The detective hesitated, then he answered simply, "Yes."
"Hardly found your man, though?" Littell continued in the same tone:
Again the detective hesitated and answered, "Yes."
I clutched the sill of the window and sank shivering back into my seat, and then as Littell started to speak again, I grasped his arm. In response he turned and looked at me for a second with something almost like pity in his eyes, and then addressed himself again to Miles.
"Who is he?" he asked.
"Not now! not now!" I gasped, appealing to Miles. "I must tell him; leave it to me."
"Very well," Miles answered, and Littell after a single inquiring glance turned from us and for the remainder of the journey looked calmly out the open window beside him. If he felt either fear or remorse it was not apparent. He was inscrutable.
On arriving at the hospital we were conducted directly to the room of Winters. It was not different from other prison hospital quarters—neat and clean, but bare and hard, it was unspeakably dreary. A single barred window before which a yellow shade was drawn let in a half-light that was reflected from the whitewashed walls and showed at the farther end of the room a narrow cot and upon it the wasted form of Winters. It was motionless and the face was pallid and the eyes closed and I feared we had not come in time. I crossed the room and stood by the side of the bed and Littell followed me. By the window the doctor and a nurse were conversing in low tones, but when I looked towards them inquiringly they discontinued their conversation and the doctor came over to me.
"If you have anything you wish to say to him," he said, "you had better do it at once; he will not last long." But I had nothing to say that made it worth while to rouse the dying man and I was waiting the end in silence when Winters opened his eyes and after a vague wandering look about him, fixed them upon me. I leaned over him.
"Do you know me?" I asked, and in a voice scarcely audible, he whispered "Yes."