Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/147

Rh and stood beside him. Jules Monroe followed, an odd smile on his thin lips.

"You'd better lay off the liquor, Gracey," he warned.

"It'll make you do things you can't get away with on Broadway."

"What do you mean?" Howard asked. The dimly lighted barroom, walls lined with glossy black leather, was crowded.

"He got tight the night Dick Carter went on his bat."

"I did what?" Ken demanded in astonished anger.

"I can't say what you did, Kenneth," Monroe smiled. "Anyone who pimped in Tia Juana for two years is likely to—"

"You're wrong, Jules," Howard interrupted. "I know the truth about Ken—"

"He was a pimp. Leon Shaw says so."

In a swift complex of motion, bodies shifting, epithets spat from angry lips, Howard moved like a battering ram through the knot of men who surrounded Jules and Ken. He struck the director with bare knuckles. Jules flushed scarlet, then became livid. He stumbled. Some one held Howard's arm. Jules was helped into the men's room. His nose was bleeding.

"You shouldn't have bothered. I was the injured party," Ken said to Howard.

"What hurts you, hurts me." He was trembling from excitement. He turned to Frankie Regan. "Take Monroe home." He handed the chorus boy a twenty-dollar bill. "Come, Ken, with me."

"It's all so amusing," Ken said. "Your defense of me and my morals."