"You!" he exclaimed, with a boiling over of contemptuous rage. "You damned baboon!"
The words had sent Wellver, like the force of uncoiled springs, vaulting over the table, and his face had gone paste-white. Yet as he landed on the far side he halted and drew himself rigidly straight, though to keep his arms inactive at his sides he had to tense every sinew from wrist to shoulder, until each fibre ached with the cramp of repression. He had caught himself on the brink of murder lust, with the murder fog in his eyes. He had caught himself and now he held himself with a desperate sense of need, though he saw Morgan's fingers close over the stock of a heavy revolver. He even smiled briefly as he noted that it was a gun with an elegant pearl grip.
"If any other man of God's earth had fathered you," he said, each word coming separately like the drippings from an icicle, "I'd prove that I wasn't only a baboon but a gorilla—and I'd prove it by pulling the snobbish head off of your damned, tailor-made shoulders. People don't generally say things like that to me and go free."
Morgan too was pallid with anger, and in neither of them was any tragedy-averting possibility of faltering courage. Wallifarro held the pistol before him, and gave back a step—only one, and that one not in retreat but in order that he might have a chance to speak before he was forced to fire.
"I realize perfectly," he said, "that physically I'd be helpless in your hands. I'm as much your inferior in brute strength as—as mentally and socially—you are—mine. I don't want to take any advantage of you—it seems that we have to fight.—I'm waiting for you to draw."
He paused there, breathing heavily, and Boone stood unmoving, his hands still at his sides.
"I'm not armed," he said, and now he had recovered a less strained composure. "Why should I come with a gun on me when a gentleman of high social standing invites me to his office?"
"You're quibbling," Morgan burst out with a fresh access of fury. "You've given me the right to demand satisfaction. You've got a pistol in your desk there, haven't you?"
"Maybe so. Why do you ask? Isn't one gun enough for you when your man's unarmed?"
"Great God," shouted the Colonel's son, "are you trying to goad me into insanity? You are going to need one sorely in a moment. I give you fair warning. I'm tired of waiting. Will you arm yourself?"