“It's simply horrible; I don't know how he manages to bear it. I was obliged to stupefy him with opium in the night—a thing I hate to do with a nervous patient; but I had to stop it somehow.”
“He is nervous, I should think.”
“Very, but splendidly plucky. As long as he was not actually light-headed with the pain last night, his coolness was quite wonderful. But I had an awful job with him towards the end. How long do you suppose this thing has been going on? Just five nights; and not a soul within call except that stupid landlady, who wouldn't wake if the house tumbled down, and would be no use if she did.”
“But what about the ballet-girl?”
“Yes; isn't that a curious thing? He won't let her come near him. He has a morbid horror of her. Altogether, he's one of the most incomprehensible creatures I ever met—a perfect mass of contradictions.”
He took out his watch and looked at it with a preoccupied face. “I shall be late at the hospital; but it can't be helped. The junior will have to begin without me for once. I wish I had known of all this before—it ought not to have been let go on that way night after night.”
“But why on earth didn't he send to say he was ill?” Martini interrupted. “He might have guessed we shouldn't have left him stranded in that fashion.”
“I wish, doctor,” said Gemma, “that you had sent for one of us last night, instead of wearing yourself out like this.”
“My dear lady, I wanted to send round to Galli; but Rivarez got so frantic at the suggestion that I didn't dare attempt it. When I asked him whether there was anyone else he would like fetched, he looked at me for a minute, as if he were scared out of his wits, and then put up both hands to his eyes and said: 'Don't tell them; they will laugh!' He seemed quite possessed with some fancy about people laughing at something. I couldn't make out what; he kept talking Spanish; but patients do say the oddest things sometimes.”
“Who is with him now?” asked Gemma.