Suitably impressed, Speed offers to become Chaney's manager, but Chaney cautions Speed that he needs only enough money to "fill a few in-betweens" before moving on.
Speed recruits the genteel but slightly decrepit cutman, Poe (Strother Martin), "a dyed in the wool hophead" whose spell at medical school many years before was cut short, Poe confesses, due to his fondness for opium.