Page:The Blind Man's Eyes (July 1916).pdf/173

Rh the light was switched out. Eaton went back to bed, but amazement would not let him sleep.

He was in Santoine's house; he knew it could be no other than Santoine's house. It was to get into Santoine's house that he had come from Asia; he had thought and planned and schemed all through the long voyage on the steamer how it was to be done. He would have been willing to cross the Continent on foot to accomplish it; no labor that he could imagine would have seemed too great to him if this had been its end; and here it had been done without effort on his part, naturally, inevitably! Chance and circumstance had done it! And as he realized this, his mind was full of what he had to do in Santoine's house. For many days he had not thought about that; it had seemed impossible that he could have any opportunity to act for himself. And the return to his thoughts of possibility of carrying out his original plan brought before him thoughts of his friends—those friends who, through his exile, had been faithful to him but whose identity or existence he had been obliged to deny, when questioned, to protect them as well as himself.

As he lay on his bed in the dark, he stared upward to the ceiling, wide awake, thinking of those friends whose devotion to him might be justified at last; and he went over again and tested and reviewed the plan he had formed. But it never had presumed a position for him—even if it was the position of a semi-prisoner—inside Santoine's house. And he required more information of the structure of the house than he as yet had, to correct his plan further. But he could not, without too great risk of losing everything, discover more that night; he turned over and set himself to go to sleep.