The journalist sent out to a store for a pasteboard horse, and when the doctor called to see him, the sick man said:—
“This is the only horse I can afford.”
Of course, he plainly showed his insanity by this act, but Doctor Santos did not look upon it in that light. He begged the man’s pardon for having advised him to buy what he could not afford.
A little later, he visited a widow with three children. She was young and pretty; her husband had been a sculptor of some talent. He was not rich, but he had earned enough to support his family decently. He died and for the first year the wife managed to live fairly well, by dint of great economy. The second year, the widow sold her husband’s art treasures; the third year, she lived on the gifts of relatives and friends, which gave out before the fourth year, and the family went from the second floor to the garret, from wholesome food to scanty scraps, from warm clothing to rags. Last of all came sickness.
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.
“They must have been stolen,” he said, “for all three are alike, the same block, the same print.”
He turned them over, they were exactly alike. Well, there was nothing to be done but to advertise and await the rightful owner, and he would have to word the advertisement so that every Spaniard in the country should not appear to claim the money.
He took a magnifying glass and began to make methodical observations. First, the paper, its quality, its transparency; then the engravings; the letters, letter by letter, the signatures. But even with the help of the glass, which magnified the size six or eight times, he could detect no difference between the bills.
“From whom could Jaime have stolen them? Had blood been shed on account of those bits of paper? Had Jaime robbed the government or a bank?”
The doctor thought and thought. He studied, with the aid of a glass, every detail, even the smallest.
“Is it possible,” he exclaimed, “that each one can be so perfect? They have been stolen, undoubtedly stolen,” he said, at the end of a quarter of an hour of close observation. Ten times, already, he had compared the numeration, but he turned again to look at it.
“They all look alike,” he said again, but when he took away the crystal he doubted the certainty of his own vision. He brought out a delicate compass and measured the numbers of his old bills. He placed the compass on the new, there was absolutely no difference.
He was not satisfied with the length alone, but he even measured the width of the lines.
“They have been stolen,” he repeated mechanically. Then, as if answering himself, he spoke slowly:—
“Where could he have stolen them? No, they are counterfeit, false, false. Ah, thou Catalan rogue, who art in the infernal regions. I hope that thou art making false notes with thy skin of Barrabas!”
“I have learned the secret,” thought the doctor. “There is no doubt of it.”
He still looked exclusively at the numbers, the false ones looked larger, they really were not, but as the lines were more delicate, it made the ciphers look larger.
“Those poor people are now in prison,” said Doctor Santos sorrowfully. “They have denounced me and the police will shortly come to arrest me, and no one will believe they were ever given to me!”
He raised the stove cover. “No, that won’t do. The embers and ashes will remain. They can smell the smoke and burnt paper.”
The doctor had a dove-cot: a dove just then lighted on the window sill. A bright idea came to him. He took two tin boxes—such as are used for cut tobacco—and stuffed them both full with bank notes, climbed up to the dove-cot and looked through the garret window. No one could see him. He raised some tiles and hid the boxes, then covered them up, leaving all as it was before. Breathing heavily, his heart thumping furiously, he descended the staircase which led to the second floor and dropping into a chair, opened a huge volume which he held before his face, while he tried to recover his usual composure.
If he had been surprised and arrested, the inspector would have noticed that the book was upside down, the two old bills, with the magnifying glass and compass, were still on the table, and that the lappels and sleeves of his coat were covered with earth and whitewash.
After several hours had passed, the old servant had returned, and as no one else had appeared, the doctor began to think that perhaps the bills had not yet been changed and, by virtue of such a supposition, he hurried to the widow’s house with the pious intention of substituting one of his old bank notes in place of the supposed false one. The bill had been changed; the widow and her children were having a little party in honor of their great good luck. They were not alone, as they generally were, but had asked several of their friends to share their joy. They were so profuse in their expressions of gratitude that the good old doctor did not know what to say nor how to explain his sudden return.
“Now be sure you take a room where you can have sunlight and give the children a dose of castor oil,” he said as he hurried away.
Doctor Santos did not recover his usual composure for a long time. He seemed taciturn although he continued in his accustomed mode of living. After a while, however, he became more like himself.
The cabinet maker, for whom the doctor had obtained a lucrative position, wished to make a public manifestation of his gratitude, but the doctor forbade him to even mention that he had received help. Nevertheless, it was murmured continually, that Doctor Santos, on account of his relations with persons of high rank, had given many a one a modest pension, while he had restored others to health by giving to them the money to procure a change of climate and a much needed rest.
Notwithstanding his friends of high rank, the doctor still lived in his modest apartment and had moreover, dismissed his only servant. He now took his meals at a neighboring tavern. He still kept the dove-cot, and he had bought an expensive therapeutical apparatus and costly instruments. He had a laboratory and a fine medical library.
He earned enough and he had innumerable friends who gave him money to help cases of true necessity, owing to his fame of discerning where