When the cab drew into the curb in front of the cafe he added a tip to the fare that dispelled most of the driver's gloom. He got out, walked into the cafe as if he'd just decided while taking a stroll that the place looked all right, and so why should he stop to examine the three-dollar-minimum luncheon menu pasted to the window? He had an almost irrepressible impulse to tip the uniformed doorman too, just for the hell of it. He saw and recognized her quickly enough, because she'd told him what kind of hat she'd be wearing and there was only one woman in the place that went with the kind of voice he'd heard on the phone. It came as a distinct shock to him to discover that she wasn't alone. There was a man seated opposite her at the small table she'd chosen--or he had chosen for her--in a softly-lit recess on the left side of the cafe, about half-way to the back. He disliked the man straight off, without precisely knowing why. He was about forty-five, with slightly graying hair cut rather short, a bland, almost mild-mannered way of smiling and nodding as he talked, and features which were distinctly on the handsome side. He was wearing a tropical worsted suit of expensive weave--the kind of suit you couldn't purchase readymade anywhere for less than a hundred dollars and you knew it was custom-tailored. Three hundred dollars would probably have been a more likely estimate of what the suit had set the man back. He wore a small red carnation in his buttonhole which the July heat had not yet succeeded in wilting. Ralph became aware suddenly that she had raised her eyes and recognized him. But before he could respond with a nod and smile and draw closer to the table all of the blandness went out of her companion's face. His face hardened and an angry glint came into his eyes. He arose from the table, so angrily and abruptly that he overturned the chair he'd been sitting in. What he did then was totally outrageous, unheard of. He leaned across the table and slapped Helen Lathrup on the right cheek, putting such force into the blow that the _smack_ was audible to everyone in the cafe. There was complete silence for an instant; no one moved or spoke. Helen Lathrup sat rigid, an ugly redness suffusing the right side of her face from temple to throat. Then a woman gasped and a man muttered: "Why doesn't somebody kill the bastard?" It was exactly what Ralph felt like doing and he made no attempt to control the impulse. Helen Lathrup's escort had straightened on delivering the blow and was just starting to swing about when Ralph reached him, caught hold of his right arm, making the turn complete, and sent his fist crashing into the man's face. It was a nose-breaking kind of blow, aimed directly at the bastard's--he was certainly that!--nose and mouth and not at his jaw. Ralph didn't just want to drop him to the floor. He wanted to send him to the hospital. He thought he heard a cartilage crunch and splinter, but he couldn't be sure.