Once hope for the patient had been abandoned, it was Seymour Weiss who was the nuncio bringing to the members of Huey’s family, in the room across the hall, tidings of great grief. Himself emotionally shaken to the depths of his being, he told Mrs. Long and the three children as gently as possible that the end was very near. They followed him across the hall to the bed where the dying man, barely conscious, was drawing in and expelling shallow, noisy breaths. He made no effort to speak; but as each of the four laid a hand on the bed beside him, he managed weakly to pat it in a final, caressing gesture of farewell.
They returned to their room to await the end. Seymour Weiss accompanied them, giving voice to whatever comforting phrases he could muster, and then returned to the sickroom. One vital point remained to be cleared up.
“Huey, Huey, can you hear me?” he asked.
There was a faint stir of response.
“Huey, you are seriously hurt. Everything that can be done to help you is being done, but no one can ever say how such things will turn out. Now is the time to tell me where you put the papers and things that you took out of the bank vault. Where did you put them? Tell me where they are, Huey. Please don’t wait any longer.”
Thus the final thoughts he carried with him out of his life concerned a political campaign, his campaign for the presidency of the United States. Hardly audible was the faint breath that whispered:
“Later—I’ll—tell—you—later....”
They were his last words. The secret of what became of the affidavits, the other documents, and the campaign funds that were to provision his presidential race was one he took with him to an elaborate tomb newly constructed in the very center of the landscaped park around the capitol he had built for Louisiana.