The lift of his hand and the grasp with which Tom caught the wrist were simultaneous. Slipping the key into his pocket, Tom brought his other hand into play, throwing the lighter-built fellow out of his path with a toss which sent him back against the desk. Maddened by this insult to his person, Tad picked up the inkstand on the desk, hurling it at Tom's head. The inkstand grazed his ear, but went smash against the wall, spattering the new wallpaper with a great blob of ink. Guy groaned, with some wild objurgation. To escape from the room Tom had turned his back, when a blow from an uplifted chair caught him between the shoulders. Wheeling, he wrenched the chair from the hands of Spit Castle, chucked it aside and dealt the young man a stinger that brought the blood from the tapir nose. All blind rage by this time, he caught the weedy youth's head under his right arm, pounding the face with his left fist till he felt the body sagging from his hold. He let it go. Spit fell on the sofa, which was spattered with blood, as the wallpaper with ink. Startled at the sight of the limp form, he stood for a second looking down at it, when his skull seemed crashed from behind. Staggering back, he thought he was going to faint, but the sight of Tad aiming another thump at him, straight between the eyes, revived him to berserker fury. He sprang like a lion on an antelope.
Strong and agile on his side, Tad was stiff to resistance. Before the sheer weight of Tom's body he yielded an inch or two, but not more. Freeing his left hand, as he bent backward, he dealt Tom a bruising blow on the temple. Tom disregarded it, pinning Tad's left arm as he had already pinned the right. His object now was to get the boy down, to force him to his knees. It was a contest of brutal strength. When it came to brutal strength the advantage was with the bigger frame, the muscles toughened by work. The fight was silent now, nearly motionless. Slowly, slowly, as iron gives way to the man with the force to bend it, Tad was coming down. His feet were twisted under him, with no power to right themselves. Two pairs of eyes, strangely alike, glared at each other, like the eyes of frenzied wild animals. Tad gave a quick little groan.
"O God, my leg's breaking."
Tom was not touched. "Damn you, let it break!"
Pressed, pressed, pressed downward, Tad was sinking by a fraction of an inch each minute. The strength above him was pitiless. Except for the running of water in the bathroom, where Guy had dragged Spit Castle to wash his nose, there was no sound in the room but the long hard pantings, now from Tad's side, now from Tom's. In the intervals neither seemed to breathe.
"GET UP, I TELL YOU"
Suddenly Tad collapsed, and went down. Tom came on top of him. The heavier having the lighter fastened by arms and legs, the two lay like two stones. The faces were so near together that they could have kissed. Their long protruding eyebrows brushed each other's foreheads. The weight of Tom's bulk squeezed the breath from his foe, as a bear squeezes it with a hug. Nothing was left to Tad but resistance of the will. Of that, too, Tom meant to get the better.
The words were whispered from one mouth into the other. "Do you know what I'm going to do with you?"