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.
The man made no attempt to fight back, to defend himself in any way. However much he may have wanted to do so, he was clearly incapable of it.
The blow had stunned him. He swayed for the barest instant, back and forth like a marionette on a wire that had gone suddenly slack, and then his knees gave way, and he crashed to the floor and rolled over on his face.
Ralph stood very still for an instant staring down at him, almost equally stunned but feeling a hot surge of triumph pulsing upward through his chest, rising to his brain, half-intoxicating him.