"Cornered!" exclaimed the Devil. "Why you grandstander, you! Even while facing me, you can blow your horn to your wife! What a phony. Maybe it's time she got a real break...."
Joe Emerald threw his gun carefully and swiftly through the air, and as the Devil ducked it neatly, he hurled his six-foot-one of well-trained muscle and bone at the hairy figure. They came together with a crash, and for an instant the Devil reeled back.
"If it's force you want," snarled Joe, "maybe I'm not unversed in its application. Ever seen any jiu jitsu?"
"Invented it," said the Devil, evading a hold, and applying one of his own. Joe whirled through the air and went to the concrete floor with a crash. But he was up in an instant, his hurtling body cracked into the Devil's knees, and both went down in a heap. In an instant they were thrashing around in a violent tangle of arms and legs. Joe crashed a fist home into the Devil's mid-section, and the Devil grunted. Then a back-handed slap from the Devil's hand rattled the teeth in Joe's skull. Brilliant lights danced before his eyes. Instantly the Devil threw his hairy body atop Joe's and bore him back, both shoulders flat against the floor. A taloned claw gripped his throat, and began to squeeze. Joe thrashed around, but he could not throw off the Devil's weight, which seemed to increase immensely by the second.
"Great help, the knowledge of how to increase gravity," observed the Devil, tightening his grasp on Joe's throat. "As soon as consciousness leaves you, I'll make the transference, and then we'll chain you by your own dog's collar and leave you here."
Joe Emerald thrashed wildly, but the lights in the basement began to grow dim as his wind was cut off. Despair swept over him in a wave as black as the approaching unconsciousness.
There was a dull thud, a groan, and the grip on his throat lessened, fell away altogether. In a whirling haze of black, he heard a mumble, "Women ... always bruising my head...."
Then Pearl was bending over him, sobbing, lifting him, shaking him wildly.
"Get up, Joe!" she begged. "Please get up. I've knocked him out with the snow shovel."