Nor was his task made the easier by the fact that Milo Standish had recovered from the momentary daze, and was slugging impartially at both the men who rolled and tossed on top of him.

This, for a short but excessively busy space of moments.  Then, wriggling free of Milo’s impeding and struggling bulk, Brice gained the throat-hold he sought.  Still holding to the ground the wrist of the knifehand, he dug his supple fingers deep into the man’s throat, disregarding such blows and kicks as he could not ward off.

There was science in his ferocious onslaught.  And his skilled fingers had found the windpipe and the carotid artery as well.  With such force as Brice was able to exert, the other’s breath was shut off, while he was all but paralyzed by the digging pressure into his carotid.

Such a grip is well understood by Japanese athletes, though its possibilities and method are unknown to the average Occidental.  Rightly applied, it is irresistible.  Carried to its conclusion, it spells sudden and agonizing death to its victim.

And Gavin Brice was carrying it to the conclusion, with all the sinew and science of his trained arms.

The knifer’s strength was gorilla-like.  But that strength, at every second, was rendered more and more futile.  The man must have realized it.  For, all at once, he ceased his battery of kicks and blows, and struggled frantically to tear free.

Each plunging motion merely intensified the pain and power of the relentless throat-grip that pinioned him.  And, strangling and panic-struck, he became wilder in his fruitless efforts to wrench loose.  Then, deprived of breath and with his nerve-centers shaken, he lost the power to strive.

It was the time for which Gavin had waited.  With perfect ease, now, he twisted the knife from the failing grasp, and, with his left hand, he reinforced the throat-grip of his right.  As he did so, he got his legs under him and arose, dragging upward with him the all but senseless body of his garroted foe.

It had been a pretty bit of work, from the start, and one upon which his monkey-faced Japanese jui-jutsu instructor would have lavished a grunt of approval.

He had conquered an armed and muscular enemy by his knowledge of anatomy and by applying the simple grip he had learned.  And now, the heaving half-dead murderer was at his mercy.

Gavin swung the feebly twitching body out, more fully into the streak of light from the house, noting, subconsciously that the light ray was twice as broad as before, by reason of the door’s standing open.

But, before he could concentrate his gaze on the man he held, he saw several million other things.  And all the several million were multi-hued stars and bursting bombs.

The entire universe seemed to have exploded and to have chosen the inside of his brain as the site for such annoying pyrotechnics.  Dully he was aware that his hands were loosening their death-grip and that his arms were falling to his sides.  Also, that his knees had turned to hot tallow and were crumbling, under him.