"Now, Mr. Man," she said, "you just dare to lay a finger on me, or to try to get this money back, and I'll _yell_. Jean the cook is sleeping just overhead, and she'd be down here before you could say 'Jack Robi'son'." At the change that came over Harrison's face, Daisy let loose the laugh that had been bobbing at her lips ever since the beginning of the encounter. She laughed until she sank into a chair helpless. She knew that Harrison had had the theory most men of his type held, that a man need only force a girl up to a certain point and her own answering passion would do the rest. She laughed so hard that she missed the gradations by which Sir Thomas Harrison passed from lust to wrath. When, finally, she straightened from her paroxysm, he was leaning forward, elbow on table, his chin thrust out ready for speech, and on his face a sneer--such a sneer!--Daisy had never imagined even Harrison could look so ugly! "So-me little schemer!" he slid, out of the side of his mouth. Words came easily enough now. "But don't think you win--oh, no-o! D'ye know what I'm going to do, if you don't hand over that money?" "Oh," Daisy stood up, tilting her head aside, and dimpling, "the money is all that's bothering you now, is it? I thought maybe you were going to say you were sorry." "I'm mighty sorry," Harrison snarled, "that you got that good money in your thief's fist. That's all I'm sorry about. But, as I say, you're going to hand it over, an' you're a-going to hand it over quick. D'ye hear!" "I hear," said the girl, "and I'm going to show _you_ something now. Here's all I care for your dirty money." With these words, and before Harrison, watching in bewilderment, realized what she intended to do, Daisy Nixon lifted the lid of the big kitchen gas and coal range, thrust the roll of bills into the coals, and gave it a quick stab with the poker. A fifteen-hundred dollar flame leaped up at the same moment as Harrison, with a sound like a lion's coughing roar, leaped up too. Words failed him for several seconds, as he stood above the transient fire-flicker, with its heart of worthless ashes. "Well," he said, at length, in a level hard snarl, "now I _am_ goin' to fix you, you low-life heifer. You could 'a stopped me before by handin' over the money, and I'd have let the matter drop. But now I'm goin' to lay information against you for stealin' that money--see? I'm a-goin to have you arrested--see? I got the pull an' the infloo'nce in this town for to do it," the contractor thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his vest, "and you--who are you? Nobody, nobody! Still, I may be easy with you yet, if--"