As Santoine waited a moment before going on, Eaton watched him anxiously. The blind man turned himself on his pillows so as to face Eaton more directly; his sightless, motionless eyes told nothing of what was going on in his mind.
"Just ten days ago," Santoine said evenly and dispassionately, "I was found unconscious in my berth—Section Three of the rearmost sleeper—on the transcontinental train, which I had taken with my daughter and Avery at Seattle. I had been attacked,—assailed during my sleep some time in that first night that I spent on the train,—and my condition was serious enough so that for three days afterward I was not allowed to receive any of the particulars of what had happened to me. When I did finally learn them, I naturally attempted to make certain deductions as to who it was that had attempted to murder me, and why; and ever since, I have continued to occupy myself with those questions. I am going to tell you a few of my deductions. You need not interrupt me unless you discover me to be in error, and then in error only in fact or observation which, obviously, had to be reported to me. If you fancy I am at fault in my conclusions, wait until you discover your error."
Santoine waited an instant; Eaton thought it was to allow him to speak if he wanted to, but Eaton merely waited.
"The first thing I learned," the blind man went on, "was the similarity of the attack on me to the more successful attack on Warden, twelve days previous, which had caused his death. The method of the two attacks was the same; the conditions surrounding them were very similar. Warden was attacked in his motor, in a public street; his murderer took a desperate chance of being detected by the chauffeur or by some one on the street, both when he made the attack and afterward when he escaped unobserved, as it happened, from the automobile. The attack upon me was made in the same way, perhaps even with the same instrument; my assailant took equally desperate chances. The attack on me was made on a public conveyance where the likelihood of the murderer being seen was even greater, for the train was stopped, and under conditions which made his escape almost impossible. The desperate nature of the two attacks, and their almost identical method, made it practically certain that they originated at the same source and were carried out—probably—by the same hand and for the same purpose.
"Mrs. Warden's statement to me of her interview with her husband a half-hour before his murder, made it certain that the object of the attack on him was to 'remove' him. It seemed almost inevitable, therefore, that the attack on me must have been for the same purpose. There have been a number of times in my life, Eaton, when I have known that it would be to the advantage of some one if I were 'removed'; that I do not know now any definite reason for such an act does not decrease its probability; for I do not know why Warden was 'removed.'
"I found that a young man—yourself—had acted so suspiciously both before and after the attack on me that both Avery and the conductor in charge of the train had become convinced that he was my assailant, and had segregated him from the rest of the passengers. Not only this, but—and this seemed quite conclusive to them—you admitted that you were the one who had called upon Warden the evening of his murder. Warden's statement to his wife that you were some one he was about to befriend—which had been regarded as exculpating you from share in his murder—ceased to be so conclusive now that you had been present at a second precisely similar attack; and it certainly was no proof that you had not attacked me. It seemed likely, too, that you were the only person on the train aside from my daughter and Avery who knew who I was; for I had had reason to believe from the time when I first heard you speak when you boarded the train, that you were some one with whom I had, previously, very briefly come in contact; and I had asked my daughter to find out who you were, and she had tried to do so, but without success."
Eaton wet his lips.
"Also," the blind man continued, "there was a telegram which definitely showed that there was some connection, unknown to me, between you and me, as well as a second—or rather a previous—suspicious telegram in cipher, which we were able to translate."
Eaton leaned forward, impelled to speak; but as Santoine clearly detected this impulse and waited to hear what he was going to say, Eaton reconsidered and kept silent.
"You were going to say something about that telegram in cipher?" Santoine asked.