“Very seldom. In my line of business you have, as a rule, to break or be broken hard. It’s a hard fight. I keep the rules of the ring. Sometimes they’re pretty liberally interpreted, but if you go too far, you get hustled out and disqualified. In this country the stakes are high, but I’ve been through the hardest training since I was a boy, and I’ve got to win.” He paused with a glance toward Aynsley. “Sounds pretty egotistical, doesn’t it? But I know my powers, and I can’t be stopped.”
His forceful air gave him a touch of dignity and redeemed the crude daring of his boast. Osborne looked at him curiously, but Miss Dexter felt half daunted. She thought his attitude grossly defiant; the inordinate pride he showed would bring its punishment.
“It sounds very rash,” she said. “You don’t know what you may have to contend with.”
Clay laughed harshly.
“I’ve some suspicion; but there comes a time, often after years of struggle, when a man knows he has only to hold on and win the game. Curious, isn’t it? But he does know, and sets his teeth as he braces himself for the effort that’s going to give him the prize.”
He spoke with vehemence, the color darkening in his face. Miss Dexter wondered whether the last glass of whisky and potass had gone to his head; but the flush suddenly faded and his lips turned blue. Osborne was the first to notice it. Jumping up, he grabbed Clay by the arms and shoved him toward the nearest chair. Clay fell into it heavily, and began fumbling at his vest pocket, but he soon let his hand drop in a nerveless manner. The next moment Aynsley was at his side. The hall was large, and the boy had been sitting some distance off, but he did not run and he made no noise. He had inherited his father’s swiftness of action, and Ruth, following in alarm, noticed the lithe grace of his movements. The girl’s impressions were, however, somewhat blurred, and it was not until afterward that the scene fixed itself vividly in her mind.
“Perhaps we’d better get the car out,” Aynsley said quickly. “We may want it if this is going to last.”
Osborne rang a bell and there was silence for a few moments while they waited, uncertain what to do. Clay’s face was livid and his eyes were half shut. He seemed unconscious of their presence, and they imagined that he was struggling against the weakness that was mastering him. His lips were tight set, his brows knit, and his hand was firmly clenched. Osborne gave an order to a servant, who immediately disappeared, and then Clay’s tense pose relaxed. He sank back in the chair, loose and limp, as if all power had suddenly gone out of him.
The change was more startling to those watching than the first attack. They had long known his strength and resolution; but now he lay inert, with head falling forward, a bulky, flaccid figure, suddenly stripped of everything that had made him feared. He was grotesque in his helplessness, and Ruth had a curious feeling that there was something unfitting, almost indecent, in their watching him. It appeared, however, that he was conscious, for when Osborne held a glass to his lips he feebly moved his head in refusal, and his slack fingers began to fumble at the pocket again.
“There’s something he wants there!” Ruth said sharply. “Perhaps it’s something he ought to take!”