Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/149

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THE BREATH OF SCANDAL
139

as he hugged to Russell's leg and held on. Then Russell began going down; his other leg went out from under him; for a dizzy, spinning instant, Gregg grabbed to nothing which had any support; they were going out the car door together, Gregg thought; and he closed his eyes, waiting the crush of them together beside the rails. Then Russell came down on the car floor and Gregg crept up on him, pulling himself within the car again. Russell was the weaker one now; Russell was the dizzier one; for he'd come down and banged his head on the car floor.

Gregg got up and stood over him. "Get up!" he said; and Russell got up; and, as he reached his feet, Gregg struck him and knocked him to the left; struck him with all his strength and knocked him to the right.

"Get up!" Gregg threatened him again; and Russell got up; for he would have murdered Gregg; he had tried to kill him; and he could imagine nothing but that, if he lay there, this Mowbry, friend of Charles Hale, would kill him. So, on the right side of his head and then on the jaw on the left, Gregg gave it to him again. "Get up!"

Gregg never quite knocked him "out"; perhaps he could not have done it even now, so stubborn and enduring was Russell's strength; but he was not trying to; he knocked him down a dozen times that he counted and then he kept on punishing him while Russell, still sure that he meant to kill him, kept coming up to fight; so Gregg pounded and cut and beat him—"beat him up," as men say—till Russell at last, though still conscious, was helpless and done, utterly finished. Gregg himself was almost as exhausted.

It was an unforgettable, bloody business, at the end of which Russell lay flat on the floor of the car, his