The Bearcat pushed his chair back from the table; he had no appetite for food and even less for their talk. He explained that he wanted to go back to his hotel. Charlie could not leave his friends and felt that Bearcat had had enough of his presence for that night. He hated to bear down on his fighter as he had done in that scene in the dressing room at the fight club, but he congratulated himself that he had flattened out the Babe in the nick of time.

The Bearcat went to his hotel. As soon as he was inside his room he rushed to the telephone and called the hotel where Malone was staying.

“Give me Joe Malone’s room.”

He waited.

“Hello, Joe? Bearcat. Babe there? No, I don’t want to talk. Just say I’ll be over. That’s right. S’long.”

The Bearcat paced up and down the carpet twice and then pulled open the bureau drawers. He took out the shirt that Babe liked best, the soft collar that she was partial to, and the tie that pleased her.

He got into his snappiest suit.

Charlie had irritated him, depressed him—always holding him down, disciplining him, caging him. He didn’t know just why but he actually dreaded Charlie, couldn’t be at ease with him any more—felt himself evading any talk with him. He disliked the contemptuous twist of Charlie’s mouth. All the things he had formerly admired and respected in Charlie he now questioned.

On the night of his big success when everything, every effort, should have been put forth to let him go loose a bit, give him a change from the bridle and checkrein, Charlie hands him a dirty humiliation before the girl he was crazy about, makin’ him a laughin’ stock in front of the reporters, mussin’ his dignity so he couldn’t talk. Now he was actually hating his manager.

Babe was okay in every way. She was for him because she liked him. His mind went back to that first night he had met her, and afterwards in the cab. He thought of her long warm kisses. He trembled. She was all right. And whatever Charlie said, contract or no contract, the fact was that she had coached him to his victory by instilling in him a profound confidence in himself. He had knocked out the toughest proposition Harlem could put up. He had brought down a savage. Now he was of some importance. He had the stuff of conquerors in him, and conquerors weren’t ruled like slaves, the way Charlie was trying to rule him. The Bearcat paled and gulped as he recalled the insult Charlie had hurled at Babe, and he had stood there dumb, not saying a word in defense of her honor.