enough ahead when they were going to call the strike off. Could you take that info and some capital to the stock market and do yourself some good playing with the company’s stock? You bet you could!” she wound up triumphantly. “So don’t go around thinking that Bill didn’t pay his way.”
“You’ve been spoiled,” I said.
“What in the name of God’s the use of being so tight?” she demanded. “It’s not like it had to come out of your pocket. You’ve got an expense account, haven’t you?”
I didn’t say anything. She frowned at me, at the run in her stocking, and at Rolff. Then she said to him:
“Maybe he’d loosen up if he had a drink.”
The thin man got up and went out of the room.
She pouted at me, prodded my shin with her toe, and said:
“It’s not so much the money. It’s the principle of the thing. If a girl’s got something that’s worth something to somebody, she’s a boob if she doesn’t collect.”
I grinned.
“Why don’t you be a good guy?” she begged.
Dan Rolff came in with a siphon, a bottle of gin, some lemons, and a bowl of cracked ice. We had a drink apiece. The lunger went away. The girl and I wrangled over the money question while we had more drinks. I kept trying to keep the conversation on Thaler and Willsson. She kept switching it to the money she deserved. It went on that way until the gin bottle was empty. My watch said one-fifteen.