When I started on this desperate search after a witness, war had been declared, but no advance as yet ordered on Cuba. But during my journey south the long expected event happened, and on my arrival in Tampa I found myself in the midst of departure and everything in confusion.
Of course, under such conditions it was difficult to find my man on the instant. Innumerable inquiries yielded no result, and in the absence of any one who would or could give me the desired information I wandered from one end of the camp to the other till I finally encountered a petty officer who gave signs of being a Rough Rider.
Him I stopped, and, with some hint of my business, asked where James Calvert could be found.
His answer was a stare and a gesture toward the hospital tents.
Nothing could have astonished me more.
"Sick?" I cried.
"Dying," was his answer.
Dying! Curly Jim! Impossible. I had misled my informant as to the exact man I wanted, or else there were two James Calverts in Tampa. Curly Jim, the former cowboy, was not the fellow to succumb in camp before he had ever smelt powder.
"It is James Calvert of the First Volunteer Corps I am after," said I. "A sturdy fellow -"
"No doubt, no doubt. Many sturdy fellows are down. He's down to stay. Typhoid, you know. Bad case. No hope from the start. Pity, but -"
I heard no more. Dying! Curly Jim. He who was considered to be immune! He who held the secret - "Let me see him," I demanded. "It is important - a police matter - a word from him may save a life. He is still breathing?"
"Yes, but I do not think there is any chance of his speaking. He did not recognize his nurse five minutes ago."
As bad as that! But I did not despair. I did not dare to. I had staked everything on this interview, and I was not going to lose its promised results from any lack of effort on my own part.
"Let me see him," I repeated.
I was taken in. The few persons I saw clustered about a narrow cot in one corner gave way and I was cut to the heart to see that they did this not so much out of consideration for me or my errand there as from the consciousness that their business at the bedside of this dying man was over. He was on the point of breathing his last. I pressed forward, and after one quick scrutiny of the closed eyes and pale face I knelt at his side and whispered a name into his ear. It was that of Veronica Moore.
He started; they all saw it. On the threshold of death, some emotion - we never knew what one - drew him back for an instant, and the pale cheek showed a suspicion of color. Though the eyes did not open, the lips moved, and I caught these words:
"Kept word - told no one - she was so -"
And that was all. He died the next instant.
Well! I was woefully done up by this sudden extinction of all my hopes. They had been extravagant, no doubt, but they had sustained me through all my haps and mishaps, trials and dangers, till now, here, they ended with the one inexorable fact-death. Was I doomed to defeat, then? Must I go back to the major with my convictions unchanged but with no fresh proof, no real evidence to support them?
I certainly must. With the death of this man, all means of reaching the state of Mrs. Jeffrey's mind immediately preceding her marriage were gone. I could never learn now what to know would make a man of me and possibly save Cora Tuttle.
Bending under this stroke of Providence, I passed out. A little boy was sobbing at the tent door. I stared at him curiously, and was hurrying on, when I felt myself caught by the hand.
"Take me with you," cried a choked and frightened voice in my ear.
"I have no friend here, now he is gone; take me back to Washington."
