not been enough, then, to watch Eaton
and await opportunity to attack him; it had been necessary to attack
him at once, at any cost.

The attack having reached Santoine instead of Eaton, the necessity for
immediate attack upon Eaton, apparently, had ceased to exist; those who
followed Eaton had thought it enough to watch him and wait for more
favorable opportunity. But as soon as it was publicly known that
Santoine had not been killed but was getting well, then Eaton had again
been openly and daringly attacked. The reason for the desperate
chances taken to attack Eaton, then, was that he was near Santoine.

Santoine's hands clenched as he recognized this. Eaton had taken the
train at Seattle because Santoine was on it; he had done this at great
risk to himself. Santoine had told Eaton that there were but four
possible reasons why he could have taken the train in the manner he
did, and two of those reasons later had been eliminated. The two
possibilities which remained were that Eaton had taken the train to
inform Santoine of something or to learn something from him. But Eaton
had had ample opportunity since to inform Santoine of anything he
wished; and he had not only not informed him of anything, but had
refused consistently and determinedly to answer any of Santoine's
questions. It was to learn something from Santoine, then, that Eaton
had taken the train.

The blind man turned upon his bed; he was finding that these events
fitted together perfectly. He felt certain now that Eaton had gone to
Gabriel Warden expecting to get from Warden some information that he
needed, and that to prevent Warden's giving him this, Warden had been
killed. Then Warden's death had caused Santoine to go to Seattle and
take charge of many of Warden's affairs; Eaton had thought that the
information which had been in Warden's possession might now be in
Santoine's; Eaton, therefore, had followed Santoine onto the train.

Santoine had not had the information Eaton required, and he could not
even imagine yet what the nature of that information could be. This
was not because he was not familiar enough with Warden's affairs; it
was because he was too familiar with them. Warden had been concerned
in a hundred enterprises; Santoine had no way of telling which of this
hundred had concerned Eaton. He certainly could recall no case in
which a man of Eaton's age and class had been so terribly wronged that
double murder would have been re