both in high places; he
was a world figure. Then, all of a sudden, the man had been struck
down--killed, because of some private quarrel, men whispered, by an
obscure and till then unheard-of man.

The trembling wires and cables, which should have carried to the
waiting world the expected news of Latron's conviction, carried instead
the news of Latron's death; and disorder followed. The first public
concern had been, of course, for the stocks and bonds of the great
Latron properties; and Latron's bigness had seemed only further
evidenced by the stanchness with which the Latron banks, the Latron
railroads and mines and public utilities stood firm even against the
shock of their builder's death. Assured of this, public interest had
shifted to the trial, conviction and sentence of Latron's murderer; and
it was during this trial that Santoine's name had become more publicly
known. Not that the blind man was suspected of any knowledge--much
less of any complicity--in the crime; the murder had been because of a
purely private matter; but in the eager questioning into Latron's
circumstances and surroundings previous to the crime, Santoine was
summoned into court as a witness.

The drama of Santoine's examination had been of the sort the
public--and therefore the newspapers--love. The blind man, led into
the court, sitting sightless in the witness chair, revealing himself by
his spoken, and even more by his withheld, replies as one of the
unknown guiders of the destiny of the Continent and as counselor to the
most powerful,--himself till then hardly heard of but plainly one of
the nation's "uncrowned rulers,"--had caught the public sense. The
fate of the murderer, the crime, even Latron himself, lost temporarily
their interest in the public curiosity over the personality of
Santoine. So, ever since, Santoine had been a man marked out; his
goings and comings, beside what they might actually reveal of
disagreements or settlements among the great, were the object of
unfounded and often disturbing guesses and speculations; and
particularly at this time when the circumstances of Warden's death had
proclaimed dissensions among the powerful which they had hastened to
deny, it was natural that Santoine's comings and goings should be as
inconspicuous as possible.

It had been reported for some days that Santoine had come to Seattle
directly after Warden's death; but when this was admitted, his
associates had always been care