“Twenty.” His hand still nervously brushed at his forehead. “Twenty-five.”
Her laugh rippled through the room. It was low and coolly disdainful, but it seemed to Billy Kane, standing by the mantel, tight-lipped, watching the scene, that it held, too, a queer, underlying, tremulous note.
Dayler wet his lips.
“Thirty-five.”
“That paper is the only thing that will save you,” she explained monotonously. “Is money any good to you—unless you live?”
It was Dayler who laughed now, but it was hysterically. His hands would not remain still. He had let his head alone now, and, instead, kept laying his hands on the table in front of him, by turns opening and clenching them, and they left damp prints on the top of the table.
“Fifty—I—I’ll make it fifty thousand dollars,” he whispered.
She shook her head.
“My God!” It was a helpless cry. Dayler stretched out his arms imploringly. “You don’t understand! It’s not easy for me to get even that amount. I’m not worth what you think I am. I—I’ve gone the limit.”
Her voice was still monotonous.