Call for the Saint

The chiseled leanness of cheekbone and jaw were picked out vividly as he lighted a cigarette. Pat, glancing at the flame momentarily reflected in those mocking blue eyes, felt a famil­iar surge of yearning and pride. For he was a very reincarna­tion of those privateers who once knew the Spanish Main, a modern buccaneer consecrated to the gods of gay and perilous adventure, a cavalier as variable as a chameleon, who would always be at once the surest and the most elusive thing in her life.

'Yeah,' Hoppy agreed grudgingly. 'Dey ain't nut'n wrong wit' de seats. Ya must have some drag wit' de promoter, boss.'

'I've never even met him.'

Simon wasn't listening really. His eyes were angled to his left, gazing through a meditative plume of smoke to where Steve Nelson was rising about a dozen seats away and climbing into the ring to be introduced as the champion who would defend his title against the winner of tonight's bout. However, it wasn't Nelson whom Simon was watching. It was the girl in the seat beside Nelson-a girl with curly raven hair, big green eyes, and a nose whose snub pertness was an infinitely lovelier reproduction of her Irish sire's well-publicized proboscis.

'I suppose he just thought this would be a nice way to intro­duce himself,' Patricia mocked. 'Three little ringside tickets, that's all. Sent by special messenger, no less. Compliments of Mike Grady and the Manhattan Arena!'

The girl with the dark hair had turned and, for a brief in­stant, met Simon's gaze. He spoke without taking his eyes off her.

'Pat darling, you're taking too much for granted. It wasn't Mike who sent them.'

'No?'

'No. It was his daughter, Connie. Third from the aisle in the front row.'

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.