Dear Sir:
I take the liberty of writing to you, for you are the only one I can find a trace of who was a friend of the late Dr. Sidney Phillips. I found a card with your name and address on the floor of his room after he left the army post at Ft. Andrews, and to you I am committing the task of clearing his name from a disgrace which has unjustly been fastened upon it. He is dead, and the wrong can never be righted to him, but for the sake of his friends and relatives his memory must not remain dishonored.
This letter is at once an explanation and a confession. I was a Captain of Infantry at Ft. Andrews when Dr. Phillips came there as army surgeon. There was another officer there, a sneaking, underhand sort of chap with whom I was having constant trouble. Upon one occasion he committed a grave breach of military discipline, but managed to throw the blame upon me and I was deprived of my captain’s commission and reduced to the ranks, besides doing time in the guard house.
I brooded upon my wrong until I was ready to murder the man who had brought it upon me. At the time of the typhoid epidemic, matters were in bad shape at Ft. Andrews. That was before the days of Red Cross nurses, and many of the boys had to turn in and nurse their comrades. I was detailed to help Dr. Phillips. The man who had ruined me was down with the fever. Ever since I had been reduced to the ranks he had taunted me openly with my disgrace and even as he lay in bed he made insulting remarks when I brought him his medicine. Finally in a mad rage I decided to be revenged upon him once and forever. I put a deadly poison into the dose Dr. Phillips had just mixed for him, slipping it in while the doctor was out of the room for a moment. I thought the dose was intended for him alone, but to my horror it was given to a dozen men, and they all died.
The whole country became stirred up about it, and such abuse was hurled at Dr. Phillips as no man ever suffered before. It was supposed that he had carelessly mistaken the poison for another harmless ingredient. I dared not confess that it was I who had done it, for in my case it would mean trial for first degree murder, while with the doctor it was simply a case of accident, and would blow over in time.
The doctor left the Post, a broken-down, ruined man, and died of yellow fever in Cuba not long after.
I have kept the secret for twenty-five years, suffering tortures of conscience, but not brave enough to confess. Now, however, I am in the last stages of a fatal disease and cannot live a week longer. By the time this reaches you I shall be gone. Take this confession and publish it to the world, that tardy justice may be done the memory of Dr. Phillips. He was innocent of the whole thing. May God forgive me!
George Ingram.”
The confession was witnessed by two doctors whose signatures appeared under his.
“He didn’t do it! Tad didn’t do it!”