Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/145

 said, first thing. I've been waiting for you all night. Let's go."

"Go?" said Russell, bracing himself back against his door and otherwise not moving. There was a trick somewhere, he was sure; this smaller, more lightly built man, of refined face and bearing, was going to cripple him first, Russell thought; either by shooting him or holding him helpless with the revolver while he did what he planned.

"Go, I said," Gregg repeated. "If I wanted just to beat you up, I had all night to do it in." He slipped off his overcoat and suit coat together and dropped them on the floor, his hands coming out bare and clenched.

Russell saw that and lunged forward to catch him at that instant; this Mowbry, Russell thought, had made a slip and for a second was unprepared, having lost hold of the revolver. Probably he expected Gregg to sidestep and dodge. But Gregg did just the opposite thing. As Russell came, he stepped toward him and came up under and inside Russell's arm and caught him with right fist full on the jaw.

It was a harder blow than the one, like it, which had dropped Hershy; it was hard as Gregg could hit. But it did not drop Russell. It did not even send him back; it stopped him, confused him for the instant in which Gregg stepped free from the clench of Russell's big arms and recognized that he had a job before him even bigger than he had thought.

"You ," said Russell and spit. Gregg rushed him, hit his face once, hit his wind and got knuckles on his own head,—the left side of the head and then the right; in the neck; then, when he saw Russell start to rush, Gregg gave way.