attacked,--assailed during
my sleep some time in that first night that I spent on the train,--and
my condition was serious enough so that for three days afterward I was
not allowed to receive any of the particulars of what had happened to
me. When I did finally learn them, I naturally attempted to make
certain deductions as to who it was that had attempted to murder me,
and why; and ever since, I have continued to occupy myself with those
questions. I am going to tell you a few of my deductions. You need
not interrupt me unless you discover me to be in error, and then in
error only in fact or observation which, obviously, had to be reported
to me. If you fancy I am at fault in my conclusions, wait until you
discover your error."

Santoine waited an instant; Eaton thought it was to allow him to speak
if he wanted to, but Eaton merely waited.

"The first thing I learned," the blind man went on, "was the similarity
of the attack on me to the more successful attack on Warden, twelve
days previous, which had caused his death. The method of the two
attacks was the same; the conditions surrounding them were very
similar. Warden was attacked in his motor, in a public street; his
murderer took a desperate chance of being detected by the chauffeur or
by some one on the street, both when he made the attack and afterward
when he escaped unobserved, as it happened, from the automobile. The
attack upon me was made in the same way, perhaps even with the same
instrument; my assailant took equally desperate chances. The attack on
me was made on a public conveyance where the likelihood of the murderer
being seen was even greater, for the train was stopped, and under
conditions which made his escape almost impossible. The desperate
nature of the two attacks, and their almost identical method, made it
practically certain that they originated at the same source and were
carried out--probably--by the same hand and for the same purpose.

"Mrs. Warden's statement to me of her interview with her husband a
half-hour before his murder, made it certain that the object of the
attack on him was to 'remove' him. It seemed almost inevitable,
therefore, that the attack on me must have been for the same purpose.
There have been a number of times in my life, Eaton, when I have known
that it would be to the advantage of some one if I were 'removed'; that
I do not know now any definite reason for such an act does not decrease
its probability;