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

leave me alone for a few moments?" he directed.

He listened till he heard the door close behind the nurse; then he seized the private 'phone beside his bed and called his broker. Instinctively, in his uncertainty, Santoine had turned to that barometer which reflects day by day, even from hour to hour, the most obscure events and the most secret knowledge.

"How is the market?" he inquired.

There was something approaching to a panic on the stock-exchange, it appeared. Some movement, arising from causes not yet clear, had dropped the bottom out of a score of important stocks. The broker was only able to relate that about an hour after the opening of the exchange, selling had developed in certain issues and prices were going down in complete lack of support.

"How is Pacific Midlands?" Santoine asked.

"It led the decline."

Santoine felt the blood in his temples. "M. and N. Smelters?" he asked.

"Down seven points."

"S. F. and D.?"

"Eight points off."

Santoine's hand, holding the telephone, shook in its agitation; his head was hot from the blood rushing through it, his body was chilled. An idea so strange, so astounding, so incredible as it first had come to him that his feelings refused it though his reason told him it was the only possible condition which could account for all the facts, now was being made all but certain. He named stock after stock; all were down—seriously depressed or had been supported only by a desperate effort of their chief holders.

"A. L. & M. is down too," the broker volunteered.

"That is only sympathetic," Santoine replied.

He hung up. His hand, straining to control its agitation, reached for the bell; he rang; a servant came.

"Get me note-paper," Santoine commanded.

The servant went out and returned with paper. The nurse had followed him in; she turned the leaf of the bed-table for Santoine to write. The blind man could write as well as any other by following the position of the lines with the fingers of his left hand. He wrote a short note swiftly now, folded, sealed and addressed it and handed it to the servant.

"Have that delivered by a messenger at once," he directed. "There will be no written answer, I think; only something sent back—a photograph. See that it is brought to me at once."

He heard the servant's footsteps going rapidly away. He was shaking with anger, horror, resentment; he was almost—not quite—sure now of all that had taken place; of why Warden had been murdered, of what vague shape had moved behind and guided all that had happened since. He recalled Eaton's voice as he had heard it first on the train at Seattle; and now he was almost sure—not quite—that he could place that voice, that he knew where he had heard it before.

He lay with clenched hands, shaking with rage; then by effort of his will he put these thoughts away. The nurse reminded him again of his need for food.

"I want nothing now," he said. "Have it ready when I wake up. When the doctor comes, tell him I am going to get up to-day and dress."

He turned and stretched himself upon his bed; so, finally, he slept.

CHAPTER XXII THE MAN HUNT

The rolling, ravine-gullied land where Harriet had left Eaton was wooded thickly with oaks, maples and ash; the ground between these trees was clear of undergrowth upon the higher parts of the land, but its lower stretches and the ravines themselves were shrouded with closely growing bushes rising higher than a man's waist, and, where they grew rankest, higher than a man's head. In summer, when trees and bushes were covered with leaves, this underbrush offered cover where a man could conceal himself perfectly; now, in the early spring before the trees had even budded, that man would be visible for some distance by day and nearly as clearly visible by night if the headlights of the motor-cars chanced to shine into the woods.

Eaton, fully realizing this chance as he left Harriet, had plunged through the bushes to conceal himself in the ravine. The glare from the burning bridge lighted the ravine for only a little way; Eaton had gained the bottom of the ravine beyond the point where this light would have made him visible and had made the best speed he could along it away from the lights and voices on the road. This speed was not very great; his stockinged feet sank to their ankles in the soft mud of the ravine; and when, realizing that he was leaving a trace easily followed even by lantern-light, he clambered to the steep side and tried to travel along its slope, he found his progress slower still. In the darkness he crashed sometimes full against the tree-trunks; bushes which he could not see seized and held him, ripping and tearing at his clothes; invisible, fallen saplings tripped him, and he stepped into unseen holes which threw him headlong, so that twice he rolled clear to the bottom of the ravine with fierce, hot pains which nearly deprived him of his senses shooting through his wounded shoulder.

When he had made, as he thought, fully three quarters of a mile in this way and must be, allowing for the winding of the ravine, at least half a mile from his pursuers, he climbed to the brink of the bank and looked back. He was not, as he had thought, half a mile from the road; he was not a quarter of a mile; he could still see plainly the lights of the three motor-cars upon the road and men moving in the flare of these lights. He was certain that he had recognized the figure of Avery among these men. Pursuit of him, however, appeared to have been checked for the moment; he heard neither voices nor any movement in the woods. Eaton, panting, threw himself down to recover breath and strength to think.

There was no question in Eaton's mind what his fate would be if he surrendered to, or was captured by, his pursuers. What he had seen in Santoine's study an hour before was so unbelievable, so completely undemonstrable unless he himself could prove his story that he felt that he would receive no credence. Blatchford, who had seen it in the light in the study, was dead; Santoine, who would have seen it if he had had eyes, was blind. Eaton, still almost stunned and yet wildly excited by that sight, felt only, in the mad confusion of his senses, the futility of telling what he had seen unless he were in a position to prove it. Those opposed to him would put his statement aside with the mere answer that he was lying; the most charitably inclined would think only that what he had been through had driven him insane.

Besides, Eaton was not at all sure that even if he had attempted to tell what he had seen he would be allowed to tell it, or, if he attempted to surrender to the men now pursuing him, he would be allowed to surrender. Donald Avery was clearly in command of those men and was directing the pursuit; in Avery, Eaton had recognized an instinctive enemy from the first; and now, since the polo game, he sensed vaguely in Avery something more than that. What Avery's exact position was in regard to himself Eaton was not at all sure; but of Avery's active hostility he had received full evidence; and he knew now—though how he knew it was not plain even to himself—that Avery would not allow him to surrender but that, if he tried to give himself up, the men under Avery's orders would shoot him down.

As Eaton watched, the motor, which from its position on the road he knew must be Harriet's, backed out from the others and went away. The other motors immediately afterward were turned and followed it. But Eaton could see that they left behind them a man standing armed near to the bridge, and that other men, also armed, passed through the light as they scrambled across the ravine and gained the road on its opposite side. The motors, too, stopped at intervals and then went on; he understood that they were posting men to watch the road. He traced the motor headlights a long way through the dark; one stopped, the other went on. He remembered vaguely a house near the place where the car he watched had stopped, and understanding that where there was a house there was a telephone, he knew that the alarm must be given still more widely now; men on all sides of him must be turning out to watch the roads. He knew they did turn out like that when the occasion demanded.

These waste places bordering upon the lake to north and south of Chicago, and within easy car-ride of the great city, had been the scene of many such man-hunts. Hobos, gypsies, broken men thrown off by the seething city, wandered through them and camped there; startling crimes took place sometimes in these tiny wildernesses; fugitives from the city police took refuge there and were hunted down by the local police, by armed details of the city police, by soldiers from Fort Sheridan. These fugitives might much better have stayed in the concealment of the human jungle of the city; these rolling, wooded, sandy vacant lands which seemed to offer refuge, in reality betrayed only into certain capture. The local police had learned the method of hunting, they had learned to watch the roads and railways to prevent escape.

Eaton understood, therefore, that his own possibility of escape was very small, even if escape had been his only object; but Eaton's problem was not one of escape—it was to find those he pursued and make certain that they were captured at the same time he was; and, as he crouched panting on the damp earth, he was thinking only of that.

The man at the bridge—Dibley—had told enough to let Eaton know that those whom Eaton pursued were no longer in the machine he had followed with Harriet. As Eaton had rushed out of Santoine's study after the two that he had fought there, he had seen that one of these men was supporting and helping the other; he had gained on them because of that. Then other men had appeared suddenly, to give their help, and he had no longer been able to gain; but he had been close enough to see that the one they dragged along and helped into the car was that enemy whose presence in the study had so amazed him. Mad exultation had seized Eaton to know that he had seriously wounded his adversary. He knew now that the man could not have got out of the car by himself—he was too badly wounded for that; he had been taken out of the car, and the other men who were missing had him in charge. The three men who had gone on in the machine had done so for their own escape, but with the added object of misleading the pursuit; the water they had got at Dibley's had been to wash the blood from the car.

And now, as Eaton recalled and realized all this, he knew where the others had left the machine. Vaguely, during the pursuit, he had sensed that Harriet was swinging their motor-car in a great circle, first to the north, then west, then to the south. Two or three miles back upon the road, before they had made their turn to the south, Eaton had lost for a few moments the track of the car they had been following. He had picked it up again at once and before he could speak of it to Harriet; but now he knew that at that point the car they were following had left the road, turning off onto the turf at the side and coming back onto the road a hundred yards beyond.

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