Call for the Saint

'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 un­ willingness 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