From having served so many sick, Morales knew what he needed. He called for a mild opiate.
Jacques Ferou approached the end of the platform. Save for two convalescing serranos with matted hair and irregular features who were now acting, perforce, as nurses, Ferou was the only able-bodied man in the hospital.
The Frenchman watched the sufferings of the matador with small, bright slaty eyes. The trick of the eyelids, drooping at the outer corners, lent him a calculating sinister aspect. He curled one spike of his straw-colored mustache.
"I will give you the opiate, monsenor, but you must pay for it! You must pay five hundred pesetas!"
Morales attempted to sit up. But he could not sit up.
"Wounds of Christ!" he gasped in a husky whisper. "What is this—a fancy or some mistake of my ears? Has the disease touched my brain? Tell me, tell me, Senor Ferou!" he almost supplicated.
"It is neither the mistake nor the fancy," returned the Frenchman in coldly even tones. "It is merely that you are a rich man, Monsenor Morales, and that you can afford to pay. These others are only hungry serranos and underpaid bullfighters. Even Quesada there, with his feverish imaginings, is but a poor hounded thief. He has no money."
As if he were about to smile at some choice recollection, the nostrils of his high predatory nose twitched, the hard grim lines about his mouth momentarily widened and deepened. But he did not smile. In a voice that sounded to the matador like pulsing chill points of steel, he went on:
"But you, Monsenor Morales; you withdrew a large sum by wire from the Bank of Spain. It was when we first started on this little expedition, and it was so much money we were indeed astounded. Dicenta, the Jewish cacique of Alcazar de San Juan, cashed that order for you in many peseta bills. Most of those bills you still have on your person. I could take them away from you with a little force; but I prefer to give you their value in narcotics, medicines, and soups. Sacre, monsenor, life must be worth more to you than any money, eh?"
The black eyes of the matador, deep-sunken from the quick ravages of the disease, blazed up at Ferou as if they would sear and brand his ashy face. Slowly as he looked, clamping his strong white teeth together with the effort, Morales straightened out his contracted right arm and felt, beneath the blanket, for the revolver at his waist.