Call for the Saint

'I wonder,' said the Saint.

But, whatever the secret of the Angel's success, Simon was certain now that it didn't lie in his gloves. There was nothing wrong with them that he could determine. No weights in the padding, no chemicals impregnated in the leather. He'd seen enough of Bilinski's hand wraps to determine that there had been no illegal substance compounded therein. And yet the practically overnight transformation of a battered dull-witted hulk into an invincible gladiator with lethal lightning in his fists was too obvious a discord in the harmony of logic.

The action of that fatal second round leading up to Torpe­do Smith's collapse passed through the Saint's memory again, slowed down to a measured succession of mental images.

'Hoppy,' the Saint reflected, 'did you see that first blow which started the Torpedo on his way out?'

'Sure, boss.' Hoppy nodded positively. 'Barrelhouse catches him in de ropes.'

'Did he hit him with a right or a left?'

'He hits him wit' both hands-lotsa times. You seen it.'

The Saint said: 'I know. But I mean that very first punch-­the one that dazed Smith and laid him open for the other blows. Did you see that particular punch?'

'Sure I see it, boss. We bot' see it.'

Hoppy yanked the car around a final corner and slid it to a halt in front of a canopy that stretched from the Gothic door­way of a skyscraper apartment building to the curb.

'If you remember it so well,' Simon pursued patiently, 'what was it-a right or a left?'

'Why, it wuz a right, a-no,' it wuz a left. A hook. Or maybe--' Hoppy hesitated, his vestigial brow furrowing painfully. 'Maybe it wuz an uppercut dere against de ropes. He is t'rowin' so many punches, I wouldn't know.'

'That's what I thought.'

The memory of Connie Grady's enigmatic anxiety and her confused half-explained fears for Steve Nelson's life rose in swelling reprise, cued in with the discord of tonight's events like the opening movement of a concerto that gave promise of more-much more-to come.

Simon got out, the gloves dangling from his hand by their laces, entered the lobby of the building with Hoppy at his heels, and headed for the elevators.

'Maybe we oughta send out for sump'n to drink, huh, boss ?' Hoppy suggested The Saint glanced at him. 'Send who?'

Hoppy glanced around, becoming aware that the lobby was deserted, the desk man and lift operators off duty.

'It's after midnight, chum,' the Saint pointed out as they entered the automatic elevator. He pressed the button marked Penthouse. The doors closed softly and the elevator purred skyward. 'Besides,' the Saint added as an afterthought, 'I be­lieve there's half a bottle of bourbon left.'

Mr. Uniatz looked at him gloomily. 'Yeah, boss. I know. Half a bottle-and me wit' a t'oist!'

'Mix it with a little water and make it go farther,' Simon suggested helpfully.

'Water?' Hoppy stared incredulously. 'De stuff what you wash wit'?'

The Saint smiled absently, thinking of other things.

'You're definitely no child of Aquarius, Hoppy!'

Hoppy blinked with mild stupefaction, pondered a moment and gave up.

'No, I guess not,' he sighed. 'I wuz de child of Mr. an' Mrs. Uniatz.'

The elevator stopped and they stepped out.

'I meant the sign you were born under.' Simon unlocked the door and entered the apartment. 'From the way you drink, you must have been born under Pisces.'

Hoppy's eyes widened in wonder at this hitherto unimag­ined vista of biological phenomena.

'Who, me? How did dat happen?'

The Saint shrugged, tossing the gloves on the living-room divan as he turned on lights*.

'I don't know,' said the Saint. 'It must have been shady there.'

He flung himself down on the divan and stretched his long legs luxuriously, while Hoppy struggled briefly with his Del­phic observation, and then discarded the entire subject as the bottle on the sideboard caught his eye.

'Keerist!' he muttered. 'Me tongue's hangin' out.'

He made a beeline for the half bottle of Kentucky dew, throttling it with an enormous hairy paw as he lifted it to his mouth, back-tilted like the maw of a baying wolf. His Adam's apple plunged in convulsive rhythm as the contents lowered an inch a second, a full four seconds elapsing before he straightened his neck again, halted in mid-swallow by the pop of a cork.

The Saint had a fresh bottle of Old Forester on his lap and was reaching for a glass from the top of a cabinet by the divan.

Hoppy's mouth pursed in hurt reproach.

'So dat's why it's locked,' he deduced aggrievedly.

'And a good thing, too,' the Saint said.

He recorked the bottle, gathered the Angel's gloves on his lap, and savored the drink with sybaritic enjoyment. Then he proceeded to re-examine the gloves; not that he expected them to yield any more secrets, but he had to be quite sure.

'Ja figure de mitts is loaded, boss?' Hoppy picked up one of the gloves. 'Is dat why you want 'em?'

Simon considered him.

'Did you work that out all by yourself?'

He tossed the remaining glove aside and picked up his glass again. Hoppy took the glove he had thrown down and felt that one too.

'Ain't nutt'n de matter wit' dese gloves, boss.'

The telephone rang.

It was Pat, her voice a stiletto in a silken sheath.

'Simon dear, it isn't that I mind being abandoned like a sinking ship--'

'Darling,' said the Saint, 'I've never been called a rat more delicately. However--'

'However,' she interrupted determinedly, 'you could at least have phoned me as soon as you got home. I've been sit­ting here expecting a call every minute. What happened? Where did you go? I waited at the Arena until the cleaning people nearly swept me out.'

'Good Lord! I told you to go on home.'

'I know, but after you disappeared down that ramp I fig­ured you to come up again. You never did.'

'Darling--'

'Don't darling me. After the police went down and never came up again either, I went out to find your car, and that was gone too.'

'You poor baffled child,' he commiserated tenderly. 'Hoppy and I took it. There was another exit. Several, in fact--'

'I happen to have figured that out quite some time ago,' she said sweetly. 'What happened? What was that shouting and crashing going on down there?'

'Oh, that,' the Saint murmured. 'Doc Spangler lost his key, so I suppose the police had to break down the door.'

'Lost his key! What key?'

'The key I have in my pocket.'

'B-but--' She broke off. 'Simon, if you're going to be coy--'

'Not at all. Come over for breakfast, and I'll try to give you a general idea what happened.'

'And just what has your little colleen, Connie Grady, got to do with all this?'

'I haven't decided yet. We'll talk about it at breakfast.'

'I'll be there,' she said ominously. 'And it had better be good.'

'It will be. The freshest eggs, the crispest bacon, the best butter--'

'I don't mean that. Good night, Lothario.'

Simon thoughtfully pulled off a shoe.

Hoppy Uniatz had disposed of the remains of his pint, and had taken advantage of the interruption to begin a strategic circling maneuver towards the Saint's bottle. There was a more or less instinctive gravitation; his receding brow was grooved by a stream of excogitation that flowed with all the gusto of a glacier towards its terminal