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

"Which is him?" the man with Connery demanded loudly.

Connery checked him, but pointed at the same time to Eaton.

"That's him, is it?" the other man said. "Then go ahead."

Eaton observed that Avery, who had turned in his seat, was watching this diversion on the part of the conductor with interest. Connery stopped beside Eaton's seat.

"You took a telegram for Lawrence Hillward this morning," he asserted.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it was mine, or meant for me, as I said at the time. My name is Eaton; but Mr. Hillward expected to make this trip with me."

The stout man with the conductor forced himself forward.

"That's pretty good, but not quite good enough!" he charged. "Conductor, get that telegram for me!"

Eaton got up, controlling himself under the insult of the other's manner.

"What business is it of yours?" he demanded.

"What business? Why, only that I'm Lawrence Hillward—that's all, my friend! What are you up to, anyway? Lawrence Hillward traveling with you! I never set eyes on you until I saw you on this train; and you take my telegram!" The charge was made loudly and distinctly; every one in the dining car—Eaton could not see every one, but he knew it was so—had put down fork or cup or spoon and was staring at him. "What did you do it for? What did you want with it?" the stout man blared on. "Did you think I wasn't on the train? What?

"I was in the washroom," he continued, roaring for the benefit of the car, "when the conductor went by with it. I couldn't take the telegram then—so I waited for the conductor to come back. When I got dressed, I found him, and he said you'd claimed my message. Say, hand it over now! What were you up to? What did you do that for?"

Eaton felt he was paling as he faced the blustering smaller man. He realized that the passengers he could see—those at the smaller tables—already had judged his explanation and found him wanting; the others unquestionably had done the same. Avery was gazing up at him with a sort of contented triumph.

"The telegram was for me, Conductor," he repeated.

"Get that telegram, Conductor!" the stout man demanded again.

"I suppose," Connery suggested, "you have letters or a card or something, Mr. Eaton, to show your relationship to Lawrence Hillward."

"No; I have not."

The man asserting himself as Hillward grunted.

"Have you anything to show you are Lawrence Hillward?" Eaton demanded of him.

"Did you tell any one on the train that your name was Hillward before you wanted this telegram?"

It was Harriet Dorne's voice which interposed; and Eaton felt his pulse leap as she spoke for him.

"I never gave any other name than Lawrence Hillward," the other declared.

Connery gazed from one claimant to the other. "Will you give this gentleman the telegram?" he asked Eaton.

"I will not."

"Then I shall furnish him another copy; it was received here on the train by our express-clerk as the operator. I'll go forward and get him another copy."

"That's for you to decide," Eaton said; and as though the matter was closed for him, he resumed his seat. He was aware that, throughout the car, the passengers were watching him curiously; he would have foregone the receipt of the telegram rather than that attention should be attracted to him in this way. Avery was still gazing at him with that look of quiet satisfaction; Eaton had not dared, as yet, to look at Harriet Dorne. When, constraining himself to a manner of indifference, he finally looked her way, she began to chat with him as lightly as before. Whatever effect the incident just closed had had upon the others, it appeared to have had none at all upon her.

"Are you ready to go back to our car now, Harriet?" Avery inquired when she had finished her breakfast, though Eaton was not yet through.

"Surely there's no hurry about anything to-day," the girl returned. They waited until Eaton had finished.

"Shall we all go back to the observation car and see if there's a walk down the track or whether it's snowed over?" she said impartially to the two. They went through the Pullmans together.

The first Pullman contained four or five passengers; the next, in which Eaton had his berth, was still empty as they passed through. The porter had made up all the berths, and only luggage and newspapers and overcoats occupied the seats. The next Pullman also, at first glance, seemed to have been deserted in favor of the diner forward or of the club-car further back. The porter had made up all the berths there also, except one; but some one still was sleeping behind the curtains of Section Three, for a man's hand hung over the aisle. It was a gentleman's hand, with long, well-formed fingers, sensitive and at the same time strong. That was the berth of Harriet Dorne's father; Eaton gazed down at the hand as he approached the section, and then he looked up quickly to the girl. She had observed the hand, as also had Avery; but, plainly, neither of them noticed anything strange either in its posture or appearance. Their only care had been to avoid brushing against it on their way down the aisle so as not to disturb the man behind the curtain; but Eaton, as he saw the hand, started.

He was the last of the three to pass, and so the others did not notice his start; but so strong was the fascination of the hand in the aisle that he turned back and gazed at it before going on into the last car. Some eight or ten passengers—men and women—were lounging in the easy-chairs of the observation-room; a couple, ulstered and fur-capped, were standing on the platform gazing back from the train.

The sun was still shining, and the snow had stopped some hours before; but the wind which had brought the storm was still blowing, and evidently it had blown a blizzard after the train stopped at four that morning. The canyon through the snowdrifts, bored by the giant rotary plow the night before, was almost filled; drifts of snow eight or ten feet high and, in places, pointing still higher, came up to the rear of the train; the end of the platform itself was buried under three feet of snow; the men standing on the platform could barely look over the higher drifts.

"There's no way from the train in that direction now," Harriet Dorne lamented as she saw this.

"There was no way five minutes after we stopped," one of the men standing at the end of the car volunteered. "From Fracroft on—I was the only passenger in sleeper Number Two, and they'd told me to get up; they gave me a berth in another car and cut my sleeper out at Fracroft—we were bucking the drifts about four miles an hour; it seemed to fill in behind about as fast and as thick as we were cutting it out in front. It all drifted in behind as soon as we stopped, the conductor tells me."

The girl made polite acknowledgment and referred to her two companions.

"What shall we do with ourselves, then?"

"Cribbage, Harriet? You and I?" Avery invited.

The man whose interest in the passenger in Section Three of the last sleeper was most definite and understandable and, therefore, most openly acute, was Conductor Connery. Connery had passed through the Pullmans several times during the morning—first in the murk of the dawn before the dimmed lamps in the cars had been extinguished; again later, when the passengers had been getting up; and a third time after all the passengers had left their berths except Dorne, and after nearly all the berths had been unmade and the bedding packed away behind the panels overhead. Each time he passed, Connery had seen the hand which hung out into the aisle from between the curtains; but the only definite thought that came to him was that Dorne was a sound sleeper.

Nearly all the passengers had now breakfasted. Connery, therefore, took a seat in the diner, breakfasted leisurely and after finishing, went forward to see what messages had been received as to the relieving snow-plows. Nothing definite yet had been learned; the snow ahead of them was fully as bad as this where they were stopped, and it would be many hours before help could get to them. Connery walked back through the train. Dorne by now must be up, and might wish to see the conductor. Unless Dorne stopped him, however, Connery did not intend to speak to Dorne. The conductor had learned in his many years of service that nothing is more displeasing to the sort of people for whom trains are held than officiousness.

As Connery entered the last sleeper, his gaze fell on the dial of pointers which, communicating with the pushbuttons in the different berths, tell the porter which section is calling him, and he saw that while all the other arrows were pointing upward, the arrow marked "3" was pointing down. Dorne was up, then—for this was the arrow denoting his berth—or at least was awake and had recently rung his bell.

Connery looked in upon the porter, who was cleaning up the washroom.

"Section Three's getting up?" he asked.

"No, Mistah Connery—not yet," the porter answered.

"What did he ring for?" Connery thought Dorne might have asked for him.

"He didn't ring. He ain't moved or stirred this morning."

"He must have rung." Connery looked to the dial, and the porter came out of the washroom and looked at it also.

"Fo' the lan's sake. I didn't hear no ring, Mistah Connery. It mus' have been when I was out on the platform."

"When was that?"

"Jus' now. There ain't been nobody but him in the car for fifteen minutes, and I done turn the pointers all up when the las' passenger went to the diner. It can't be longer than a few minutes, Mistah Connery."

"Answer it, then," Connery directed.

As the negro started to obey, Connery followed him into the open car. He could see over the negro's shoulder the hand sticking out into the aisle, and this time, at sight of it, Connery started violently. If Dorne had rung, he must have moved; a man who is awake does not let his hand hang out into the aisle. Yet the hand had not moved. Nothing was changed about it since Connery had seen it before. The long, sensitive fingers fell in precisely the same position as before, stiffly separated a little one from another; they had not changed their position at all.

"Wait!" Connery seized the porter by the arm. "I'll answer it myself."

He dismissed the negro and waited until he had gone. He looked about and assured himself that the car, except for himself and the man lying behind the curtains of Section Three, was empty. He slowed, as he approached the hand. He halted and stood a moment beside the berth, himself almost breathless as he listened for the sound of breathing within. He heard nothing, though he bent closer to the curtain. Yet he still hesitated, and retreating a little and walking briskly as though he were carelessly passing up the aisle, he brushed hard against the hand and looked back, exclaiming an apology for his carelessness.

The hand fell back heavily, inertly, and resumed its former position and hung as white and lifeless as before. No response to the apology came from behind the curtains; the man in the berth had not roused. Connery rushed back to the curtains and touched the hand with his fingers. It was cold! He seized the hand and felt it all over; then, gasping, he parted the curtains and looked into the berth. He stared; his breath whistled out; his shoulders jerked, and he drew back, instinctively pressing his two clenched hands against his chest and the pocket which held President Jarvis' order.

The man in the berth was lying on his right side facing the aisle; the left