“If I can.”
“I want my—mother to know—I am dead. She was not always good—but she was—my mother.”
“Tell me her name, and where to find her?”
The voice of the dying man sinks lower. Stanhope bends to catch the whispered reply, and then asks:
“Can you answer a few questions that I am anxious to put to you?”
“Y—yes.”
“Now that you know yourself dying, are you willing to tell me anything I may wish to know?”
“You are the—only man—who was ever—merciful to me,” said the dying man. “I will tell you—anything.”
Turning to the nurse, Stanhope makes a sign which she understands, and, nodding a reply, she goes softly from the room.
When Richard Stanhope and the dying man are left alone, the detective bends his head close to the pillows, and the questions asked, and the answers given, are few and brief.