"No."
"Of course not. What's the matter with Max is he's afraid the others will think he was in on it too, that Dan was putting his dough down as well as mine. Well, that's his hard luck. He can go climb trees for all I care, the lousy little runt. Another drink would go good."
She poured another for herself and for me. Rolff hadn't touched his first one. He said, still staring at the brown bottle:
"You can hardly expect him to be hilarious about it."
The girl scowled and said disagreeably:
"I can expect anything I want. And he's got no right to talk to me that way. He doesn't own me. Maybe he thinks he does, but I'll show him different." She emptied her glass, banged it on the table, and twisted around in her chair to face me. "Is that on the level about your having ten thousand dollars of Elihu Willsson's money to use cleaning up the city?"
"Yeah."
Her bloodshot eyes glistened hungrily.
"And if I help you will I get some of the ten—?"
"You can't do that, Dinah." Rolff's voice was thick, but gently firm, as if he were talking to a child. "That would be utterly filthy."
The girl turned her face slowly toward him. Her mouth took on the look it had worn while talking to Thaler.
