Babe was busy, too, during the period of the Bearcat’s absence. The buyers were in town and she permitted herself to be taken to theaters and night clubs by them and enjoyed herself thoroughly. However, she allowed them no undue intimacy with her, beyond a few kisses, and for the pleasure of her company the buyers were glad to reward her with various sums of money before they left town. She had brought Goldstein a great deal of business and he was grateful. Her financial condition had so improved that she moved to the Hotel Europe in 49th Street, two days before the Bearcat came home. With the Bearcat’s two hundred she had replenished her wardrobe, and she now began to feel almost prosperous.

When the Bearcat came home, the winner of the Buffalo fight and the richer by thirty-five hundred dollars, Babe saw him every day. They went to the movies, to dinner; and Babe went up to see the Bearcat at the gym when he tipped her off that Charlie would not be present.

But Charlie was not a manager who could be kept in the dark long about what his fighter was up to outside of training hours. He watched every movement of the Bearcat without the fighter knowing that his manager was mentally shadowing him.

At breakfast, over their ham and eggs, Charlie could tell by the brisk way the Bearcat dug into his food and the happy tone of his conversation that he had seen Babe Gordon. At supper when the Bearcat was silent and preoccupied and hurried his food, Charlie knew that he had an appointment with Babe for the movies. He knew by the shoe-shine, the freshly pressed suit, the favorite necktie, two hair-trims a week instead of one, the increasing intensity of Bearcat’s interest in this tart—an interest that would ultimately ruin him. Charlie was too shrewd to read the riot act to Bearcat on the eve of the fight in which he was to meet Harlem Joe Hastings. He knew the importance of the morale that time and again had won victory, when the body seemed doomed to defeat.

He knew that Babe was coming up to the gym the days he was downtown, and Charlie was determined to break up the affair, but he must wait for the right moment. He arranged with the girl at the switchboard of the hotel to tell him all the appointments Bearcat made with Babe.