BLIND SYNOPSIS CHAPTER I.—Gabriel Warden, Seattle eapitalist, tells his butler he is expecting §, Salen, to be admitted without question. informs his wife of danger that threatens him if he pursues a course he oonsiders the only honorable one. War- den leaves the house in his car and meets man whom he takes into the machine. Shen the car returns home, Warden fis found dead, murdered, and alone. The ealler, a young man, has been at War- den’s house, but leaves unobserved CHAPTER I1.—Bob Connery, conductor, eives orders to hold train for a party. e men and a girl board the train e father of the girl, Mr. Dorne, is the rson for whom the train was held Wp D. Eaton, a young man, also boarded the train. Dorne tells his daugh- ter and his secretary, Don Avery, to find out what they can concerning him. CHAPTER III.—The two make Eaton's soquaintance. The train is stopped by emowdrifts., CHAPTER IV.—Eaton receives a tele- gram addressed to Lawrence Hillwara, which he claims. It warns him he is being followed. CHAPTER V.—Passing through the car, Connery notices Dorne’'s hand hanging outside the berth. He ascertains Dorne’s has recently rung. Perturbed, he Investigates and finds Dorne with his Jv) crushed. He calls a surgeon, Dr. clair, on the train. CHAPTER VI.—Sinclair recognizes the red man as Basil Santolne, who, al- ough blind, is a peculiar power in the cial world as adviser to “big inter: ” Hig recovery is a matter of doubt CHAPTER VIIL.—Eaton {is practically placed under arrest. He refuses to make explanations as to his previous move- ments before boarding the train, but its he was the man who called on aiden the night the financier was mur- CHAPTER IX.—Eaton pleads with Har- t Santoine to withhold judgment, tell- g her ‘he is in serious danger, though ocent of the crime against her father. feels the girl believes him, CHAPTER X.—Santoine recovers suffi- eélently to question Eaton, who refuses to reveal his identity. The financier re- Soires Eaton to accompany him to the ntoine home, where he is in the posi- tion of a semi-prisoner. CHAPTER Xl1.—Eaton meets a resident of the house, Wallace Blatchford, and a young girl, Mildred Davis, with whom apparently he is acquainted, though they oonceal the fact. KEaton’s mission is to @ecure certain documents which are vital w his interests, and his being admitted the house is a remarkable stroke of The girl agrees to aid him. He Jocoines deeply interested in Harriet San- ine, and she in him. CHAPTER XII1.—Harrlet tells.Eaton she and Donald Avery act as ‘‘eyes” to San- toine, reading to him the documents on which he bases his judgments. While walking with her, two men in an auto- mobile deliberately attempt to run Eaton down. He escapes with slight injuries. The girl recognizes one of the men as having been on the train on which they came from Seattle. CHAPTER XIIL—Santoine questions Eaton closely, but the latter is reticent. The blind man tells him he is convinced the attack made on him on the train was the result of an error, the attacker hav- ing planned to kill Eaton. Santoine tells Harriet she is to take charge of certain papers connected with the “Latron prop- erties,” which had hitherto been in Avery's charge. CHAPTER XIV.—Avery seeks to influ- ence Harriet, as his wife to be, to give the papers to him. She refuses. Harriet is beginning to feel that her love belongs to Eaton. CHAPTER XV.—At the country club Eaton reveals a remarkable proficiency at polo, seemingly to Avery's tifica- tion. Eaton induces Harriet to allow him to leave the grounds for a few minutes that night r CHAPTER XVI.—That night Eaton in- vadeg Santoine’s library, seeking the pa- Jers he is determined to possess. There e finds two men, one of whom he recog- nizes with bewildered surprise, on the same errand. The three men engage in a pistol duel. CHAPTER XVII.—Aroused by the shoot- ing, Santoine descends to the library. The combatants are there, but silent. Wallace Blatchford arrives and is on the point of informing Santoine of the identity of one of the intruders when he is shot and instantly killed. The fighters escape. The sate has been rifled and important papers en, (Continued from last week). “He is dead,” Santoine said. “They shot him! They were three, at least. One was not with the others. They fired at each other, I believe, after one shot him.” Santoine’s hand was still in Blatchford’s. “I heard them below.” He told shortly how he had gone down, how Blatchford had en- tered and been shot. The blind man, still kneeling, heard the ordering and organizing of others for the pursuit; now women servarts from the other part of ‘the house were taking charge of affairs in the room. There had been no signal heard, Santoine was told, upon any of the bells which he had tried to ring from his room. ILaton was the only person from the house who was miss- ing. “They came, at least some of them came”—Santoine had risen, fighting down his grief over his cousin’s death —*for what was in your safe, Har- riet.” “I know; I saw it open.” “What is gone?” Santoine manded. He heard her picking up the con- tents of the safe from the floor and carrying them to the table and ex- amining them, “Why-—nearly all the formal papers seem to be gone; lists and agreements relating to a dozen different things.” “None of the correspondence?’ “No; that all seems to be here.” Santoine was breathing quickly; the trust for which he had been ready to die—for which Blatchford had died—: seemed safe. “We don't know whether he got it, then, or not!” It was Avery's volce de- EYES BY WILLIAM MACHARGEDWIN BALMER. Mustrations by R.H.Livingstone COPYRIGHT BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. which broke in upon him; Santoine merely listened. “He? Who?” ter’s challenge. 3 “Why, Eaton. It is plain enough what happened here, isn’t it?” Avery answered. “He came here to this room for what he was after—for what he has been after from the first— whatever that may have been! He came prepared to force the safe and vet it! But he was surprised—" “By whom?’ the blind man asked. “By whoever it is that has been fol- lowing him. I don’t attempt to ex- plain who they were, Mr. Santoine: for I don’t know. But—whoever they were—in doing this, he laid himself open to attack by them. They were watching—saw him enter here. They attacked him here. Wallace switched on the !ight and recognized him: so ne shot Wallace and ran with what ever he could grab up of the contenrs of the safe, hoping that by luck he'd get what he was after.” “It isn’t so—it isn't so!” Harriet de nied. 3 - Her father checked her; he stood an instant thoughtful. “Who is di- recting the pursuit, Donald?” he asked. : Avery went out at once. The blind man turned to his daughter. “Now, Harriet,” he ' commanded. She understood that her father would not move till she had seen the room for him. “There was some sort of a struggle near my safe,” she said. “Chairs— everything there is knocked about.” “Yes.” y “There is also blood there—a big spot of it on the floor.” : “I found that,” said Santoine. “There are bullet marks every- where—above ‘the mantel. all about.” “How was the safe opened?” ] “The combination has been cut c¢om- pletely away; there is an—an instru- ment connected with = the electric- iight fixture which seems to have done the cutting. There is a hand-drill, too—I think it is a hand-drill. The inner, door has been drilled through. and the catches drawn back.” “Who is this?” The valet, who had been sent to Ea- ton’s room, had returned with his re- port. “Mr. Eaton went from his room fully dressed, sir,” he said to San- toine, “except for his shoes. I found all his shoes in his room.” During the report the blind man felt his daughter's grasp on his arm be- come tense and relax and tighten again. Then, as though she realized she was adding to his comprehension of what she had already betrayed, she suddenly took her hand from her fa- ther’s arm. Santoine let the servants, at his daughter's direction, help him to his room. His daughter stood bhe- side him while the nurse washed the blood-splotches from his hands and feet. When the nurse had finished he still felt his daughter’s presence; she drew nearer to him. “Father?” she questioned. “Yes.” 3 “You don't agree with Donald, do You?—that Mr. Eaton went to the study to—to get something, and that whoever has been following him found him there and—and interrupted him and he killed Cousin Wallace?” Santoine was silent an instant. “That seems the correct explanation, Harriet,” he evaded. “It does not fully explain; but it seems correct as far as it goes. If Donald asks you what my opinion is, tell him it is that.” : He felt his daughter shrink away from: him, The blind man made no move to draw her back to him; he lay perfectly still ; kis head rested flat upon the pil- lows; his hands were clasped tightly together above the coverlet. He had accused himself, in the room below, because, by the manner he had chosen to treat Eaton, he had slain the man he loved best and had forced a friend- ship with Eaton on his daughter which, he saw, had gone further than mere friendship; it had gone, he knew now, even to the irretrievable between man and woman—had brought her. that is, to the state where, no matter what Eaton was or did, she must suf- fer with him! But Santoine was not accusing himself now; he was feeling only the fulfillment of that threat against those who had trusted him with their secrets, which he had felt vaguely after the murder of Gabriel Warden and, more plainly with the events of each succeeding day, ever since, For that threat, just now, had culminated in his presence in pur poseful, violent action; but Santoine in his blindness had been unable—and was still unable—to tell what that action meant. CHAPTER XVII Pursuit, . | Harriet. Santolne, clad only in a heavy robe over ‘her .nightdress and In slippers, wenf from her father's bedroom swiftly down into the study He heard his daugh- ‘against her breast; she stood strain- 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 instruc- tions to watch the roads; but as she reached the foot of the stairs, a serv- ant closed the study doors. The great, curtained room In its terrifying dis- order was brightly lighted, empty, ab- solutely still. She had given direc- tions that, except for the removal of Blatchford’s body, all must be left as it was in the room till the arrival of the police. She stood an instant with hands pressed against her breast, star- ing down at the spots upon the floor, Was one of them Eaton's? Something within her told her that it was, and the fierce desire to go to him, to help him, was all she felt just now. It was Ponald Avery's and her father’s accusation of Eaton that haq made her feel like this. She had been feeling, the moment before Donald had spoken, that Philip Eaton had played upon her that evening in mak- ing her take him to his confederate in the ravine in order to plan and con- summate something here. Above her grief and horror at the killing of her: cousin and the danger to her father had risen the an-uish of her guilt with Eaton, the ag ny of her betraval. But their accusation that Eaton had killed Wallace Blatchford, seeing him knowing him—in the light—had swept ali that away; all there was of her seemed to have risen in denial of that. Before her eyes, half shut, she saw again the body of her cousin Wallace lying in its blood on the floor. with her father kneeling heside it, his tlind eyes raised in helplessness to the light ; but she saw now another body too—Eaton’s—not here-—lying some: where in the bure, wind-swept woods, shot down by those pursuing him. She looked at tne face of the clock and then down to the pendulum to see whether it had stopped; but the pen- dulum was swinging. The hands stood at half past one o'clock; now she re- called that, in her first wild gaze about the room when she rushed in with the others, she had seen the hands showing a minute or so short of twenty minutes past one. Not quite a quarter of an hour had passed since the alarm! The pursuit could not have moved far away. She reopened the window through which the pur- suers had passed and stepped out onto the dark lawn. A half mile down the beach she heard shouts and a shot; she saw dimly through the night in that direction a boat without lights moving swiftly out upon the lake, Her hands clenched and. pressed ing at the sounds of the man-hunt. Tt had turned west, it seemed; it wus coming back her way, but to the west of the house. She crossed the lawn toward the garage. A light suddenly shone out there, and she went on. . The wide door at the car arivens was pushed open, and someone was within working over a car. His back was toward her, and he was bent over the engine, but, at the glance, she knew him and recoiled, gasping. It was Eaton. He turned at the same instant and saw her. : “Oh; it’s you!” he cried to her. Her heart, which almost had ceased to beat, raced her pulses again. At the sound she had made on the drive- way, he had turned to her as a hunted thing, cornered, desperate, certain that whoever came must be against him. His ery to her had recognized her as the only one who could come and not he against him; it had hailed her with relief as bringing him help. He could not have cried out so at that instant at sight of her if he had been guilty of what they had accused. Now she saw too, as he faced her, blood flow- ing over his face; blood soaked a shoulder of his coat, and his left arm dangling at his side; but now, as he threw back his head and straightened in his relief at finding it was she who had surprised him, she saw in him an exultation and cxcitement she had never seen before—something which her presence alone could not have caused. Toright, she sensed vaguely, something had happened to him which had changed his attitude toward her and everything else. “Yes; it's I!” she cried quickly and rushed to him. “It’s I! It’s I,” wildly “You're Hurt!” Touched His She Shoulder. “You're hurt!” she reassured him. She touched his shoulder. hurt! I knew you were!” hi He pushed her back with his right hand and held her away from him, “Did they hurt your father?” “Hurt Father? No.” “But Mr. Blatchford—" “Dead,” she answered dully. “You're glare i yards ahead to the gates. Beyond the “They killed him, then!” ! “Yes; they—" She iterated. He | was telling her now—unnecessarily— that he had had nothing to do with it; it was the others who had done that. He released her and wiped the blood from his eyes with the heel of his hand. “The poor old man,” he said, | “—the poor old man!” She drew toward him in the realiza- tion that he could find sympathy for | others even in such a time as this. “Where's the key for the battery and magneto—the key you start the car with?” She ran to a shelf and brought it to him; he used it and pressed the starting lever. The engine started and he sprang to the seat. His left arm still hanging useless at his side, he tried to throw in the gears with his right hand; but the mechanism of the car was strange to him. She leaped up beside him. “Move over!” she commanded. *It's this way!” He slipped to the side and she rook the driving seat, threw in the gears expertly, and the car shot from the garage. She switched on the electric headlights as they dashed down the driveway and threw a bright white upon the roadway a hundred gates ‘the publie pike ran north and south. “Which way?” she demanded of kim, slowing the car. “Stop!” he cried to her. “Stop and get out! You mustn't do this!” “You could not pass alone,” she sald. *“IFather’s men would close the gates upon vou.” “The men? There are no men there now—they went to the beach— hefore! They must have heard some- thing there! 1t was their being there that turned bhim—the others back. They tried for the lake and were turned back and got away in a ma- | chine; 1 followed—back up here!” ! Harriet Santoine glanced at the face of the man beside her. She could see his features only vaguely; she could see no expression; only the position of his head. But now she knew that she wa'. not help'ng him to run away; he was no longer hunted—at least he was not only hunted; he was hunting others too. As the car rolled down upon the open gates and he strained forward in the seat beside her, she; knew that what he was feeling was a wild eagerness in this pursuit. “Right or left—quick!” she de- manded of him. “I'll take one or the other.” “Right,” he shot out. “There are their tracks!” He pointed for her. “How do you know those are their tracks?” she asked him. “I told you, I followed them to where they got their machine.” “Who are they?” “The men who shot Mr. Blatchford.” “Who are they?” she put to him directly again. ~ He waited, and she knew ‘that. he was not going to answer her directly. Suddenly he caught her arm. The road had forked, and he pointed to the left; she swung the car that way again seeing as they made the turn. the tire-tracks they were following. The car raced up a little hill and now again was descending; the head- lights showed a bridge over a ravine. * “Slow! Stop!” her companion com- manded. She raced the car on; he put his hand on the wheel and with his foot tried to push hers from the accelera- | tor; but she fought him; the car! swayed and all but ran away as they approached the bridge. “Give it to: me!” she screamed to him and wrenched the car about. It was upon, the bridge and across it; they they skidded upon the mud of the road again, they could hear the bridge cracking behind. “Harriet !” he pleaded with her. She steered the car on, recklessly, | her heart thumping with more than | the thrill of the chase. “They're the | men who tried to kill you, aren't they?” she rejoined. The speed at! which they were going did not permit her to look about; she had to keep . her eyes on the road at that moment when she knew within herself and was telling the man beside her that | she from that moment must be at one | with him. For already she had said it; as she risked herself in the pur-, suit, she thought of the men they were | after not chiefly as those who had! killed her cousin but as those who had | threatened Eaton. | “What do 1 care what happens to! me, if we catch them?” she cried i “Harriet!” he repeated her name again. “Philip I” She felt him shrink and change as she called the name. It had been clear to her, of course, that, since she had known him, the name he had been using was not his own. Often she had wondered what his name was; now she had to know, “What should I call you?’ she demanded of him. i “My name,” he said, “is Hugh.” | “Hugh!” she called it. “Yes.” ¥ ! “Hugh—" She waited for the rest; but he told no more. “Hugh!” she whispered to herself again his name now. “Hugh!” Her eyes, which had watched the road for the guiding of the car, had followed his gesture from time to time pointing out the tracks made by the machine they were pursuing. These tracks still ran on ahead; as she gazed down the road, a red glow be- yond the bare trees was lighting the sky. A glance at Hugh told that he also had seen it, “A fire?" she referred to him. “Looks like it." They said no more as they rushed on; but the red glow was spreading, and. yellow. flames soon were in sight shooting higher and higher; these were clouded off for an instant culy to appear flaring higher again, and the breeze brought the smell of sea- soned wood burning. : “It’s right across the road!” Hugh announced as they neared it. “It's the bridge over the next ra- vine,” Harriet said. Her foot already was bearing upon tke brake, and the power was shut off; the car coasted on slowly. ¥or both could see now that the wooden span was blazing from end to end; it was old wood, swift to burn and going like tinder. There was no possible chance for the ear to cross it. The girl brought the machine to a stop fifty feet from the edge of the ravine; the fire was so hot that the gasoline tank would not he safe nearer. She gazed down at the tire-marks on the road. “They crossed with their machine.” she said to Hugh. “And fired the bridge behind. The; must have poured gasoline over it and lighted it at botly ends.” She sat with one hand still strain Ing at the driving wheel, the othe: playing with the gear lever. “There's no other way across that ravine, 1 suppose.” Hugh questioned her. “The other road’s back more than a mile, and two miles about.” She threw in the reverse and started to tur, Hugh shook his bead. “That's no use.” “No.” she agreec. and stopped the car again. Hugh stepped down oc the ground. Tne double giare from tne head lights of a motor snone through the trec-frunks as tie cur topped and cane swiftly down a rise three guar ‘ters of a mile away and around the ast turn back on the road; another pair of blinding lights followed. There was no doubt that this must he the pursuit from Santoine’s hbuse. Eaton stood beside Harriet. who had stayed in the driviug-seat of the car. “I'm going just beside the read here,” he said te her. quietly. “I'm armed, of course. If these are your people, you'd better go back with them. I'm sure they are; but I'll wait and see.” She caught his hand. “No; no!” she cried. “You must get as far away as you cen before they come! I'm going back to meet and hold them.” She threw the car into. the reverse. backed and turned it and brought it again. onto the road. He came beside her again, putting out his hand; she seized it. Her hands for an instant clung to it, his to hers.: “You must go—quick!” she urged; “but how am I to know what becomes of you—where you are? Shall I hear from, you—shall I ever see you?” “No news will be good news,” he said. *“‘until—" “Until what?” *“Until—" And again that unknown something which a thousand times— it seemed to her—had checked his word and action toward her made him RST wn In 41 “z Ai my _ = = Re — “Until | Come to You As—As You Have Never Known Me Yet!” pause; but nothing could completely bar them from one another now. “Un- til they catch and destroy me, or— until I come to you as—as you have never known me yet!” An instant more she clung to him. The double headlights flared into sight again upon the road, much nearer now and coming fast. She re- leased him; he plunged into the i bushes beside the road, and the damp, bare twigs lashed against one another at his passage; then she shot her car forward. But she had made only a few hundred yards when the first of the two cars met her. It turned to its right to pass, she turned the same way; the approaching car twisted to the left, she swung hers to oppose it. The two cars did not strike; they stopped, radiator to radiator, with rear wheel locked. The second car drew up behind the first. The glare i of her headlights showed her both were full of armed men. Their head: lights, revealing Ler to them, hushed suddenly their angry ejaculations. She recognized Avery in the first car; he leaped out and ran up to her. “Harriet! In God's name, what are you doing here?’ She sat unmoved in her seat, gazing at him. Men leaping .from the cars ran past her down the road toward the ravine and the burning bridge. Avery, galning no satisfaction from her, let go her arm; his hand dropped to the back of the seat and he drew it up quickly. “Harriet, there's blood here!” She did not reply. He stared at her and seemed to comprehend. or He jumped from the car and ran to the assembled men. They called in ansver to his shout, and she could see 8 man pointing out to them the way; Eaton had gone. The men, scat- tering themselves at intervals along the edge of the wood and, under Avery's direction, posting others in each direction to watch the road, be- gan to beat through the bushes after Eaton. She sat watching; she put her cold hands to her face; then, recalling how just now Eaton’s hand had clung to hers, she pressed them to her lips. Avery came running back to her. “You drove him out here, Harriet!” he charged. “Him? Who?) she asked coolly. “Eaton. He was hurt!” The tri- umph in the ejaculation made her re- coil. “He was hurt and could not drive, and you drove him out.” He left her, running after the men into the woods. She sat in the car, listening to the sounds of the hunt. She had no immediate fear that they would find Eaton; her present anxiety was over his condition from his hurts and what might happen if he encoun- tered those he had been pursuing. In that neighborhood, with its woods and bushes and ravines to furnish cover, the darkness made discovery of him hy Avery and his men impossible if Eaton wished to hide himself. Avery appeared to have realized this; for now the voices in the woods ceased and the men began to struggle back roward the cars. A party was sent on foot across the ravine, evidently to guard the road beyond. The rest be- gan to clamber into the cars. She nacked her car away from the one in front of it and started home, She had gone only a short distance when the cars again passed her, trav- etinz at a high speed. She began then to pass individual men left by those in tke cars to watch the road. At the first large house she saw one of the cars again, standing empty. She passed it without stopping. A mile further, a little group of men carry- ing guns stopped her, recognized her and let her pass. They had been called out, they told her, by Mr. Avery over the telephone to watch the roads for Eaton; they had Eaton’s de- scription ; members of the local police were to take charge of them and di- rect them. She comprehended that Avery was surrounding the vacant acreage where Eaton had taken refuge to be certain that Eaton did not get away until.daylight came and a search for him was possible. Lights gleamed. at her across the broad lawns of the houses.near her father’s great house as she approached it; at the sound of her car, people came running to the windows and looked out. She understood that news of the murder at Basil Santoine’s had aroused the neighbors and brought them from their beds. As she left her motor on the drive beside ‘the house—for tonight no one came from the garages to take it— the little clock upon its dash marked half past two. stan ma i, CHAPTER XIX Waiting. 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. : “Where have you been, Daughter?” he asked. “I have been driving with Mr, Ea- ton in a motor,” she said. “Helping him to escape?’ A spasm crossed the blind man’s face. : “He said not; he—he was following the men who shot Cousin Wallace.” The blind man lay for an instant still. “Tell me,” he commanded finally. She told him, beginning with her dis- covery of Eaton in the garage and ending with his leaving her and with Donald Avery’s finding her in the mo- tor; and now she held back one word only—his name which he had told her, Hugh. Her father listened intently. “You and Mr. Eaton appear to have become rather well acquainted, Har- riet,” he said. “Has he told you noth- ing about himself which you have not told me? You have seen nothing con- cerning him, which you have not told?” Her mind went quickly back to the polo game; she felt a flush, which his blind eyes could not see, dyeing her cheeks and forehead. The blind man waited for a mo- ment ; he put out his hand and pressed the bell which called the steward. Neither spoke until the steward came. “Fairley,” Santoine said then, qui- etly, “Miss Santoine and I have just agreed that for the present all reports regarding the pursuit of the men who entered the study last night are to be made direct to me, not through Miss Santoine or Mr, Avery.” “Very well, sir.” She still sat silent after the steward had gone; she thought for an instant “her father had forgotten her presence; then he moved slightly. “That is all, dear,” he sald quietly. (To be Continued.) Natural Inquiry. Miss Yvonne, a clever English ac- tress, tells a story of an actress friend of hers whose little four year old daughter one day inquired of her: “Why do you go to the theatre, mummy?” “Oh; to get bread and butter,” she was told. Next day the child had .tea with the landlady. “So you’ve been to the theatre, have you?” she inquired in her knowing | little way. “No. Why?” asked the woman. “Then how did you get this bread and butter?” For Sale.—A three piece bed-room suite of bird’s eye maple; in very good condition. Inquire at this office.