"Exactly. He's not such a fool as I am."
"Well?" There was an insolent rising inflection in Lilas's voice. "What are you going to do about it?"
Bob had prepared himself for some denial, for some pretense of ignorance, at least, and he was taken aback at this ready acceptance of his challenge. Something malevolent in her air increased his uneasiness. The girl was as hard as flint and seemed capable of any desperate action.
"You say you love Lorelei; you pretend to be grateful to me—"
As if the mere heat of his accusation had ignited her fury Lilas interrupted him angrily: "Oh, cut out that love-and-gratitude talk! I want money, do you understand? MONEY! You think I won't dare go through with this, and so does Merkle. You, neither of you, can understand why I'll take a chance on 'the chair' just to make you pay. Well, that's because you are men, and because you are healthy and happy and have something to live for. But what have I got? I'm sick. I'm going to pieces. I'll be gone in a few years if I don't get the coin. I've always fought and I've usually been licked, but I won't be licked this time. Men like you and John Merkle licked me—Why, I was licked before I had learned to fight back, and you taught me to hate you before I had put on long dresses."
"You know that's not true!" Bob cried, sharply. "You harmed men before they ever harmed you. You hated Jarvis Hammon, and yet he did more for you than any one in all your life; Merkle helped you, too, when you needed help, and so did I. Lorelei was your friend—"
"Bah! I haven't any friends; I never had any, and I don't want any now. Nobody ever did anything for me. You and John Merkle are going to pay me for what other men have put me through. Oh, come, I'm not bluffing! You're afraid to stand the gaff, but I'm not. I'm getting old. My looks are gone. Who's going to pay me if you don't? Who—" Lilas's voice, which has risen steadily, broke now, and she shook a clenched fist in Wharton's face. He saw that she had worked herself up into one of her abrupt, reasonless rages.
"I've got you!" she keened. "I can drag you and your sick wife, and Merkle, and those Hammon women out into the light, and I'll do it, too. I can make you all squirm, so let's get down to cases. There's millions of dollars among you, millions that were squeezed out of my kind of people; now I'm going to try my hand at squeezing. If I lose—very well. But I'll holler, and you'll have to stop my mouth or the world will hear. You don't dare holler."
"I'm glad you're in the open at last," Bob told her, roughly. "We'll see if Melcher is as desperate as—"
"To hell with Melcher!" screamed the girl. "He's a fool. He's scared already, but I'm not, and I'm the one to settle with, remember that." She was a-quiver now; her nerves, tortured from overstimulation, were jumping; but she felt a tremendous sense of power, together with a contemptuous disregard of consequences. "Go to Max, if you want to. Sound the alarm. Do anything you please," she mocked, "but get your pennies together or I'll bawl you out from the housetops."