Call for the Saint

with three characters and a black sedan taking the chief roles in another attempt to reunite Hoppy and me with our illustrious ancestors.'

'I assure you, sir, that I--'

'Excuse me,' the Saint interrupted. 'I'm willing to believe that Karl might attempt a solo mission on account of the kick­ing around we gave him in the dressing room, but there were three men in the second try. I'm rather certain the driver was Karl. He might have done that to grind a private axe, but the other two must have had other inducements, Doc, old boy. Inducements supplied by you, perhaps.'

Spangler shook his head bewilderedly.

'But-you're entirely off the track, dear boy. Karl has been here in the house for the past three hours.'

'Then he must have a twin running around loose gunning for me. ... As for the other two-I'd lay some odds that one of them was your new butler, Jeeves Mancini, the demon majordomo, who seemed to be sort of lying down on the job when I saw him. The third man,' said the Saint dispassion­ately, 'may very well have been you.'

Spangler's expression of outraged innocence would have done credit to a cardinal accused of committing bigamy.

'But that's simply preposterous. I haven't left the house yet today. As a matter of fact, Karl and Slim and I were about to leave for the gym to meet the Angel when you arrived.' He spread his hands. 'Surely you're not serious when you say you actually expected to find three anonymous snipers-men who tried to shoot you from a car like movie gangsters-here in my house?'

'I don't say I had that idea all along,' Simon admitted. 'It just kind of grew on me when I found their car parked in front of this house. Your Stanley Steamer, I presume, Dr. Liv­ingstone?'

'What!' Spangler's eyes were round with appalled amaze­ment. 'My dear boy, are you sure you're not feeling the heat? My car has been parked there all day.'

'I did feel the heat,' said the Saint gently, 'of your car's engine. For a jalopy that hadn't been moved all day, it was awfully feverish.'

'Standing out there in the sun--'

'It might get the chill off. But I hardly think the sun was quite hot enough to burn those holes through the rear window and the windshield.'

Spangler sank back into his chair, shaking his head help­lessly.

'I don't know what you're trying to prove,' he protested earnestly. 'But if you mean those bullet holes, they've been there for nearly a month now. One of the boys became a little exuberant one night and--'

'Skip it,' said the Saint amiably. 'I didn't come here to torment you by putting the stretch on your imaginative powers. Any time a good story is needed, I'm sure you can come up with one. I just wanted to make one point for the record. The next time any uncomfortable passes are made at me or any of my friends-among whom I am going to include Steve Nelson -I am just automatically going to drop by and beat the bejesus out of you and any of your teammates who happen to be around. It may seem rather arbitrary of me, Doc; but an expert like you should be able to allow for my psychopathic fixations. . . . Let's go, Whitey.'

Whitey, let go the desk unsteadily.

'Okay. I can make it,' he said, and waved away Hoppy's helpfully offered hand. He followed Simon, spitting contemp­tuously on the floor as he passed Karl's cowed figure huddled in the corner.

As they sped northward up Fifth Avenue, Mullins explained the predicament in which the Saint had found him.

'I guess I was nuts,' he said, 'goin' into that den of thieves alone, but I went off my chump just thinkin' of that lousy fink sendin' his stooge to proposition my boy.'

'You shoulda gone heeled, pal,' Hoppy said.

'I did.' Whitey slapped his right hip. 'But I just figured on bawling Spangler out, not killin' him; and then I get blasted from behind.'

'How long were you there?' Simon asked.

' 'Bout half an hour. Say!' Whitey's voice lifted as though remembering. 'It couldn'a been Karl who was with those mugs what you said tried to gun you. He was in that room with Spangler most of the time I was cussin' the Doc.' His pale eyes' brightened with thought. 'Y' know, there's a coupla heist guys with the Scarponi mob who Spangler hires sometimes for jobs. They look a lot like Karl.'

The Saint shrugged.

'He still might have made it. I figure that Karl got some of his pals together in a hurry after he left Steve's place, and followed Hoppy and me when we left. I wouldn't give him an alibi unless he punched a time clock. You certainly weren't in shape to time everything to the minute.' He glanced at Whitey. 'We'd better drop you off at a doctor's so you can get that fixed up. How do you feel?'

'Oh, I'm okay, Saint,' Whitey minimized. He felt his blood-clotted head gingerly. 'The slug took a li'l hair off, that's all. Just drop me off at Kayo Jackson's gym. I'll wash up there.'

'It's your noodle.' Simon swung the wheel to his left and cut westward toward Sixth Avenue.

'Did you mean it,' Whitey asked after a moment, 'when you said you'd work with the Champ?'

The Saint fished a cigarette from his breast pocket and punched the dashboard lighter.

'You're the trainer, Whitey.'

Whitey found a match in his pocket and struck it with his thumb, cupping the flame as he held it to the Saint's cigarette.

'Kayo'll go nuts when I tell him,' he grinned. 'Wit' you and the Champ workin' out there together, we'll pack 'em in.'

'At two bits a head,' Mr. Uniatz mentioned, rather quickly for him. 'So whaddas de boss get out of it?'

'I'll see that Kayo shells out with the Saint's cut of the gymnasium gate, don't worry.'

'Hoppy is my agent,' said the Saint.

He was thinking more about the slug he carried in his pocket -the slug he had dug out of the pawnshop doorframe. He had to ponder the fact that neither Karl's guns nor Slim Mancini's were of the same caliber-and in spite of what he had said, he couldn't really visualize Doc Spangler doing his own torpedo work. There was at least negative support for Whitey's evidence that Karl had been in the house during the time the Saint thought he'd seen him at the wheel of the gun­men's car. Yet Simon found it impossible to reconcile his indelibly photographic impression of the man who had driven that car with the possibility that it had been someone other than Karl. ... If it hadn't been Karl, then it had certainly been his identical twin.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The dawning sun arched a causeway of golden light through the Saint's bedroom window, glinting on his crisp dark hair as he laced on the heavy rubber-soled shoes in which he did his road work with Steve every morning. Hoppy, bleary-eyed, leaned against the doorframe, watching him unhappily.

'Chees;' he complained hoarsely, 'will I be glad when de fight is over tomorrow night! I'm goddam sick of gettin' up wit' de boids every mornin' to do road work wit' Nelson.' He yawned cavernously. 'Dis at'letic life is moider.'

'What athletic life?' the Saint inquired with mild irony. 'The only road work you do is follow behind in the car with Whitey.''

Hoppy sighed lugubriously.

'Dat ain't de pernt, boss. It's just I don't get de sleep a guy. needs at my age.'

'Well, I must say you wear the burden of your years with lavender and old dignity,' Simon complimented him. He stood up and headed for the door. 'Come on, Steve and Whitey will be waiting for us.'

Hoppy groaned and followed like an exhausted elephant.

They found Nelson near the Fifty-ninth Street entrance of Central Park, alone.

'Whitey's got another of those headaches,' he explained. ''I think maybe that bullet Karl grazed him with last month must have shaken his brains up worse than he admitted.'

The Saint nodded, breaking into an easy jogging trot beside Nelson as they struck out northward along the side of a wind­ing park road.

'Could be,' he agreed.

Mr. Uniatz climbed into the car again, and waited discon­solately for several minutes in order to give them a