"You'll call me as soon as you know anything more," she requested; "will you call me every hour?"
She hung up, on receiving assurance of this.
A servant brought a written paper. She took it before she recognized that it was not for her but for the steward. It was a short statement of the obvious physical circumstances of the murder, evidently dictated by her father and intended for the newspapers. She gave it to Fairley, who began reading it over the telephone to the newspapers. She wandered again to the west windows. She was not consciously listening to the telephone conversation in the hall; yet enough reached her to make her know that reporters were rushing from the city by train and automobile. The last city editions of the morning papers would have at least the fact of the murder; there would be later extras; the afternoon papers would have it all. There was a long list of relatives and friends to whom it was due that telegraphic announcement of Wallace Blatchford's death reach them before they read it as a sensation publicly printed. Recollection of these people at least gave her something to do.
She went up to her own room, listed the names and prepared the telegrams for them; she came down again and gave the telegrams to Fairley to transmit by telephone. As she descended the stairs, the great clock in the lower hall struck once; it was a quarter past three.
There was a stir in these lower rooms now; the officers of the local police had arrived. She went with them to the study, where they assumed charge nervously and uncertainly. She could not bear to be in that room; nevertheless she remained and answered their questions. She took them to Eaton's rooms on the floor above, where they searched through and took charge of all his things. She left them and came down again and went out to the front of the house.
The night was sharp with the chill preceding the day; it had cleared; the stars were shining. As she stood looking to the west, the lights of a motor turned into the grounds. She ran toward it, thinking it must be bringing word of some sort; but the men who leaped from it were strangers to her—they were the first of the reporters to arrive. They tried to question her, but she ran from them into the house. She watched from the windows and saw other reporters arriving. To Harriet there seemed to be scores of them. Every morning paper in Chicago, immediately upon receipt of the first flash, had sent at least three men; every evening paper seemed to have aroused half its staff from their beds and sent them racing to the blind millionaire's home on the north shore. Even men from Milwaukee papers arrived at four o'clock. Forbidden the house, they surrounded it and captured servants. They took flashlights till, driven from the lawn, they went away—many of them—to see and take part in the search through the woods for Blatchford's murderer. The murder of Santoine's cousin—the man, moreover, who had blinded Santoine—in the presence of the blind man was enough of itself to furnish a newspaper sensation; but, following so closely Santoine's visit to the Coast because of the murder of Gabriel Warden, the newspaper men sensed instantly in it the possibility of some greater sensation not yet bared.
Harriet was again summoned. A man—a stranger—was awaiting her in the hall; he was the precursor of those who would sit that day upon Wallace Blatchford's death and try to determine, formally, whose was the hand that had done it—the coroner's man. He too, she saw, was already convinced what hand it had been—Eaton's. She took him to the study, then to the room above where Wallace Blatchford lay dead. She stood by while he made his brief, conventional examination. She looked down at the dead man's face. Poor Cousin Wallace! he had destroyed his own life long before, when he had destroyed her father's sight; from that time on he had lived only to recompense her father for his blindness. Cousin Wallace's life had been a pitiable, hopeless, loving perpetuation of his penance; he had let himself hold nothing of his own in life; he had died, as she knew he would have wished to die, giving his life in service to his cousin; she was not unduly grieving over him.
She answered the man's questions, calmly and collectedly; but her mind was not upon what she was saying. Her mind was upon only one thing—even of that she could not think connectedly. Some years ago, something—she did not know what—had happened to Hugh; to-night, in some strange way unknown to her, it had culminated in her father's study. He had fought some one; he had rushed away to follow some one. Whom? Had he heard that some one in the study and gone down? Had he been fighting their battle—her father's and hers? She knew that was not so. Hugh had been fully dressed. What did it mean that he had said to her that these events would either destroy him or would send him back to her as—as something different? Her thought supplied no answer.
But whatever he had done, whatever he might be, she knew his fate was hers now; for she had given herself to him utterly. She had told that to herself as she fled and pursued with him that night; she had told it to him; she later had told it—though she had not meant to yet—to her father. She could only pray now that out of the events of this night might not come a grief to her too great for her to bear.
She went to the rooms that had been Eaton's. The police, in stripping them of his possessions, had overlooked his cap; she found the bit of gray cloth and hugged it to her. She whispered his name to herself—Hugh—that secret of his name which she had kept; she gloried that she had that secret with him which she could keep from them all. What wouldn't they give just to share that with her—his name, Hugh!