The amount of money I owe is really something shocking.

Even what is in the safe"-- he nodded to a large affair on the other side of the room--"belongs to somebody else." Rosenheim had been through this same performance hundreds of times before, but not with the same denouement.
Suddenly he saw a lean young man, with hollow cheeks and blazing eyes, leap over the brass railing.

In another instant horny hands grasped him firmly by the windpipe and a voice hissed in his ear: "Pay me those judgments or I'll strangle you here and now!" With bursting veins and protruding tongue he struggled helplessly to escape as his assailant dragged him toward the safe.
"I mean what I say!" half shrieked Peters.

"I'm starving! I'd as lief die one way as another; but before I die you'll pay up those judgments--every cent!" Rosenheim was on his knees now before the safe, his eyes starting from his head.
"Open the safe!" commanded Peters.
Rosenheim, the sweat of death on his brow, fumbled with the combination; the tumbler caught, the door swung open.

Peters lifted his captive enough to permit him to reach in and take out the bills.
"Count 'em out!" he ordered.
Rosenheim did as he was told, shaking with fear.