“Dead?” he muttered stupidly. “He’s dead?”
Hoppy nodded admiringly.
“He won’t never be no deader. Whereja ever get dat punch, chum. Why, when we was togedder, you stunk.”
“My dear sir,” Spangler said, eyeing the Saint with watchful deliberation, “if this is an attempt at humour—”
“You needn’t laugh now,” Simon assured him pleasantly.
“Save it for later — when the police get here. They should be in at any moment.”
The Angel licked his lips tremulously.
“Jeez, Doc... I croaked him. I croaked de Torpedo...”
“He’s lying!” Karl sneered. “Smith cannot be dead!”
“Listen.” The Saint glanced at the door. “I think I hear them now.”
They followed his gaze, listening.
And while they stood intently frozen, the Saint sauntered quite casually to the corner where Karl and Maxie had tossed the Angel’s gloves, and scooped them up in one sweeping motion.
Dr Spangler turned quickly.
“What are you doing? Put down those gloves!” Alarmed suspicion darkened his colourless eyes. “Karl! Angel!”
His voice broke shrilly.
Bilinski went into motion uncertainly, as if still wondering what he was called on to do; but with a playful push as gentle as the thrust of a locomotive piston, Hoppy shoved him back to a sitting position on the edge of the rubbing table.
“Aw, don’t mind him, Barrelhouse,” he grinned. “He’s just noivous.”
He stuck out a foot to trip Karl who, gun in hand, was diving for cover behind the table.
The Saint moved with the effortless speed of lubricated lightning, kicking the gun from the sprawling thug’s hand with all the vicious grace of a savate champ.
“Whassamatter?” the Angel blinked bewilderedly. “Doc—”
Karl struggled to all fours. It was a strategic error, for he presented, for one irresistible moment, his rear end to Mr Uniatz’s ecstatic toe in an explosive junction that flung him end over end into the shower stall across the room.
“Help!” Spangler shouted. “Max! Max! Hel—”
His cry broke in a gasping grunt as the Saint’s fist buried itself a good six inches in his paunch, collapsing him to the floor like a deflated blimp.
“Nice woik, boss,” Hoppy congratulated.
“Hey what’s the big idea?” the big Angel demanded, his confusion crystallising into a fuzzy awareness that the isotope of friendship had somehow exploded.
He struggled off the edge of the rubbing table.
“Aw, relax, ya fat slob!” Hoppy recommended affectionately. He clarified his suggestion with a shove that had all the delicate tact of an impatient rhinoceros slamming full tilt into a bull elephant; and the Angel, unbalanced, staggered backwards, knocking over the rubbing table and going down with it in a cosmic crash.
“All right, Hoppy,” Simon called from the door as he removed the key. “Don’t let’s wear out our welcome.”
He handed the gloves to Hoppy as they stepped out into the corridor and locked the door behind them. As they turned to leave, other gruff voices echoed faintly through the corridor leading from the end of the ramp, and the Saint’s white teeth flashed in a satiric grin as he recognised the terse tonalities of the Law.
“The other way, Hoppy,” he said, and turned in the opposite direction.
They sped swiftly through the underground maze toward the basement exits that opened into the street at the other end.
Chapter three
Hoppy Uniatz eased the big convertible adroitly through the midnight traffic and past the bright lights of the Times Square district, and presently gave vent to a cosmic complaint.
“Boss,” he announced with the wistful appeal of an arid hippopotamus being driven past a water hole, “I gotta t’oist. Exercise always gives me a t’oist, boss.”
“Keep going,” the Saint commanded inexorably. His long brown fingers were carefully probing the gloves on his lap. “You can refresh yourself after we get home.”
Hoppy sighed and trod on the accelerator again.
“Anyt’ing in dem gloves, boss?”
“I can’t feel anything.”
Simon lifted a glove and sniffed it thoughtfully. He rubbed his finger over the damp leather and tasted it.
“Barrelhouse musta loined how to speed up his punch,” Hoppy ruminated. “De fat slob always can hit like a mule, but he never is able to land it much when I know him. He’s too slow.” Hoppy shook his head in perplexity. “Imagine him bein’ de Masked Angel! Doc Spangler musta teached him plenty.”
“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 over-night 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 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 kerb.
“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 brows furrowing painfully. “Maybe it wuz an uppercut dere against the 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 a 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 further,” Simon suggested hopefully.
“Water?” Hoppy stared incredulously. “De stuff what you wash wit’?”