The bulky youth put out a hand and stopped her. “I’ll fix him,” he said, “the bastard.” He adjusted his coat-collar to his neck, pulled the front of his coat down, and stalked off the dance-floor to face Ned Beaumont. “What’s the idea?” he demanded. “What’s the idea of talking to the little lady like that?”
Ned Beaumont, staring soberly at the youth, stretched his right arm out to the side and laid his hand palm-up on the bar. “Give me something to tap him with, Jimmy,” he said. “I don’t feel like fist-fighting.”
One of the bar-tender’s hands was already out of sight beneath the bar. He brought it up holding a small bludgeon and put the bludgeon in Ned Beaumont’s hand. Ned Beaumont let it lie there while he said: “She gets called a lot of things. The last guy I saw her with was calling her a dumb cluck.”
The youth drew himself up straight, his eyes shifting from side to side. He said: “I won’t forget you and some day me and you will meet when there’s nobody around.” He turned on his heel and addressed Lee Wilshire. “Come on, let’s blow out of this dump.”
“Go ahead and blow,” she said spitefully. “I’ll be God-damned if I’m going with you. I’m sick of you.”
A thick-bodied man with nearly all gold teeth came up and said: “Yes you will, the both of you. Get.”
Ned Beaumont laughed and said: “The–uh–little lady’s with me, Corky.”
Corky said, “Fair enough,” and then to the youth: “Outside, bum.”
The youth went out.
Lee Wilshire had returned to her table. She sat there with her cheeks between her fists, staring at the cloth.
Ned Beaumont sat down facing her. He said to the waiter: “Jimmy’s got a Manhattan that belongs to me. And I want some food. Eaten yet, Lee?”
“Yes,” she said without looking up. “I want a silver fizz.”
Ned Beaumont said: “Fine. I want a minute steak with mushrooms, whatever vegetable Tony’s got that didn’t come out of a can, some lettuce and tomatoes with Roquefort dressing, and coffee.”
When the waiter had gone Lee said bitterly: “Men are no good, none of them. That big false alarm!” She began to cry silently.
“Maybe you pick the wrong kind,” Ned Beaumont suggested.
“You should tell me that,” she said, looking up angrily at him, “after the lousy trick you played me.”
“I didn’t play you any lousy trick,” he protested. “If Bernie had to hock your pretties to pay back the money he’d gypped me out of it wasn’t my fault.”
The orchestra began to play.
“Nothing’s ever a man’s fault,” she complained. “Come on and dance.”
“Oh, all right,” he said reluctantly.
When they returned to the table his cocktail and her fizz were there.
“What’s Bernie doing these days?” he asked as they drank.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since he got out and I don’t want to see him. Another swell guy! What breaks I’ve been getting this year! Him and Taylor and this bastard!”
“Taylor Henry?” he asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t have much to do with him,” she explained quickly, “because that’s while I was living with Bernie.”
Ned Beaumont finished his cocktail before he said: “You were just one of the girls who used to meet him in his Charter Street place now and then.”
“Yes,” she said, looking warily at him.
He said: “I think we ought to have a drink.”
She powdered her face while he caught their waiter’s attention and ordered their drinks.
4
The door-bell awakened Ned Beaumont. He got drowsily out of bed, coughing a little, and put on kimono and slippers. It was a few minutes. after nine by his alarm-clock. He went to the door.
Janet Henry came in apologizing. “I know it’s horribly early, but I simply couldn’t wait another minute. I tried and tried to get you on the phone last night and hardly slept a wink because I couldn’t. All of Father’s sticks are there. So, you see, he lied.”
“Has he got a heavy rough brown one?”
“Yes, that’s the one Major Sawbridge brought him from Scotland. He never uses it, but it’s there.” She smiled triumphantly at Ned Beaumont.