The Blind Man's Eyes by William MacHarg (best books to read non fiction txt) 📕

Eaton received back his purse and bill-fold. He put them in his pocket without examining their contents. The porter appeared with his overcoat and hat. Eaton put them on and stepped out of the car. The conductor escorted him to a limousine car. "This is the gentleman," Connery said to the chauffeur to whom Harriet Santoine had spoken. The man opened the door of the limousine; another man, whom Eaton had not before seen, was seated in the car; Eaton stepped in. Connery extended his hand—"Good-by, sir."

"Good-by."

The motor-car drove down a wide, winding road with tall, spreading trees on both sides. Lights shone, at intervals, from windows of what must be large and handsome homes. The man in the car with Eaton, whose duty plainly was only that of a guard, did not speak to Eaton nor Eaton to him. The motor passed other limousines occasionally; then, though the road was still wide and smooth and still bounded by great trees, it was lonelier; no houses appeared for half a mile; then lights glowed directly ahead; the car ran under the porte-cochère of a great stone country mansion; a servant sprang to the door of the limousine and opened it; another man seized Eaton's hand-baggage from beside the chauffeur. Eaton entered a large, beamed and paneled hallway with an immense fireplace with logs burning in it; there was a wide stairway which the servant, who had appointed himself Eaton's guide, ascended. Eaton followed him and found another great hall upstairs. The servant led him to one of the doors opening off this and into a large room, fitted for a man's occupancy, with dark furniture, cases containing books on hunting, sports and adventure, and smoking things; off this was a dressing room with the bath next; beyond was a bedroom.

"These are to be your rooms, sir," the servant said. A valet appeared and unpacked Eaton's traveling bag.

"Anything else, sir?" The man, who had finished unpacking his clothes and laying them out, approached respectfully. "I've drawn your bath tepid, sir; is that correct?"

"Quite," Eaton said. "There's nothing else."

"Very good. Good night, sir. If there's anything else, the second button beside the bed will bring me, sir."

When the man had withdrawn noiselessly and closed the door, Eaton stood staring about the rooms dazedly; then he went over and tried the door. It opened; it was not locked. He turned about and went into the dressing room and began taking off his clothes; he stepped into the bathroom and felt the tepid bath. In a moment he was in the bath; fifteen minutes later he was in bed with the window open beside him, letting in the crisp, cool breeze. But he had not the slightest idea of sleep; he had undressed, bathed, and gone to bed to convince himself that what he was doing was real, that he was not acting in a dream.

He got up and went to the window and looked out, but the night was cloudy and dark, and he could see nothing except some lighted windows. As he watched, the light was switched out. Eaton went back to bed, but amazement would not let him sleep.

He was in Santoine's house; he knew it could be no other than Santoine's house. It was to get into Santoine's house that he had come from Asia; he had thought and planned and schemed all through the long voyage on the steamer how it was to be done. He would have been willing to cross the Continent on foot to accomplish it; no labor that he could imagine would have seemed too great to him if this had been its end; and here it had been done without effort on his part, naturally, inevitably! Chance and circumstance had done it! And as he realized this, his mind was full of what he had to do in Santoine's house. For many days he had not thought about that; it had seemed impossible that he could have any opportunity to act for himself. And the return to his thoughts of possibility of carrying out his original plan brought before him thoughts of his friends—those friends who, through his exile, had been faithful to him but whose identity or existence he had been obliged to deny, when questioned, to protect them as well as himself.

As he lay on his bed in the dark, he stared upward to the ceiling, wide awake, thinking of those friends whose devotion to him might be justified at last; and he went over again and tested and reviewed the plan he had formed. But it never had presumed a position for him—even if it was the position of a semi-prisoner—inside Santoine's house. And he required more information of the structure of the house than he as yet had, to correct his plan further. But he could not, without too great risk of losing everything, discover more that night; he turned over and set himself to go to sleep.

The first gray of dawn roused Eaton, and drawing on trousers and coat over his pajamas, he seated himself by the open window to see the house by daylight. The glow, growing in the east, showed him first that the house stood on the shore of the lake; the light came to him across water, and from the lake had come the crisp, fresh-smelling breeze that had blown into his windows through the night. As it grew lighter, he could see the house; it was an immense structure of smooth gray stone. Eaton was in its central part, his windows looking to the south. To the north of him was a wing he could not see—the wing which had contained the porte-cochère under which the motor-car had stopped the night before; and the upper part of this wing, he had been able to tell, contained the servants' quarters. To the south, in front of him, was another wing composed, apparently in part at least, of family bedrooms.

Between the house and the lake was a terrace, part flagged, part gravel, part lawn not yet green but with green shoots showing among the last year's grass. A stone parapet walled in this terrace along the top of the bluff which pitched precipitously down to the lake fifty feet below, and the narrow beach of sand and shingle. As Eaton watched, one of the two nurses who had been on the train came to a window of the farthest room on the second floor of the south wing and stood looking out; that, then, must be Santoine's room; and Eaton drew back from his window as he noted this.

The sun had risen, and its beams, reflected up from the lake, danced on his ceiling. Eaton, chilled by the sharp air off the water—and knowing now the locality where he must be—pulled off his coat and trousers and jumped back into bed. The motor driveway which stretches north from Chicago far into Wisconsin leaves between it and the lake a broad wooded strip for spacious grounds and dwellings; Santoine's house was one of these.

Eaton felt that its location was well suited for his plans; and he realized, too, that circumstances had given him time for anything he might wish to do; for the night's stop at Minneapolis and Santoine's unexpected taking him into his own charge must have made Eaton's disappearance complete; for the present he was lost to "them" who had been "following" him, and to his friends alike. His task, then, was to let his friends know where he was without letting "them" learn it; and thinking of how this was to be done, he fell asleep again.

At nine he awoke with a start; then, recollecting everything, he jumped up and shut his windows. There was a respectful, apologetic knock at the door; evidently a servant had been waiting in the hall for some sound within the room.

"May I come in, sir?"

"Come in."

The man who had attended him the evening before entered.

"Your bath, sir; hot or cold in the morning, sir?"

"Hot," Eaton answered.

"Of course, sir; I'd forgotten you'd just come from the Orient, sir. Do you wish anything first, sir?"

"Anything?"

"Anything to drink, sir."

"Oh, no."

The man again prepared the bath. When Eaton returned to his dressing-room, he found the servant awaiting him with shaving mug, razor and apron. The man shaved him and trimmed his hair.

"I shall tell them to bring breakfast up, sir; or will you go down?" the man asked then.

Eaton considered. The manners of servants are modeled on the feelings of their masters, and the man's deference told plainly that, although Eaton might be a prisoner, he was not to be treated openly as such.

"I think I can go down," Eaton replied, when the man had finished dressing him. He found the hall and the rooms below bright and open but unoccupied; a servant showed him to a blue Delft breakfast room to the east, where a fire was burning in an old-fashioned Dutch fireplace. A cloth was spread on the table, but no places were set; a number of covered dishes, steaming above electric discs, were on the sideboard. The servant in attendance there took covers off these dishes as Eaton approached; he chose his breakfast and sat down, the man laying one place for him. This manner of serving gave Eaton no hint as to how many others were in the house or might be expected to breakfast. He had half finished his bacon and greens before any one else appeared.

This was a tall, carefully dressed man of more than fifty, with handsome, well-bred features—plainly a man of position and wealth but without experience in affairs, and without power. He was dark haired and wore a mustache which, like his hair, was beginning to gray. As he appeared in the hall without hat or overcoat, Eaton understood that he lived in the house; he came directly into the breakfast room and evidently had not breakfasted. He observed Eaton and gave him the impersonal nod of a man meeting another whom he may have met but has forgotten.

"Good morning, Stiles," he greeted the servant.

"Good morning, sir," the man returned.

The newcomer sat down at the table opposite Eaton, and the servant, without inquiring his tastes, brought pineapple, rolls and coffee.

"I am Wallace Blatchford," the stranger volunteered as Eaton looked up. He gave the name in a manner which seemed to assume that he now must be recalled; Eaton therefore feigned recognition as he gave him his name in return.

"Basil Santoine is better this morning," Blatchford announced.

"I understood he was very comfortable last evening," Eaton said. "I have not seen either Miss Santoine or Mr. Avery this morning."

"I saw Basil Santoine the last thing last night," the other boasted. "He was very tired; but when he was home, of course he wished me to be beside him for a time."

"Of course," Eaton replied, as the other halted. There was a humility in the boast of this man's friendship for Santoine which stirred sympathy, almost pity.

"I believe with the doctors that Basil Santoine is to be spared," the tall man continued. "The nation is to be congratulated. He is certainly one of the most useful men in America. The President—much as he is to be admired for unusual qualities—cannot compare in service. Suppose the President were assassinated; instantly the Vice President would take his place; the visible government of the country would go on; there would be no chaos, scarcely any confusion. But suppose Basil Santoine had died—particularly at this juncture!"

Eaton finished his breakfast but remained at the table while Blatchford, who scarcely touched his food, continued to boast, in his queer humility, of the blind man and of the blind man's friendship for him. He checked himself only when Harriet Santoine appeared in the doorway. He and Eaton at once were on their feet.

"My dear! He wants to see me now?" the tall man almost pleaded. "He wants me to