Dorothy straightened her lithe figure.
"Not a thing," she shrugged. Then musingly, "So you're a wrestler, eh?"
"Sure--what did yer think I was--a gigolo?"
Dorothy giggled. "Know this hold?" she asked casually.
And then a startling thing occurred--especially startling to the unsuspecting Mike. There was a flash of brown-sweatered arms, a swirl of darker brown hair and Mike felt himself gripped by one elbow and the side of his neck. He knew the hold, had practiced it in gymnasium, but not for some years. To be seized violently thus aroused the man and it brought an instinctive muscular reaction which was assisted by a stab of pain as Dorothy's thumb sank upon the nerve which is called the "funny bone."
Yes, Mike knew the hold, and how to break it and recover; so as Dorothy swirled him backward onto the table with uncanny strength, he pivoted. Then, clutching her under her arms, he clasped his hands just beneath her shoulder blades, bearing downward with his head against her chest. It was a back-breaking grip, but her slender form twisted in his arms as though he had been trying to hold a revolving shaft. An arm slipped over his shoulder, a hand fastened on his wrist and began to tug it slowly upward with the deliberate strength of a low-geared safe hoist. Then the other hand, stealing around him, encircled the middle finger of his clasped hand and began to force it back--a jiu jitsu trick. If he resisted, the finger would be broken. To release his clasp would mean a probable dislocation of the other arm.
Mike realized that he had to do not only with a phenomenally strong girl, but with a skilled and practiced exponent of Oriental wrestling tricks. He was by no means ignorant of this school, and countered the attack in the proper technical way--with utter relaxation for the moment--a supple yielding, followed by a swift offensive. Though he was broader of shoulder and heavier, the two were nearly of equal height, possibly of equal strength, but of a different sort. Mike's was slower, but enduring; Dorothy's more that of the panther--swift, high of innervation, but incapable of sustained tension.
Such maneuvers as immediately followed in this curious combat were startling. Mike felt that he was struggling with an opponent far more skilled than himself in jiu jitsu, one trained to the last degree in the scientific application of the levers and fulcrums by which minimum force might achieve maximum results in the straining of ligaments and paralysis of muscles.
And to give him his due, for all his bluff about striking her with the gun on the way up to the house, Mike had some decent instincts beneath his roughness. Whereas he was striving to overcome without permanently injuring the girl, Dorothy had no such qualms. She was fighting with deliberate intention of putting him out of the running, for at least such time as would permit her to carry out her plans for escape.
But for a time Mike's efforts were purely defensive, his object to save himself from disgraceful defeat. What would the gang say if she bested him, a professional wrestler, and make her getaway?