The alarm of the cry came to answer Eaton's question early the next morning. As he started up in his berth, he shook himself into realization that the shouts were not merely part of an evil dream; some one was repeating the cry outside the car window. He threw up the curtain and saw a vagrant newsboy, evidently passing through the railroad yards to sell to the trainmen. Eaton's guard outside his window was not then in sight; so Eaton lifted his window from the screen, removed that, and hailing the boy, put out his hand for a paper. He took it before he recalled that he had not even a cent; but he looked for his knife in his trousers pocket and tossed it out to the boy with the inquiry: "How'll that do?"
The boy gaped, picked it up, grinned and scampered off. Eaton spread the news-sheet before him and swiftly scanned the lines for information as to the fate of the man who, for four days, had been lying only forty feet away from him at the other end of a Pullman car.
The paper—a Minneapolis one—blared at him that Santoine's condition was very low and becoming rapidly worse. But below, under a Montana date-line, Eaton saw it proclaimed that the blind millionaire was merely sick; there was no suggestion anywhere of an attack. The paper stated only that Basil Santoine, returning from Seattle with his daughter and his secretary, Donald Avery, had been taken seriously ill upon a train which had been stalled for two days in the snow in Montana. The passenger from whom the information had been gained had heard that the malady was appendicitis, but he believed that was merely given out to cover some complication which had required surgical treatment on the train. He was definite as regarded the seriousness of Mr. Santoine's illness and described the measures taken to insure his quiet. The railroad officials refused, significantly, to make a statement regarding Mr. Santoine's present condition. There was complete absence of any suggestion of violence having been done; and also, Eaton found, there was no word given out that he himself had been found on the train. The column ended with the statement that Mr. Santoine had passed through Minneapolis and gone on to Chicago under care of Dr. Douglas Sinclair.
Eaton stared at the newspaper without reading, after he saw that. He thought first—or rather, he felt first—for himself. He had not realized, until now that he was told that Harriet Santoine had gone,—for if her father had gone on, of course she was with him,—the extent to which he had felt her fairness, almost her friendship to him. At least, he knew now that, since she had spoken to him after he was first accused of the attack on her father, he had not felt entirely deserted or friendless till now. And with this start of dread for himself, came also feeling for her. Even if they had taken her father from the other end of this car early in the night to remove him to another special car for Chicago, she would be still watching beside him on the train. Or was her watch beside the dying man over now? And now, if her father were dead, how could Harriet Santoine feel toward the one whom all others—if not she herself—accused of the murder of her father? For evidently it was murder now, not just "an attack."
But why, if Santoine had been taken away, or was dead or dying, had they left Eaton all night in the car in the yards? Since Santoine was dying, would there be any longer an object in concealing the fact that he had been murdered?
Eaton turned the page before him. A large print of a picture of Harriet Santoine looked at him from the paper—her beautiful, deep eyes gazing at him, as he often had surprised her, frankly interested, thoughtful, yet also gay. The newspaper had made up its lack of more definite and extended news by associating her picture with her father's and printing also a photograph of Donald Avery—"closely associated with Mr. Santoine in a confidential capacity and rumored to be engaged to Miss Santoine." Under the blind man's picture was a biography of the sort which newspaper offices hold ready, prepared for the passing of the great.
Eaton did not read that then. The mention in the paper of an engagement between Avery and Harriet Santoine had only confirmed the relation which Eaton had imagined between them. Avery, therefore, must have gone on with her; and if she still watched beside her father, Avery was with her; and if Basil Santoine was dead, his daughter was turning to Avery for comfort.
This feature somehow stirred Eaton so that he could not stay quiet; he dressed and then paced back and forth the two or three steps his compartment allowed him. He stopped now and then to listen; from outside came the noises of the yard; but he made out no sound within the car. If it had been occupied as on the days previous, he must have heard some one coming to the washroom at his end. Was he alone in the car now? or had the customary moving about taken place before he awoke?
Eaton had seen no one but the newsboy when he looked out the window, but he felt sure that, if he had been left alone in the car, he was being watched so that he could not escape.
His hand moved toward the bell, then checked itself. By calling any one, he now must change his situation only for the worse; as long as they were letting him stay there, so much the better. He realized that it was long past the time when the porter usually came to make up his berth and they brought him breakfast; the isolation of the car might account for this delay, but it was more likely that he was to find another reason.