"None."
"You deny all four possibilities?"
"Yes."
"Then you are using denial only to hide the fact, whatever it may be;
and of the four possibilities I am obliged to select the first as the
most likely."
"You mean that I attacked you?"
"That is not what I said. I said you must have taken the train to
injure me, but that does not mean necessarily that it was to attack me
with your own hand. Any attack aimed against me would be likely to
have several agents. There would be somewhere, probably, a distant
brain that had planned it; there would be an intelligent brain near by
to oversee it; and there would be a strong hand to perform it. The
overseeing brain and the performing hand--or hands--might belong to one
person, or to two, or more. How many there were I cannot now
determine, since people were allowed to get off the train. The
conductor and Avery--"
"Father!"
"Yes, Harriet; but I expected better of Avery. Mr. Eaton, as you are
plainly withholding the truth as to your reason for taking this train,
and as I have suffered injury, I am obliged--from the limited
information I now have--to assume that you knew an attack was to be
made by some one, upon that train. In addition to the telegram,
addressed to you under your name of Eaton and informing of my presence
on the train, I have also been informed, of course, of the code message
received by you addressed to Hillward. You refused, I understand, to
favor Mr. Avery with an explanation of it; do you wish to give one now?"
"No," said Eaton.
"It has, of course, been deciphered," the blind man went on calmly.
"The fact that it was based upon your pocket English-Chinese dictionary
as a word-book was early suggested; the deciphering from that was
simply a trial of some score of ordinary enigma plans, until the
meaning appeared."
Eaton made no comment. Santoine went on:
"And that very interesting meaning presented another possible
explanation--not as to your taking the train, for as to that there can
be only the four I mentioned--but as to the attack itself, which would
exonerate you from participation in it. It is because of this that I
am treating you with the consideration I do. If that explanation were
correct, you would--"
"What?"
"You would have had nothing to do with the attack, and yet you would
know who made it."
At this, Eaton stared at the blind man and wet his lips.
"What do you mean?" he said.
Santoine did not reply to the question. "What have you been doing
yesterday and to-day?" he asked.
"Waiting," Eaton answered.
"For what?"
"For the railroad people to turn me over to the police."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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