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

twisted to the left, she swung hers to oppose it. The two cars did not strike; they stopped, radiator to radiator, with rear wheels locked. The second car drew up behind the first. The glare of her headlights showed her both were full of armed men. Their headlights, revealing her to them, hushed suddenly their angry ejaculations. She recognized Avery in the first car; he leaped out and ran up to her.

"Harriet! In God's name, what are you doing here?"

She sat unmoved in her seat, gazing at him. Men leaping from the cars, ran past her down the road toward the ravine and the burning bridge. She longed to look once more in the direction in which Eaton had disappeared, but she did not. Avery reached up and over the side of the car and caught her arm, repeating his demand for an explanation. She could see, turning in her seat, the men who had run past surrounding Dibley on the road and questioning him. Avery, gaining no satisfaction from her, let go her arm; his hand dropped to the back of the seat and he drew it up quickly.

"Harriet, there's blood here!"

She did not reply. He stared at her and seemed to comprehend.

He shouted to the men around Dibley and ran toward them. They called in answer to his shout, and she could see Dibley pointing out to them the way Eaton had gone. The men, scattering themselves at intervals along the edge of the wood and, under Avery's direction, posting others in each direction to watch the road, began to beat through the bushes after Eaton. She sat watching; she put her cold hands to her face; then, recalling how just now Eaton's hand had clung to hers, she pressed them to her lips. Avery came running back to her.

"You drove him out here, Harriet!" he charged. "Dibley says so."

"Him? Who?" she asked coolly.

"Eaton. Dibley did not know him, but describes him. It can have been no one else. He was hurt!" The triumph in the ejaculation made her recoil. "He was hurt and could not drive, and you drove him out"—his tone changed suddenly—"like this!"

For the first time since she had left the garage she was suddenly conscious that she was in her night-dress with only a robe and slippers. She drew the robe quickly about her, shrinking and staring at him. In all the miles she had driven that night with Eaton at her side, she never a moment had shrunk from her companion or thought how she was dressed. It was not the exaltation and excitement of what she was doing that had prevented her; it went deeper than that; it was the attitude of her companion toward her. But Avery had thought of it, and made her think of it, at once, even in the excitement under which he was laboring.

He left her again, running after the men into the woods. She sat in the car, listening to the sounds of the hunt. She could see, back of her, in the light of the burning bridge, one of the armed men standing to watch the road; ahead of her, but almost indistinguishable in the darkness, was another. The noise of the hunt had moved further into the woods; she had no immediate fear that they would find Eaton; her present anxiety was over his condition from his hurts and what might happen if he encountered those he had been pursuing. In that neighborhood, with its woods and bushes and ravines to furnish cover, the darkness made discovery of him by Avery and his men impossible if Eaton wished to hide himself. Avery appeared to have realized this; for now the voices in the woods ceased and the men began to straggle back toward the cars. A party was sent on foot across the ravine, evidently to guard the road beyond. The rest began to clamber into the cars. She backed her car away from the one in front of it and started home.

She had gone only a short distance when the cars again passed her, traveling at high speed. She began then to pass individual men left by those in the cars to watch the road. At the first large house she saw one of the cars again, standing empty. She passed it without stopping. A mile farther, a little group of men carrying guns stopped her, recognized her and let her pass. They had been called out, they told her, by Mr. Avery over the telephone to watch the roads for Eaton; they had Eaton's description; members of the local police were to take charge of them and direct them. She comprehended that Avery was surrounding the vacant acreage where Eaton had taken refuge to be certain that Eaton did not get away until daylight came and a search for him was possible.

Lights gleamed at her across the broad lawns of the houses near her father's great house as she approached it; at the sound of her car, people came to the windows and looked out. She understood that news of the murder at Basil Santoine's had aroused the neighbors and brought them from their beds.

As she left her motor on the drive beside the house—for to-night no one came from the garages to take it—the little clock upon its dash marked half past two.

CHAPTER XX WAITING

Harriet went into the house and toward her own rooms; a maid met and stopped her on the stairs.

"Mr. Santoine sent word that he wishes to see you as soon as you came in, Miss Santoine."

Harriet went on toward her father's room, without stopping at her own—wet with the drive through the damp night and shivering now with its chill. Her father's voice answered her knock with a summons to come in. As she obeyed, pushing the doors open, he dismissed the nurse; the girl, passing Harriet as she went out, returned Harriet's questioning look with a reassuring nod; Basil Santoine had endured the shock and excitement of the night better than could have been expected; he was quite himself.

As Harriet went toward the bed, her father's blind eyes turned toward her; he put out his hand and touched her, seeming startled to find her still in the robe she had worn an hour before and to feel that the robe was wet.

"Where have you been, Daughter?" he asked.

She hesitated, drawing the robe out of his hand. "I—I have been driving Mr. Eaton in a motor," she said.

"Helping him to escape?" A spasm crossed the blind man's face.

"He said not; he—he was following the men who shot Cousin Wallace."

The blind man lay for an instant still. "Tell me," he commanded finally.

She told him, beginning with her discovery of Eaton in the garage and ending with his leaving her and with Donald Avery's finding her in the motor; and now she held back one word only—his name which he had told her, Hugh. Her father listened intently; when she had finished, he made no move, no comment, no reproach. She had seated herself on the chair beside his bed; she looked away, then back to him.

"That is not all," she said; and she told him of her expedition with Eaton to the ravine before the attack in the house.

Again she waited.

"You and Mr. Eaton appear to have become rather well acquainted, Harriet," he said. "Has he told you nothing about himself which you have not told me? You have seen nothing concerning him, which you have not told?"

Her mind went quickly back to the polo game; she felt a flush, which his blind eyes could not see, dyeing her cheeks and forehead.

"No," she answered. She was aware that he did not accept the denial, that he knew she was concealing something.

"Nothing?" he asked again.

She put her hands to her face; then she drew them quickly away. "Nothing," she said steadily.

The blind man waited for a moment; he put out his hand and pressed the bell which called the steward. Neither spoke until the steward had come.

"Fairley," Santoine said then, quietly, "Miss Santoine and I have just agreed that for the present all reports regarding the pursuit of the men who entered the study last night are to be made direct to me, not through Miss Santoine or Mr. Avery."

"Very well, sir."

She still sat silent after the steward had gone; she thought for an instant her father had forgotten her presence; then he moved slightly.

"That is all, dear," he said quietly.

She got up and left him, and went to her own rooms; she did not pretend to herself that she could rest. She bathed and dressed and went downstairs. The library had windows facing to the west; she went in there and stood looking out. Somewhere to the west was Eaton, alone, wounded; she knew she need not think of him yet as actively hunted, only watched; with daylight the hunt would begin. Would he be able to avoid the watchers and escape before the actual hunt for him began?

She went out into the hall to the telephone. She could not get the use of the 'phone at once; the steward was posted there; the calls upon the 'phone were continual—from neighbors who, awakened to learn the news of Blatchford's death and the hunt for his murderer, called to offer what help they could, and from the newspapers, which somehow had been notified. The telephones in the bedrooms all were on this wire. There was a private telephone in the library; somehow she could not bring herself to enter that room, closed and to be left with everything in its disorder until the arrival of the police. The only other telephone was in her father's bedroom.

She took advantage of a momentary interruption in the calls to call up the local police station. Hearing her name, the man at the other end became deferential at once; he told her what was being done, confirming what she already knew; the roads were being watched and men had been posted at all near-by railway stations and at the stopping points of the interurban line to prevent Eaton from escaping that way. The man spoke only of Eaton; he showed the conviction—gathered, she felt sure, by telephone conversation with Donald Avery—that Eaton was the murderer.

"He ain't likely to get away, Miss Santoine," he assured her. "He's got no shoes, I understand, and he has one or maybe two shots through him."

She shrunk back and nearly dropped the 'phone at the vision which his words called up; yet there was nothing new to her in that vision—it was continually before her eyes; it was the only thing of which she could think.

"You'll call me as soon as you know anything more," she requested; "will you call me every hour?"

She hung up, on receiving assurance of this.

A servant brought a written paper. She took it before she recognized that it was not for her but for the steward. It was a short statement of the obvious physical circumstances of the murder, evidently dictated by her father and intended for the newspapers. She gave it to Fairley, who began reading it over the telephone to the newspapers. She wandered again to the west windows. She was not consciously listening to the telephone conversation in the hall; yet enough reached her to make her know that reporters were rushing from the city by train and automobile. The last city editions of the morning papers would have at least the fact of the murder; there would be later extras; the afternoon papers would have it all. There was a long list of relatives and friends to whom it was due that telegraphic announcement of Wallace Blatchford's death reach them before they read it as a sensation publicly printed. Recollection of these people at least gave her something to do.

She went up to her own room, listed the names and prepared the telegrams for them; she came down again and gave the telegrams to Fairley