Doctor Santos felt inspired: “If this little woman goes to the bad, whose fault will it be? Her sewing brings in so little!” Pulling out a banknote, he handed it to the widow, telling her to live where she could have fresh air and sunlight, to buy nourishing food and look after the little ones.
The doctor left that poverty-stricken place, his plain face so radiant with happiness that it seemed almost beautiful. He thought to himself, as he went along, that if Jaime had used some of this money for himself and had lived properly, he would not have died of consumption. “That devilish avarice!” he muttered. “A millionaire living and dying like a beggar in order not to spend his money. What is the good of money if it is not to spend?”
Suddenly two ideas flashed into his head. “Suppose this is stolen money! What if the bills are false?”
He stopped. The package fell from his hand.
“Sir, you have dropped something,” said a poor woman who was passing. The doctor picked up the bundle and, turning around, went home.
“Stolen or false,” he muttered grimly. “There is no other solution.”
The words and the ideas sounded in his ears, they hurt him, as if some one had struck him on the head with a hammer.
He reached his home, told his old servant that he would see no one, then changed his mind, sent the woman off on an errand, and shut himself up in his office.
The doctor had in his house two banknotes of a thousand pésétas (two hundred and fifty dollars) each.
“We will begin with the hypothesis that I can prove them false,” he said. He took out his own banknotes and laid them on the table; took another out of the package and placed it between the first two.