"You trouble me with interruptions. Who mentioned money? You shall not have a penny!"
"No?"
"The reward shall grow out of the work."
"And the work?"
"Is fighting."
At this Donnegan narrowed his eyes and searched the fat man thoroughly. It sounded like the talk of a charlatan, and yet there was a crispness to these sentences that made him suspect something underneath. For that matter, in certain districts his name and his career were known. He had never dreamed that that reputation could have come within a thousand miles of this part of the mountain desert.
"You should have told me in the first place," he said with some anger, "that you knew me."
"Mr. Donnegan, upon my honor, I never heard your name before my daughter uttered it."
Donnegan waited soberly.
"I despise charlatanry as much as the next man. You shall see the steps by which I judged you. When you entered the room I threw a strong light upon you. You did not blanch; you immediately walked straight into the shaft of light although you could not see a foot before you."