Basil Santoine at twenty-two had been graduated from Harvard, though blind. His connections,—the family was of well-to-do Southern stock,—his possession of enough money for his own support, made it possible for him to live idly if he wished; but Santoine had not chosen to make his blindness an excuse for doing this. He had disregarded too the thought of foreign travel as being useless for a man who had no eyes; and he had at once settled himself to his chosen profession, which was law. He had not found it easy to get a start in this; lawyers had shown no willingness to take into their offices a blind boy to whom the surroundings were unfamiliar and to whom everything must be read; and he had succeeded only after great effort in getting a place with a small and unimportant firm. Within a short time, well within two years, men had begun to recognize that in this struggling law-firm there was a powerful, clear, compelling mind. Santoine, a youth living in darkness, unable to see the men with whom he talked or the documents and books which must be read to him, was beginning to put the stamp of his personality on the firm's affairs. A year later, his name appeared with others of the firm; at twenty-eight, his was the leading name. He had begun to specialize long before that time, in corporation law; he married shortly after this. At thirty, the firm name represented to those who knew its particulars only one personality, the personality of Santoine; and at thirty-five—though his indifference to money was proverbial—he was many times a millionaire. But except among the small and powerful group of men who had learned to consult him, Santoine himself at that time was utterly unknown.
There are many such men in all countries,—more, perhaps, in America than anywhere else,—and in their anonymity they are like minds without physical personality; they advise only, and so they remain out of public view, behind the scenes. Now and then one receives publicity and reward by being sent to the Senate by the powers that move behind the screen, or being called to the President's cabinet. More often, the public knows little of them until they die and men are astonished by the size of the fortunes or of the seemingly baseless reputations which they leave. So Santoine—consulted continually by men concerned in great projects, immersed day and night in vast affairs, capable of living completely as he wished—had been, at the age of forty-six, great but not famous, powerful but not publicly known. At that time an event had occurred which had forced the blind man out unwillingly from his obscurity.
This event had been the murder of the great Western financier Matthew Latron. There had been nothing in this affair which had in any way shadowed dishonor upon Santoine. So much as in his role of a mind without personality Santoine ever fought, he had fought against Latron; but his fight had been not against the man but against methods. There had come then a time of uncertainty and unrest; public consciousness was in the process of awakening to the knowledge that strange things, approaching close to the likeness of what men call crime, had been being done under the unassuming name of business. Government investigation threatened many men, Latron among others; no precedent had yet been set for what this might mean; no one could foresee the end. Scandal—financial scandal—breathed more strongly against Latron than perhaps against any of the other Western men. He had been among their biggest; he had his enemies, of whom impersonally Santoine might have been counted one, and he had his friends, both in high places; he was a world figure. Then, all of a sudden, the man had been struck down—killed, because of some private quarrel, men whispered, by an obscure and till then unheard-of man.
The trembling wires and cables, which should have carried to the waiting world the expected news of Latron's conviction, carried instead the news of Latron's death; and disorder followed. The first public concern had been, of course, for the stocks and bonds of the great Latron properties; and Latron's bigness had seemed only further evidenced by the stanchness with which the Latron banks, the Latron railroads and mines and public utilities stood firm even against the shock of their builder's death. Assured of this, public interest had shifted to the trial, conviction and sentence of Latron's murderer; and it was during this trial that Santoine's name had become more publicly known. Not that the blind man was suspected of any knowledge—much less of any complicity—in the crime; the murder had been because of a purely private matter; but in the eager questioning into Latron's circumstances and surroundings previous to the crime, Santoine was summoned into court as a witness.
The drama of Santoine's examination had been of the sort the public—and therefore the newspapers—love. The blind man, led into the court, sitting sightless in the witness chair, revealing himself by his spoken, and even more by his withheld, replies as one of the unknown guiders of the destiny of the Continent and as counselor to the most powerful,—himself till then hardly heard of but plainly one of the nation's "uncrowned rulers,"—had caught the public sense. The fate of the murderer, the crime, even Latron himself, lost temporarily their interest in the public curiosity over the personality of Santoine. So, ever since, Santoine had been a man marked out; his goings and comings, beside what they might actually reveal of disagreements or settlements among the great, were the object of unfounded and often disturbing guesses and speculations; and particularly at this time when the circumstances of Warden's death had proclaimed dissensions among the powerful which they had hastened to deny, it was natural that Santoine's comings and goings should be as inconspicuous as possible.
It had been reported for some days that Santoine had come to Seattle directly after Warden's death; but when this was admitted, his associates had always been careful to add that Santoine, having been a close personal friend of Gabriel Warden, had come purely in a personal capacity, and the impression was given that Santoine had returned quietly some days before. The mere prolonging of his stay in the West was more than suggestive that affairs among the powerful were truly in such state as Warden had proclaimed; this attack upon Santoine, so similar to that which had slain Warden, and delivered within eleven days of Warden's death, must be of the gravest significance.
Connery stood overwhelmed for the moment with this fuller recognition of the seriousness of the disaster which had come upon this man entrusted to his charge; then he turned to the surgeon.
"Can you do anything for him here, Doctor?" he asked.
The surgeon glanced down the car. "That stateroom—is it occupied?"
"It's occupied by his daughter."