26 chapters
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26 chapters
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
Gabriel Warden—capitalist, railroad director, owner of mines and timber lands, at twenty a cow-puncher, at forty-eight one of the predominant men of the Northwest Coast—paced with quick, uneven steps the great wicker-furnished living room of his home just above Seattle on Puget Sound. Twice within ten minutes he had used the telephone in the hall to ask the same question and, apparently to receive the same reply—that the train from Vancouver, for which he had inquired, had come in and that the p
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
On the morning of the eleventh day, Bob Connery, special conductor for the Coast division of one of the chief transcontinentals, was having late breakfast on his day off at his little cottage on the shore of Puget Sound, when he was treated to the unusual sight of a large touring car stopping before his door. The car carried no one but the chauffeur, however, and he at once made it plain that he came only as a message-bearer when he hurried from the car to the house with an envelope in his hand.
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
Dorne motioned Avery to the aisle, where already some of the passengers, having settled their belongings in their sections, were beginning to wander through the cars seeking acquaintances or players to make up a card game. Eaton, however, was not among these. On the contrary, when these approached him in his section, he frankly avoided chance of their speaking to him, by an appearance of complete immersion in his own concerns. The Englishman directly across the aisle from Eaton clearly was not l
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
The Eastern Express, mantled in a seething whirl of snow, but still maintaining very nearly its scheduled time and even regaining a few lost minutes from hour to hour as, now well past the middle of the State, it sped on across the flatter country in its approach to the mountains, proceeded monotonously through the afternoon. Eaton watched the chill of the snow battle against the warmth of the double windows on the windward side of the car, until finally it conquered and the windows became—as he
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
It is the wonder of the moment of first awakening that one—however tried or troubled he may be when complete recollection returns—may find, at first, rehearsal of only what is pleasant in his mind. Eaton, waking and stretching himself luxuriously in his berth in the reverie halfway between sleep and full consciousness, found himself supremely happy. His feelings, before recollection came to check them, reminded him only that he had been made an acquaintance, almost a friend, the day before, by a
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
The man whose interest in the passenger in Section Three of the last sleeper was most definite and understandable and, therefore, most openly acute, was Conductor Connery. Connery had passed through the Pullmans several times during the morning—first in the murk of the dawn before the dimmed lamps in the cars had been extinguished; again later, when the passengers had been getting up; and a third time after all the passengers had left their berths except Dorne, and after nearly all the berths ha
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
The surgeon, having finished loosening the pajamas, pulled open and carefully removed the jacket part, leaving the upper part of the body of the man in the berth exposed. Conductor Connery turned to Avery. "You have no objection to my taking a list of the articles in the berth?" Avery seemed to oppose; then, apparently, he recognized that this was an obvious part of the conductor's duty. "None at all," he replied. Connery gathered up the clothing, the glasses, the watch and purse, and laid them
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
As he entered his own car, Eaton halted; that part of the train had taken on its usual look and manner, or as near so, it seemed, as the stoppage in the snow left possible. Knowing what he did, Eaton stared at first with astonishment; and the irrational thought came to him that the people before him were acting. Then he realized that they were almost as usual because they did not know what had happened; the fact that Basil Santoine had been attacked—or that he was on the train—still had been car
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
Connery pulled aside the curtain of the washroom at the end of the Santoine car—the end furthest from the drawing-room where Santoine lay. "Step in here, sir," he directed. "Sit down, if you want. We're far enough from the drawing-room not to disturb Mr. Santoine." Eaton, seating himself in the corner of the leather seat built against two walls of the room, and looking up, saw that Avery had come into the room with them. The girl followed. With her entrance into the room came to him—not any soun
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
Half an hour later, Connery unlocked the door of Eaton's compartment, entered and closed the door behind him. He had brought in Eaton's traveling bag and put it down. "You understand," said the conductor, "that when a train is stalled like this it is considered as if under way. So I have local police power, and I haven't exceeded my rights in putting you under arrest." "I don't recall that I have questioned your right," Eaton answered shortly. "I thought you might question it now. I'm going to s
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
"Basil Santoine dying! Blind Millionaire lawyer taken ill on train!" 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
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
The first gray of dawn roused Eaton, and drawing on trousers and coat over his pajamas, he seated himself by the open window to see the house by daylight. The glow, growing in the east, showed him first that the house stood on the shore of the lake; the light came to him across water, and from the lake had come the crisp, fresh-smelling breeze that had blown into his windows through the night. As it grew lighter, he could see the house; it was an immense structure of smooth gray stone. Eaton was
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
In the supposition that he was to have less liberty, Eaton proved correct. Harriet Santoine, to whose impulses had been due his first privileges, showed toward him a more constrained attitude the following morning. She did not suggest hostility, as Avery constantly did; nor, indeed, was there any evidence of retrogression in her attitude toward him; she seemed merely to be maintaining the same position; and since this seemed difficult if they were often together, she avoided him. Eaton found his
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
Basil Santoine's bedroom, like the study below it, was so nearly sound-proof that anything going on in the room could not be heard in the hall outside it, even close to the double doors. Eaton, as they approached these doors, listened vainly, trying to determine whether any one was in the room with Santoine; then he quickened his step to bring him beside Harriet. "One moment, please, Miss Santoine," he urged. She stopped. "What is it you want?" "Your father has received some answer to the inquir
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
Harriet went down the stair into the study; she passed through the study into the main part of the house and found Donald and sent him to her father; then she returned to the study. She closed and fastened the doors, and after glancing about the room, she removed the books in front of the wall-safe to the right of the door, slid back the movable panel, opened the safe and took out a bundle of correspondence. She closed safe and panel and put back the books; and carrying the correspondence to her
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
Eaton, coming down rather late the next morning, found the breakfast room empty. He chose his breakfast from the dishes on the sideboard, and while the servant set them before him and waited on him, he inquired after the members of the household. Miss Santoine, the servant said, had breakfasted some time before and was now with her father; Mr. Avery also had breakfasted; Mr. Blatchford was not yet down. As Eaton lingered over his breakfast, Miss Davis passed through the hall, accompanied by a ma
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
Eaton dismissed the man who had been waiting in his rooms for him; he locked the door and carefully drew down all the window-shades. Then he put his overcoat, folded as he had been carrying it under his arm, on the writing table in the center of the room, and from its folds and pockets took a "breast-drill" such as iron workers use in drilling steel, an automatic pistol with three clips of cartridges, an electric flashlight and a little bottle of nitroglycerine. He loaded the pistol and put it i
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
Basil Santoine was oversensitive to sound, as are most of the blind; in the world of darkness in which he lived, sounds were by far the most significant—and almost the only—means he had of telling what went on around him; he passed his life in listening for or determining the nature of sounds. So the struggle which ended in Eaton's crash to the floor would have waked him without the pistol-shot immediately following. That roused him wide-awake immediately and brought him sitting up in bed, forge
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
Harriet Santoine, still clad only in the heavy robe over her nightdress and in slippers, went from her father's bedroom swiftly down into the study again; what she was going to do there she did not definitely know. She heard, as she descended the stairs, the steward in the hall outside the study calling up the police stations of the neighboring villages and giving news of what had happened and instructions to watch the roads; but as she reached the foot of the stairs, a servant closed the study
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Harriet went into the house and toward her own rooms; a maid met and stopped her on the stairs. "Mr. Santoine sent word that he wishes to see you as soon as you came in, Miss Santoine." Harriet went on toward her father's room, without stopping at her own—wet with the drive through the damp night and shivering now with its chill. Her father's voice answered her knock with a summons to come in. As she obeyed, pushing the doors open, he dismissed the nurse; the girl, passing Harriet as she went ou
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
The blind man, lying on his bed in that darkness in which he had lived since his sixteenth year and which no daylight could lessen, felt the light and knew that day had come; he stirred impatiently. The nurse, the only other occupant of the room, moved expectantly; then she sank back; Santoine had moved but had not roused from that absorption in which he had been ever since returning to his bed. He had not slept. The connections of the electric bells had been repaired,—the wires had been found p
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
The rolling, ravine-gullied land where Harriet had left Eaton was wooded thickly with oaks, maples and ash; the ground between these trees was clear of undergrowth upon the higher parts of the land, but its lower stretches and the ravines themselves were shrouded with closely growing bushes rising higher than a man's waist, and, where they grew rankest, higher than a man's head. In summer, when trees and bushes were covered with leaves, this underbrush offered cover where a man could conceal him
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
Santoine awoke at five o'clock. The messenger whom he had despatched a few hours earlier had not yet returned. The blind man felt strong and steady; he had food brought him; while he was eating it, his messenger returned. Santoine saw the man alone and, when he had dismissed him, he sent for his daughter. Harriet had waited helplessly at the house all day. All day the house had been besieged. The newspaper men—or most of them—and the crowds of the curious could be kept off; but others—neighbors,
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
Santoine, after Harriet had left the library, stood waiting until he heard the servant go out and close the door; he had instructed the man and another with him to remain in the hall. The blind man felt no physical weakness; he was wholly absorbed in the purpose for which he had dressed and come downstairs; now, as he heard Avery start forward to help him, he motioned him back. It was the rule in Santoine's house that the furniture in the rooms he frequented should be kept always in the same pos
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
Eaton—he still, with the habit of five years of concealment, even thought of himself by that name—awoke to full consciousness at eight o'clock the next morning. He was in the room he had occupied before in Santoine's house; the sunlight, reflected from the lake, was playing on the ceiling. His wounds had been dressed; his body was comfortable and without fever. He had indistinct memories of being carried, of people bending over him, of being cared for; but of all else that had happened since his
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AT MODERATE PRICES
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Adventures of Jimmie Dale, The. By Frank L. Packard. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle. After House, The. By Mary Roberts Rinehart. Ailsa Paige. By Robert W. Chambers. Alton of Somasco. By Harold Bindloss. Amateur Gentleman, The. By Jeffery Farnol. Anna, the Adventuress. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Anne's House of Dreams. By L. M. Montgomery. Around Old Chester. By Margaret Deland. Athalie. By Robert W. Chambers. At the Mercy of Tiberius. By Augusta Evans Wilson. Auction Block, The.
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