The memory of Connie’s visit, her confused plea for him to see the fight, lingered in his mind like the memory of strange music, a siren measure awakening an old familiar chill, prescient and instinctive, warning of danger that was no less perilous because it was as yet unknown.
The crowd broke into a thunderous roar.
“It’s de Angel!” Hoppy proclaimed. “He’s climbin’ in de ring!”
The current sensation of the leather-pushing profession was indeed mounting the punch podium. He squeezed his hogshead torso between the ropes, and as he straightened up the Saint saw that the mask was really nothing more than a black bean-bag that fitted over his small potato head with apertures for eyes, nose, and mouth, and fastened by a drawstring between chin and shoulder at the place where a normal person’s neck would ordinarily be, but which in the Angel was no more than an imaginary line of demarcation. He shambled to his corner like a hairless gorilla and clasped his bandaged hands over his head in a salute to the enraptured mob.
Patricia shuddered.
“Simon, is it — is it human?”
The Saint grinned.
“He’ll never win any contests for the body beautiful, but of course we haven’t seen his face yet. He may be quite handsome.”
“Dere ain’t nobody seen his face,” Hoppy confided. “Dese wrestlers what pull dis gag wit’ de mask on de face, dey don’t care who knows who dey really are, but Doc Spangler, he don’t let nobody see who his boy is. May be it’s for luck. De Masked Angel ain’t lost a fight yet!”
“Doc Spangler?”
Hoppy’s head bobbed affirmatively. He pointed to a well-dressed portly gentleman who looked more like a bank president out for an evening’s entertainment than a fighter’s manager, who was standing in smiling conversation with one of the Angel’s seconds.
“Dat’s de Doc. He’s de guy who discovers de Angel from some place. Dat Doc is sure a smart cookie, boss.”
The Saint smiled agreeably.
“You can say that again.”
The salient features of the estimable Doc Spangler’s history passed through Simon Templar’s mind in swift procession — a record which, among many others, was filed with inexorable clarity in the infinite index of a memory whose indelibility had time and again proven one of the more useful tools of his profession.
“In fifteen fights,” Hoppy expounded, “he brings de Angel from nowhere to a fight wit’ de Champ free weeks from now!”
Pat lifted an eyebrow.
“Even if Torpedo Smith beats him?”
“Aaah!” Hoppy chortled derisively. “Dat bum ain’t got a chanst! De Angel’ll moider him! You wait and see.”
The Champ, having shaken hands with the two contenders, climbed out of the ring and resumed his seat beside Connie Grady, and the fighters rose from their corners as the referee waved them to the centre of the ring for instructions.
Pat, wide-eyed, shook her head unbelievingly.
“Simon, that man with the mask — he... he’s fantastic! Those arms — his gloves are touching his knees!”
“A fascinating example of evolution in reverse,” Simon remarked.
The Masked Angel was indeed a remarkable specimen. With his arms dangling alongside his enormous hairless body he was the very antithesis of the classic conception of an athlete, his sagging breasts and vast pink belly undulating in rolls, billows, and pleats of fat; and though his hips narrowed, wasp-like, to the negligible proportions of a bull gorilla’s, his flabby thighs ballooned out like a pair of mammoth loose-skinned sausages, tapering to a pair of stubby tree-trunk legs.
“A freak,” Pat decided. “He wears that ridiculous mask because he’s a pinhead.”
“But even he can do somebody some good. You’ve got to admit that he makes Hoppy look like a creature of svelte and sprightly beauty.”
“In dis racket, boss,” Hoppy mulled with a heavy concentration of wisdom, “you don’t have to be good-lookin’.” Suddenly he sat up straight and strained forward. “Well, for cryin’ out loud!”
“What’s the matter?” The Saint followed his gaze to the ring.
Hoppy waved a finger the size of a knockwurst in the general direction of the two contestants and their handlers standing in the middle of the ring listening to the referee.
“Lookit, boss! Standin’ behind Torpedo Smith — his handler! It’s me old chum, Whitey Mullins!”
The fighters and their seconds were turning back to their respective corners. Whitey Mullins, a slender, rubbery-faced little man with balding flaxen hair, wearing a turtle-neck sweater and sneakers, convoyed Smith to his corner and climbed out of the ring, taking the stool with him. The Saint recognised him as one of the professional seconds connected with the Manhattan Arena.
“One of the Torpedo’s propellers, I take it?”
Hoppy nodded.
“He works a lot wit’ me when I am in the box-fight racket, boss.” Fond memories of yesteryear’s mayhem lit his gorgon countenance with reminiscent rapture. “Cyclone Uniatz, dey called me.”
“That, no doubt, explains why you never get up before the stroke of ten,” Simon observed.
“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 unwillingness 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, without 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’ free to one de Angel kayoes Smith insida six rounds. He wins all his fights by kayos.”
The Saint was watching the two gladiators being given the customary libations of water and between-round advice by their handlers. He smiled thoughtfully.