Page:The Blind Man's Eyes (July 1916).pdf/126

104 "Yes."

"From where?"

Eaton did not answer.

"From Yokohama?"

"The last port we stopped at before sailing for Seattle was Yokohama—yes."

Connery reflected. "You had been in Seattle, then, at least five days; for the last steamer you could have come on docked five days before the Tamba Maru."

"You assume that; I do not tell you so."

"I assume it because it must be so. You'd been in Seattle—or at least you had been in America—for not less than five days. In fact, Mr. Eaton, you had been on this side of the water for as many as eleven days, had you not?"

"Eleven days?" Eaton repeated.

"Yes; for it was just eleven days before this train left Seattle that you came to the house of Mr. Gabriel Warden and waited there for him till he was brought home dead!"

Eaton, sitting forward a little, looked up at the conductor; his glance caught Avery's an instant; he gazed then to Harriet Santoine. At the charge, she had started; but Avery had not. The identification, therefore, was Connery's, or had been agreed upon by Connery and Avery between them; suggestion of it had not come from the Santoines. And Connery had made the charge without being certain of it; he was watching the effect, Eaton now realized, to see if what he had accused was correct.

"What do you mean by that?" Eaton returned.

"What I said. You came to see Gabriel Warden in Seattle eleven days ago," Connery reasserted. "You