Call for the Saint

Saint's hands.'

'That's what I admire about this business,' Simon remarked cheerfully. 'Everyone trusts everyone else.'

Hoppy fixed Mr. Thompson with a baleful glare.

'Out, ya bum,' he ordered.

'Now wait,' Mushky protested. 'It's de rules. I--'

'Oh, let him alone,' said the Saint. 'Whitey is watching the Angel, isn't he? It isn't exactly a unilateral proposition.'

'Sure,' Mr. Thompson agreed with hasty anxiety. 'No cause for gettin' mad, Hoppy. I'm just one of de hired hands.'

Hoppy grunted and proceeded about the business of laying out the hand bandages, adhesive tape, rubber mouthpiece, col­lodion, ammonia, and other paraphernalia of the modern gladiator.

'You working with Karl, Mushky?' the Saint asked casually as he slipped out of his street clothes.

Thompson shook his head.

'Naw. . . . He-uh-got kicked in the face by. a beer-wagon horse. Broke his jaw in two places, I hear.'

Hoppy looked up at him a moment, and broke into a deep guffaw.

'Ya don't say,' he yakked.

Simon slipped into his dark purple sateen trunks and began to lace his boxing shoes swiftly as Hoppy tore strips of ad­hesive tape into suitable knuckle strips. Mushky Thompson lounged in his chair with a cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth until Hoppy had finished taping the Saint's hands with practiced precision, reinforcing the bones without im­pairing their freedom. Then Mushky got to his feet.

'Good luck,' he threw over his shoulder. 'You'll need it.'

'Tanks,' Hoppy said-and did a take after the gibe sank in.

'Come back here!' the Saint snapped, as Mr. Uniatz started after the Angel's second, 'Don't start anything now, you idiot!'

Hoppy made unintelligible grating noises through his bared teeth, his nuclear mind infected as much by the vibrant blood cry of the mob as by the taunt. Impending battle-his own or anyone else's-was apt to make Mr. Uniatz emotionally un­stable.

Three preliminaries and a semi-final later, the Saint lay on the rubbing table, completely relaxed, listening to ten thou­sand throats vibrating the walls in a massive chorus of excite­ment. The semi-final bout had ended in a knockout, he guessed, from the uproar. He stretched his length peacefully, his eyes closed, everything in him settled into an immeasurabe still­ness amid the swirling rumble of vociferation. Dimly and indistinguishably he heard the orotund bellow of the announcer introducing somebody after the roar of the crowd had died down a bit; and shortly afterwards the man who had been introduced began speaking over the audience public-address system, and he recognized Grady's unmistakable accents even though he could not make out the words.

Hoppy stumbled into the dressing room, breathless from battling the crowd en route.

'What a mob!' he wheezed, his eyes gleaming. 'Grady's up dere makin' dat announcement!'

A swelling ululation rose in a gathering tidal wave of sound and broke thunderously upon their ears.

'Say,' Hoppy exulted, 'sounds like dey like what he told'em, huh?' He came over to the Saint. 'Boss, what does Span glersay when Grady tells him ya goin' in for Nelson?'

The Saint yawned.

'Oh, he raised a little stench about it at first, but Mike re minded him that my bet stated that Bilinski would be knocked out-it didn't say by whom. So he changed his mind. ... By the way, did Pat get a good seat?'

'Yeah,' Hoppy chuckled hoarsely. 'An' guess who's she sittin' next to!'

'Are you training for a quiz program, or would you just like to tell me?'

'Inspector Foinack!'

The Saint considered him reverently for a moment, while the forthcoming possibilities of that supernal juxtaposition devel­oped the gorgeous gamut of their emotional potential.

'Oh, my God!' Simon breathed. 'I'd rather watch that than my own fight.'

There was a patter of footsteps and Whitey Mullins darted into the dressing room. His face was contorted with savage glee.

'Okay,' he croaked. 'You're on, Saint. They're waitin' for you!' He snatched up the water bucket. 'Grab the water bottle and sponge,' he yelped at Hoppy, and went to the door.

The Saint swung his long legs off the table to the floor and stood up. He followed Whitey out of the door into the corri­dor, with Hoppy bringing up the rear.

'Brother, I only wisht it was that lousy crook, Spangler, you was smackin' around tonight,' Mullins grated with vitriolic bitterness as they mounted the ramp into the Arena, 'and not just that dumb ox he stole from me.'

Simon sensed an excitement, a temper in the crowd that was different from the usual mass tension of the ordinary fight at­tendance at Grady's weekly shows. It was electric with antici­pation of the unexpected, a breathless waiting watchfulness that he felt as he mounted to the apron of the ring and slipped between the ropes amid a thunderclap of acclaim. There was a slight note of hysteria in it, he thought as he seated himself on the stool in his corner and looked about at the ocean of faces that spread on every side..

The Masked Angel hadn't appeared yet, but the Saint rather expected that. Spangler would try every trick in the bag, in­cluding the petty one of wearing down the opposition's nerves by making him wait.

He failed to spot Pat among the buzzing tide of faces at ringside, but everything beyond the glare of light centering on the ring was little more than a smoke-dimmed blur. The faces, void of all individuality, were such as one encounters sometimes in nightmare sequences, a phantasmagoria of eyes and noise-hard, critical, and skin- pricklingly theriomorphic. ... He wondered momentarily if Steve was in good enough shape to listen to the fight from his bedside. . . . Connie had been with him nearly all day at the hospital. . . .

A roar like an approaching forest fire filled the packed coliseum with surging clamor as the Masked Angel appeared up the ramp, preceded by Doc Spangler and followed by a co­hort of handlers bearing the various accessories of refreshment and revival. The incredible bulk of the Angel loomed up over the apron of the ring and squeezed between the ropes in his corner, his plates of sagging fat quivering like chartreuse jelly. Unmasked now, his ridiculous little nubbin of a head bobbed from side to side in acknowledgment of the roars of the mob, his round little cheeks and button nose more an inspiration for laughter than the fearsome horror his black mask had aroused.

Behind him, Doc Spangler leaned over his shoulder and spoke softly into an ear that was the approximate size and shape of a brussels sprout.

As the Saint watched them from beneath lowered lids, he felt once again the spectral footfalls of ghostly centipedes pa­rading his spine, knowing that his real danger was as yet un­determined, the point of attack unknown. How it would come, in what shape or form, he wasn't quite sure. He'd covered all the possibilities, or so he thought; but whether the threat, the unknown secret weapon that the Angel must surely possess, would come from an act of the Angel himself, or from some outside agent, he wasn't quite sure. All he had was an idea. ... He felt its shadow upon him like a ghostly mist, ambient and all-pervading. . . .

The bell clanged sharply a few times; the throbbing hum of the crowd subsided somewhat. The main-bout referee, dapper and fresh in white tennis shoes and flannels, stepped to the center of the ring and gestured the Saint and the Angel to come to him.

Simon rose, followed by Whitey and Hoppy, and came for­ward to face the Angel, who shambled up to the referee flanked by Spangler and Mushky Thompson. The Angel tow­ered over them all, an utterly gross, unlovely specimen of so-called homo sapiens.

The referee droned the familiar formula: '. . . break when I say break ... no hitting in breaks, no rabbit or kidney punches . . . protect yourself at all times . . . shake hands, come out fighting ...'

They touched gloves, and the Saint walked nonchalantly back to his corner. He rubbed his feet a couple of times on the resin sprinkled there while Hoppy pulled the stool out of the ring. . . . The sound of the bell seemed unreal and far away when, after what seemed an extraordinarily long time, it finally rang.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Saint turned and moved almost casually out of his corner to meet the slowly approaching Angel. Bilinski