I crouched beside him, but I did not know what to say or do. I could only wait there, that he might not die alone.
"Give me a knife!" he mumbled again, clutching at me. "A knife, Hewlett! Don't leave me to die like this! Bring Père Antoine and my mother. I want to tell her—to tell her——"
He muttered in his delirium until his voice died away. I thought that he would never speak again. But presently he seemed to revive again to the consciousness of his surroundings.
"Are you with me, Hewlett?" he whispered.
I placed my hand in his, and he clutched at it with feverish force.
"You will have the gold, Hewlett," he muttered, apparently ignorant that I, too, was a prisoner and in hardly better plight. "You are the last of the four. I tried to kill you, Hewlett."
I said nothing, and he repeated querulously, between his gasps: "I tried to kill you, Hewlett. Are you going to leave me to die alone in the dark now?"
"No," I answered. "It doesn't matter, Lacroix." And, really, it did not matter.
"I wanted to kill you," his voice rambled on. "Leroux is dead. I watched him die. I thought if—you died, too, no one but I would know the secret of the gold. I tried to murder you. I blew up the tunnel!"
He paused a while, and again I thought he was dying, but once more he took up the confession.