him as a fugitive for five
years; and here he found the man who was the cause of it all, before
him in the same room a few paces away in the dark!

For it was impossible that this was not that man; and Eaton knew now
that this was he who must have been behind and arranging and directing
the attacks upon him, Eaton had not only seen him and heard his voice,
but he had felt his grasp; that sudden, instinctive crouch before a
charge, and the savage lunge and tackle were the instant, natural acts
of an old linesman on a championship team in the game of football as it
was played twenty years before. That lift of the opponent off his feet
and the heavy lunge hurling him back to fall on his head was what one
man--in the rougher, more cruel days of the college game--had been
famous for. On the football field that throw sufficed to knock a
helmeted opponent unconscious; here it was meant, beyond doubt, to do
more.

Upon so much, at least, Eaton's mind at once was clear; here was his
enemy whom he must destroy if he himself were not first destroyed.
Other thoughts, recasting of other relations altered or overturned in
their bearing by the discovery of this man here--everything else could
and must wait upon the mighty demand of that moment upon Eaton to
destroy this enemy now or be himself destroyed.

Eaton shook in his passion; yet coolly he now realized that his left
shoulder, which had taken the shock of his fall, was numb. He shifted
his pistol to cover a vague form which had seemed to move; but, if it
had stirred, it was still again now. Eaton strained to listen.

It seemed certain that the noise of the shot, if not the sound of the
struggle which preceded it, must have raised an alarm, though the room
was in a wing and shut off by double doors from the main part of the
house; it was possible that the noise had not gone far; but it must
have been heard in the room directly above and connected with the study
by a staircase at the head of which was a door. Basil Santoine, as
Eaton knew, slept above; a nurse must be waiting on duty somewhere
near. Eaton had seen the row of buttons which the blind man had within
arm's-length with which he must be able to summon every servant in the
house. So it could not last much longer now--this deadlock in the
dark--the two facing one, and none of them daring to move. And one of
the two, at least, seemed to have recognized that.

Eaton had moved, warily and carefully, but he had