"No," she agreed, and stopped the car again. Hugh stepped down on the ground. A man appeared on the other side of the ravine. He stood and stared at the burning span and, seeing the machine on the other side, he scrambled down the slope of the ravine. Eaton met him as he came up to the road again. The man was one of the artisans—a carpenter or jack-of-all-work—who had little cottages, with patches for garden, through the undivided acreage beyond the big estates. He had hastily and only partly dressed; he stared at Eaton's hurt with astonishment which increased as he gazed at the girl in the driving seat of the car. He did not recognize her except as one of the class to whom he owed employment; he pulled off his cap and stared back to Eaton with wonder.

"What's happened, sir? What's the matter?"

Eaton did not answer, but Harriet now recognized the man. "Mr. Blatchford was shot to-night at Father's house, Dibley," she said.

"Miss Santoine!" Dibley cried.

"We think the men went this way," she continued.

"Did you see any one pass?" Eaton challenged the man.

"In a motor, sir?"

"Yes; down this road in a motor."

"Yes, sir."

"When?"

"Just now, sir."

"Just now?"

"Not five minutes ago. Just before I saw the bridge on fire here."

"How was that?"

"I live there just beyond, near the road. I heard my pump going."

"Your pump?"

"Yes, sir. I've a pump in my front yard. There's no water piped through here, sir."

"Of course. Go on, Dibley."

"I looked out and saw a machine stopped out in the road. One man was pumping water into a bucket for another."

"Then what did you do?"

"Nothing, sir. I just watched them. Motor people often stop at my pump for water."

"I see. Go on."

"That's all about them, sir. I thought nothing about it—they wouldn't wake me to ask for water; they'd just take it. Then I saw the fire over there—"

"No; go back," Eaton interrupted. "First, how many men were there in the car?"

"How many? Three, sir."

Eaton started. "Only three; you're sure?"

"Yes, sir; I could see them plain. There was the two at the pump; one more stayed in the car."

Eaton seized the man in his intentness. "You're sure there weren't any more, Dibley? Think; be sure! There weren't three more or even one more person hidden in the tonneau of the car?"

"The tonneau, sir?"

"The back seats, I mean."

"No, sir; I could see into the car. It was almost right below me, sir. My house has a room above; that's where I was sleeping."

"Then did you watch the men with the water?"

"Watch them, sir?"

"What they did with it; you're sure they didn't take it to the rear seat to give it to some one there. You see, we think one of the men was hurt," Eaton explained.

"No, sir. I'd noticed if they did that."

"Then did they put it into the radiator—here in front where motorists use water?"

Dibley stared. "No, sir; I didn't think of it then, but they didn't. They didn't put it into the car. They took it in their bucket with them. It was one of those folding buckets motor people have."

Eaton gazed at the man. "Only three, you are sure!" he repeated. "And none of them seemed to be hurt!"

"No, sir."

"Then they went off in the other direction from the bridge?"

"Yes, sir. I didn't notice the bridge burning till after they went. So I came down here."

Eaton let the man go. Dibley looked again at the girl and moved away a little. She turned to Eaton.

"What does that mean?" she called to him. "How many should there have been in the machine? What did they want with the water?"

"Six!" Eaton told her. "There should have been six in the machine, and one, at least, badly hurt!"

Dibley stood dully apart, staring at one and then at the other and next to the flaming bridge. He looked down the road. "There's another car coming," he announced. "Two cars!"

The double glare from the headlights of a motor shone through the tree-trunks as the car topped and came swiftly down a rise three quarters of a mile away and around the last turn back on the road; another pair of blinding lights followed. There was no doubt that this must be the pursuit from Santoine's house. Eaton stood beside Harriet, who had stayed in the driving-seat of the car.

"You know Dibley well, Harriet?" he asked.

"He's worked on our place. He's dependable," she answered.

Eaton put his hand over hers which still clung to the driving wheel. "I'm going just beside the road here," he said to her, quietly. "I'm armed, of course. If those are your people, you'd better go back with them. I'm sure they are; but I'll wait and see."

She caught at his hand. "No; no!" she cried. "You must get as far away as you can before they come! I'm going back to meet and hold them." She threw the car into the reverse, backed and turned it and brought it again onto the road. He came beside her again, putting out his hand; she seized it. Her hands for an instant clung to it, his to hers.

"You must go—quick!" she urged; "but how am I to know what becomes of you—where you are? Shall I hear from you—shall I ever see you?"

"No news will be good news," he said, "until—"

"Until what?"

"Until—" And again that unknown something which a thousand times—it seemed to her—had checked his word and action toward her made him pause; but nothing could completely bar them from one another now. "Until they catch and destroy me, or—until I come to you as—as you have never known me yet!"

An instant more she clung to him. The double headlights flared into sight again upon the road, much nearer now and coming fast. She released him; he plunged into the bushes beside the road, and the damp, bare twigs lashed against one another at his passage; then she shot her car forward. But she had made only a few hundred yards when the first of the two cars met her. It turned to its right to pass, she turned the same way; the approaching car