The cuirassiers, eager, awkward nurses, fluttered round the bed, and tore away the sky-blue jacket, thinking to find the wound beneath. Instead, they drew out a paper. One of them read the address on it.
“Al Señor Coronel Don Miguel Lopez.”
Lopez broke the seal, frowned, and put the message in his pocket. “Nothing–oh, nothing important,” he volunteered. “Now, once for all, let us finish our work.”
“Wait!” a faint whisper came from the bed.
“He says to wait,” doggedly repeated a cuirassier.
“Yes, wait,” Driscoll pleaded suddenly. “Just a minute, before I go, before we both go, perhaps,”–he thought in a flash that it might be a last word from Jacqueline–“perhaps, gentlemen, he, he has something to tell me.”
But Ney’s head, moving weakly on the pillow, was a negative.
The prisoner’s voice grew firm again.
“Then hurry up!” he ordered in the old querulous drawl. “Don’t you know I’m in a hurry?”
Ney opened his eyes as he heard the shuffling of feet. Men were carrying out the prisoner. With feeble anger he brushed aside the hand of a cuirassier who was trying to staunch the blood at his groin.