The Blind Man's Eyes

by William MacHarg; Edwin Balmer

"That I will be prevented?"

"For the present. I don't know all that Father has ordered done about you; but he is awaiting the result of several investigations. The telegrams you received doubtless are being traced to their sources; other inquiries are being made. As you have only lately come back to America, they may extend far and take some time."

"Thank you," he acknowledged. He went to the door, opened it and went out; he closed it after him and left her alone.

Harriet stood an instant vacantly staring after him; then she went to the door and fastened it with a catch. She came back to the great table-desk—her blind father's desk—and seated herself in the great chair, his chair, and buried her face in her hands. She had seemed—and she knew that she had seemed—quite composed as she talked to Eaton; now she was not composed. Her face was burning hot; her hands, against her cheeks, were cold; tremors of feeling shook her as she thought of the man who just had left her. Why, she asked herself, was she not able to make herself treat this man in the way that her mind told her she should have treated him? That he might be the one who had dealt the blow intended to kill her father—her being could not and would not accept that. Yet, the only reason she had to deny it, was her feeling.

That Eaton must have been involved in the attack or, at least, must have known and now knew something about it which he was keeping from them, seemed certain. Yet she did not, she could not, abominate and hate this man. Instead, she found herself impelled, against all natural reason, more and more to trust him. Moreover, was it fair to her father for her to do this?

Since childhood, since babyhood, even, no one had ever meant anything to her in comparison with her father. Her mother had died when she was young; she had never had, in her play as a child, the careless abandon of other children, because in spite of play she had been thinking of her father; the greatest joy of childhood she could remember was walking hand in hand with her father and telling him the things she saw; it had been their "game"; and as she grew older and it had ceased to be merely a game—as she had grown more and more useful to the blind man, and he had learned more fully to use and trust her—she had found it only more interesting, a greater pleasure. She had never had any other ambition—and she had no other now—except to serve her father; her joy was to be his eyes; her triumph had been when she had found that, though he searched the world and paid fortunes to find others to "see" for him, no one could serve him as she could; she had never thought of herself apart from him.

Now her father had been attacked and injured—attacked foully, while he slept; he had come close to death, had suffered; he was still suffering. Certainly she ought to hate, at least be aloof from any one, every one, against whom the faintest suspicion breathed of having been concerned in that dastardly attack upon her father; and that she found herself without aversion to Eaton, when he was with her, now filled her with shame and remorse.

She crouched lower against this desk which so represented her father in his power; she felt tears of shame at herself hot on her cold hands. Then she got up and recollected herself. Her father, when he would awake, would wish to work; there were certain, important matters he must decide at once.

Harriet went to the end of the room and to the right of the entrance door. She looked about, with a habit of caution, and then removed a number of books from a shelf about shoulder high; she thus exposed a panel at the back of the bookcase, which she slid back. Behind it appeared the steel door of a combination wall-safe. She opened it and took out two large, thick envelopes with tape about them, sealed and addressed to Basil Santoine; but they were not stamped, for they had not been through the mail; they had been delivered by a messenger. Harriet reclosed the safe, concealed it and took the envelopes back to her father's desk and opened them to examine their contents preparatory to taking them to him. But even now her mind was not on her work; she was thinking of Eaton, where he had gone and what he was doing and—was he thinking of her?

Eaton had left the room, thinking of her. The puzzle of his position in relation to her, and hers to him, filled his mind too. That she had been constrained by circumstances and the opinions of those around her to assume a distrust of him which she did not truly feel, was plain to him; but it was clear that, whatever she felt, she would obey her father's directions in regard to him. And she had told that Basil Santoine, if he was to hold his prisoner as almost a guest in his house pending developments, was to keep that guest strictly from communication with any one outside. Santoine, of course, was aware from the telegram that others had been acting with Eaton; the incident at the telephone had shown that Santoine had anticipated that Eaton's first necessity would be to get in touch with his friends. And this, now, indeed was a necessity. The gaining of Santoine's house, under conditions which he would not have dared to dream of, would be worthless now unless immediately—before Santoine could get any further trace of him—he could get word to and receive word from his friends.