CHAPTER XXXI
WHEN OLD FOES GET TOGETHER
But Clifford dared wait no longer for his reinforcements—and he dared not shoot, with Mary standing between him and his most-desired target, Bradley. He sprang through the curtains, his automatic in his right hand, and swung his left fist mightily just beneath the ear of the unsuspecting Slim Harrison, who went down like a dead man.
“Look out!” shrilled Loveman, loosening Mary’s arm.
Bradley whirled about, instinctively holding Mary before him, from whose shoulders the unloosened cloak was falling, and from whose face the as yet unknotted veil fell away.
“Come on, boys,” Clifford cried, as if to a squad behind him. “Guard the front door, and round up the whole bunch!”
“Beat it through the basement!” Bradley roared to the others. And at the same instant he hurled Mary straight at the on-coming Clifford. As she struck Clifford, Bradley leaped upon him and knocked his pistol flying from his hand, and then, brushing Mary aside with a powerful sweep, he grappled Clifford in his bear-like arms. The two men went swaying heavily. Clifford had a brief vision of the others staring on nonplussed—then they were gone, and he and Bradley were alone, except for the limp Harrison on the floor.
“So it was all a bluff—those others!” Bradley snarled at him. Exultant triumph gleamed in his malignant face. “God, I been waiting—long enough for this—but I’m going to get you at last!”
Clifford tried to struggle free: Mary must have been taken by those others, and his every impulse called on him to pursue. But there was no breaking the clutch of those mighty, hate-hungry arms. He tried only to struggle defensively, hoping for the appearance of Jimmie Kelly—but in a few moments he realized that if he merely tried to hold his own against this maddened antagonist he would swiftly be a defeated man—and that once beaten down he would be maimed to the exhaustion of Bradley’s fury. And then he realized and accepted this for what it was and what it had to be: it was that “next time” for which Bradley had often wished—the “time” which between these two old enemies there was no avoiding.
This splendid dining-room had in its time looked upon many strange scenes, but never had it looked upon such a scene as that which followed. In each man—hostile always, and super-enemies since Clifford had driven Bradley from the Police Department by the exposure of his criminal practices—was the same supreme desire to destroy the other, destroy him physically—to crush him utterly with infuriated muscles. Grappling each other they went staggering about the great muted room. The table, with its champagne glasses, its silver-and-glass épergne of terraced fruit, went toppling over. The next moment a splendid if incongruous buhl cabinet was a wreck and its ostentatious exhibit of cut-glass was a thousand fragments upon the floor. And still the two men-beasts swayed about in their destructive fury.
A minute of this mad straining of muscle against muscle, and that part of Clifford’s rage which was unbridled madness disappeared—though the rage itself remained. His head began to clear. He perceived that in such an animal-like struggle as this he was foredoomed: Bradley was the heavier and had the greater strength. So he began to try to break free: if he could change this to a fight with fists, and could keep Bradley at arm’s length, there would be a different tale, for he knew himself Bradley’s superior at boxing. But Bradley also knew this and clung unbreakingly on: his was the art of the New York policeman who has risen from the “gas-house district”—an art in which no practice that will maim or win is barred. He kicked fiercely at Clifford’s shins; he tried to drive his knee up into Clifford’s stomach; suddenly bending his own body inwardly into an arc, he as suddenly contracted his gorilla-like arms, with the intent to disable his enemy, caught unawares—perhaps break his back; and he closed a huge hand upon Clifford’s face as though it would strip the features from the skull—and only removed that awful grip when Clifford sunk his teeth into the heel of the palm.