Call for the Saint (12 page)

She followed his gaze.

There was no hint of coquetry in the eyes of the black-haired girl. There was something in them quite different-a swift glow of gratitude tempered by an anxiety that shadowed her clear elfin beauty. Then she turned away. Pat smiled with feline sweetness.

“I see. How nice of her to think you might need some excitement!”

Hoppy’s porcine eyes blinked.

“Boss, ain’t she de Champ’s girl friend?”

“So I’ve heard.” Simon smiled and blew a large smoke ring that rose lethargically over the seat in front of him and settled about the bald pate of its occupant like a pale blue halo.

A scattered burst of cheering greeted Torpedo Smith’s entrance into the ring.

“Shouldn’t you be more careful about picking your leading ladies?” Pat inquired with saccharin concern.

“I have to face the hazards of my profession,” Simon exclaimed, with a glint of scapegrace mockery in his blue eyes. “But there may be some excitement at that-although I don’t mean what you’re thinking, darling.”

The memory of Connie’s visit, her confused plea for him to see the fight, lingered in his mind like the memory of strange music, a siren measure awakening an old familiar chill, prescient and instinctive, warning of danger that was no less perilous because it was as yet unknown.

The crowd broke into a thunderous roar.

“It’s de Angel!” Hoppy proclaimed. “He’s climbin’ in de ring!”

The current sensation of the leather-pushing profession was indeed mounting the punch podium. He squeezed his hogshead torso between the ropes; and as he straightened up the Saint saw that the mask was really nothing more than a black beanbag that fitted over his small potato head with apertures for eye, nose, and mouth, and fastened by a drawstring between chin and shoulder at the place where a normal person’s neck would ordinarily be, but which in the Angel was no more than an imaginary line of demarcation. He shambled to his corner like a hairless gorilla and clasped his bandaged hands over his head in a salute to the enraptured mob.

Patricia shuddered.

“Simon, is it-is it human?”

The Saint grinned.

“He’ll never win any contests for the body beautiful, but of course we haven’t seen his face yet. He may be quite handsome.”

“Dere ain’t nobody seen his face,” Hoppy confided. “Dese wrestlers what pull dis gag wit’ de mask on de face, dey don’t care who knows who dey really are, but Doc Spangler, he don’t let nobody see who his boy is. Maybe it’s for luck. De Masked Angel ain’t lost a fight yet!”

“Doc Spangler?”

Hoppy’s head bobbed affirmatively. He pointed to a well-dressed portly gentleman who looked more like a bank president out for an evening’s entertainment than a fighter’s manager, who was standing in smiling conversation with one of the Angel’s seconds.

“Dat’s de Doc. He’s de guy who discovers de Angel from someplace. Dat Doc is sure a smart cookie, boss.”

The Saint smiled agreeably.

“You can say that again.”

The salient features of the estimable Doc Spangler’s history passed through Simon Templar’s mind in swift procession-a record which, among many others, was filed with inexorable clarity in the infinite index of a memory whose indelibility had time and again proven one of the more useful tools of his profession.

“In fifteen fights,” Hoppy expounded, “he brings de Angel from nowhere to a fight wit’ de Champ t’ree weeks from now!”

Pat lifted an eyebrow.

“Even if Torpedo Smith beats him?”

“Aaah!” Hoppy chortled derisively. “Dat bum ain’t got a chanst! De Angel’ll moider him! You wait and see.”

The Champ, having shaken hands with the two contenders, climbed out of the ring and resumed his seat beside Connie Grady, and the fighters rose from their corners as the referee waved them to the center of the ring for instructions.

Pat, wide-eyed, shook her head unbelievingly.

“Simon, that man with the mask-he-he’s fantastic! Those arms-his gloves are touching his knees!”

“A fascinating example of evolution in reverse,” Simon remarked.

The Masked Angel was indeed a remarkable specimen. With his arms dangling alongside his enormous hairless body he was the very antithesis of the classic conception of an athlete, his sagging breasts and vast pink belly undulating in rolls, billows, and pleats of fat; and though his hips narrowed slightly to the negligible proportions of a bull gorilla’s, his flabby thighs ballooned out like a pair of mammoth loose-skinned sausages, tapering to a pair of stubby tree-trunk legs.

“A freak,” Pat decided. “He wears that ridiculous mask because he’s a pinhead.”

“But even he can do somebody some good. You’ve got to admit that he makes Hoppy look like a creature of svelte and sprightly beauty.”

“In dis racket, boss,” Hoppy mulled with a heavy concentration of wisdom, “you don’t have to be good-lookin’.” Suddenly he sat up straight and strained forward. “Well, for cryin’ out loud!”

“What’s the matter?” The Saint followed his gaze to the ring.

Hoppy waved a finger the size of a knockwurst in the general direction of the two contestants and their handlers standing in the middle of the ring listening to the referee.

“Lookit, boss! Standin’ behind Torpedo Smith-his handler! It’s me old chum, Whitey Mullins!”

The fighters and their seconds were turning back to their respective corners. ,Whitey Mullins, a slender rubbery-faced little man with balding flaxen hair, wearing a turtle-necked sweater and sneakers, convoyed Smith to his corner and climbed but of the ring, taking the stool with him. The Saint recognized him as one of the professional seconds connected with the Manhattan Arena.

“One of the Torpedo’s propellers, I take it?”

Hoppy nodded.

“He works a lot wit’ me when I am in the box-fight racket, boss.” Fond memories of yesteryear’s mayhem lit his gorgon countenance with reminiscent rapture. “Cyclone Uniatz, dey called me.”

“That, no doubt, explains why you never get up before the stroke of ten,” Simon observed.

“Huh?”

Pat giggled as the bell clanked for the first round.

The Angel shuffled forward slowly, his arms held high, peering cautiously between his gloves at the oncoming Torpedo Smith. Smith, who had crashed into the top ranks of pugilism via a string of varied victories far longer than the unbroken string of knockouts boasted by the Masked Angel, moved warily about his opponent, jabbing tentative lefts at the unmoving barrier of arms that the Angel held before him. The Angel turned slowly as Smith moved around him, the fantastic black cupola of his masked head sunk protectively between beefy pink shoulders, the little eye slits peering watchfully. He kept turning, keeping Smith before him without attempting a blow. The Torpedo moved about more deliberately, with a certain puzzlement, as though he couldn’t understand the Angel’s unwillingness to retaliate, but was himself afraid to take any chances.

There was a stillness in the crowd, a sense of waiting as for the explosion of a bomb whose fuse was burning before their very eyes.

Pat spoke at last.“But, Simon, they’re just looking at each other.”

The Saint selected another cigarette and tapped it on his thumb.

“You can’t blame them. It’ll probably take a round for them just to get over the sight of each other.”

Hoppy lifted a voice, that rang with the dulcet music of a foghorn with laryngitis.

“Come on, you Angel! Massecrate de bum!”

But the Angel, with supreme indifference to encouragement, merely kept turning, shuffling around to meet the probing jabs of Torpedo Smith, peering through his sinister mask, tautly watchful.

The crowd broke into a roar as the Torpedo suddenly drove a left hook to the Angel’s stomach, doubling him up, and, casting caution to the winds, followed with a swift onslaught of lefts and rights. The Angel, arms, gloves, and elbows shielding his exposed surfaces, merely backed into a corner and crouched there until the bell punctuated the round.

Pat shook her head bewilderedly.

“Simon, I don’t understand. This Masked Angel doesn’t look as if he can fight at all. All he did was make like a turtle while that other man tried to find some place to hit him.”

“Oh, you just wait,” Hoppy growled reassuringly. “Dis fight ain’t over yet. De smart money is bettin’ t’ree to one de Angel kayoes Smith insida six rounds. He wins all his fights by kayoes.”

The Saint was watching the two gladiators being given the customary libations of water and between-round advice by their handlers. He smiled thoughtfully.

“The Masked Angel has a very clever manager.”

The bell for the second round brought Torpedo Smith out with a rush. Gaining confidence with every blow, he drove the quivering hulk of the Angel back on his heels, bringing the crowd to its feet in a steady roar of excitement.

“Hoppy,” the Saint spoke into Hoppy’s ear, “has the Angel ever been cut under that black stocking he wears over his head?”

“Huh? Naw, boss! His fights never last long enough for him to get hoit.” Hoppy’s eyes squinted anxiously. “Chees! Why don’t he do sump’n? Torpedo Smith is givin’ him de woiks!”

Pat was bouncing in her seat, the soft curve of her lips parted with excitement as she watched.

“I thought the Angel was so wonderful!” she gibed. “Come on, Torpedo!”

“Dey’re bot’ on de ropes!” Hoppy exclaimed hoarsely.

The Saint’s hawk-like eyes suddenly narrowed. No, it was Torpedo Smith who was on the ropes now. With the Angel in control! … Something had happened. Something he hadn’t seen. He gripped Hoppy’s arm.

“Something’s wrong with Smith.”

Something was very definitely wrong with Torpedo Smith. He stood shaking his head desperately as if to clear it, holding onto the top strand with one hand and with the other trying to push away the black-masked monster who was now opening up with the steady relentless power of a pile driver.

“De Angel musta hit him!” Hoppy yelled. “I told ya, didn’t I? I told ya!” His foghorn bellow rose over the mob’s fierce blood cry. “Smith’s down!”

Torpedo Smith, obviously helpless, had slumped beneath the repeated impact of the Angel’s deliberate blows and now lay where he had fallen, face down, motionless, as the referee, tolled him out.

The sea of humanity began ebbing like a tide toward the exits, the vast drone of their voices and shuffling feet covered by the reverberating recessional of a pipe organ striking up “Anchors Aweigh” from somewhere in the bowels of the coliseum.

“Well, ya see, boss?” Hoppy jubilated as they drifted into the aisle. “It’s just like I told ya. De Angel’s dynamite!”

Pat shook her golden head compassionately.

“That poor fellow-the way that horrible creature hit him when he was helpless! Why didn’t the referee stop it?”

She turned, suddenly aware that Simon was no longer behind her. She looked about bewilderedly. “Simon!”

“Dere he is!” Hoppy waved a hamlike hand toward the end of the row they had just left. “Boss!”

The Saint was standing there, the occupants of the first rows of the ringside eddying past him, watching the efforts of Whitey Mullins and his assistants to revive the slumbering Smith.

Hoppy breasted the current with the irresistible surge of a battleship, and returned to Simon’s side with Pat in his wake.

” ‘S matter, boss?”

“What is it, Simon?”

The Saint glanced at her and back at the ring. He took a final pull at his cigarette, and dropped it to crush it carefully with one foot.

“They’ve just called the Boxing Commission doctor into Smith’s corner,” he said.

Pat stared at the ring.

“Is he still unconscious?”

“Aw, dat’s nuttin’.” Hoppy dismissed Smith’s narcosis with a scornful lift of his anthropogenous jaw. “I slug a guy oncet who is out for twelve hours, an’ when dey—”

“Wait a minute,” the Saint interrupted, and moved toward Smith’s corner as Whitey Mullins leaped from the ring to the floor.

“Whitey!” Hoppy bellowed joyfully. “Whassamatter, chum? Can’t ya wake up dat sleeping beauty?”

Whitey glanced at him with no recognition, his wide flexible mouth contorted curiously.

Hoppy blinked.

“Whitey! Whassamatter?”

Pat glanced at the ring with quick concern.

“Is Smith hurt badly?”

The towheaded little man with the lean limber face stared at her a moment with twisting lips. When he spoke, his high-pitched Brooklyn accent was muted with tragedy.

“He’s dead,” he said, and turned away.

The spectral cymbals of grim adventure clashed an eerie tocsin within the Saint, louder now than when first he heard their faint far notes in Connie Grady’s flustered appeal for him to search the sinister riddle of the Angel’s victories, and save her fiance from unknown peril. They had rung in the nebulous confusion of her plea, in the tortured suspicions unvoiced within her haunted eyes… . Now he heard their swelling beat again, a phantom reprise that prickled his skin with ghostly chills.

He spoke softly into Pat’s ear.

“Darling, I just remembered. Hoppy and I have some vitally urgent business to attend to immediately. Do you mind going home alone-at once?”

Patricia Holm looked up sharply, the startled pique on her lovely face giving way swiftly to disquieted resignation. She knew him too well.

“What is it, Simon? What are you up to?”

“I’ll explain later. I’m already late. Be a good girl.” He kissed her lightly. “I’ll make it up to you,” he said, and left her gazing after him as he sauntered down the long concrete ramp leading to the fighters’ dressing rooms with Hoppy shambling in his wake like a happy bear.

CHAPTER TWO
The door of the number-one dressing room beneath the floor of the Manhattan Arena rattled and shook as the sportswriters milled about the corridor outside and protested their exclusion. Who, one of them shouted, did the big ham think he was, Greta Garbo?

Behind the locked door, Dr. Kurt Spangler rubbed his shining bald head and listened benignly to the disgruntled din.

“Maybe I should oughta give ‘em an interview, huh, Doc?”

The pink mountain of flesh lying on the rubbing table lifted a head the general size and shape of a runt eggplant. “I don’t want they should think I’m a louse.”