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’?”
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 imagined 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 bee-line 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 savoured 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.
“Ya 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 nut’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 manoeuvre towards the Saint’s bottle. This 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 moraine.
“Boss,” Hoppy ruminated, “I got an idea.”
The Saint kicked off the other shoe.
“Be kind to it, Hoppy,” he yawned, “it’s in a strange place.”
But Hoppy, lost in contemplation of a glorious tomorrow evolving from the stuff of his dreams, went on unheeding.
“Dis fat slob, Bilinski, who is de Masked Angel. He beats the Champ. Dat makes him de Champ, don’t it?”
The Saint eyed him curiously. “He hasn’t beaten him yet.”
“But if Barrelhouse Bilinski gets de crown,” Hoppy continued with growing inspiration, “dey is one guy who can knock him on his can any day in de week. Dat’s me, boss! If dat fat slob gets de champeenship. I’m de guy what can take it away from him. Den I’ll be de champ and you’ll be my manager!”
The telephone rang again.
“Excuse me,” said the Saint. “My bottle seems to be moving towards your hand.”
He rescued it in the nick of time, and picked up the phone.
He recognised at once the soft, husky lilt of the voice.
“I... I do hope you’ll forgive my calling you at this hour,” Constance Grady apologised hurriedly. “I called several times after I... I thought you might have gotten home, but there was no answer.”
“I just got in,” Simon explained. “I didn’t have a chance to call you right after the fight as I’d promised, and I thought it was rather late to phone you now. But,” he added quickly, “I’m glad you called. Thanks for the tickets.”
“Thank you for using them.” She hesitated, her voice dropping almost to a whisper. “You... you saw what happened...”
“Yes. Very interesting.”
A slight pause.
“Daddy—” she began, and stopped. “My father came home a few minutes ago. He’s very upset. I... I made an excuse that I had to go on to an all-night drug store on the corner to get some aspirin. I’m talking to you from there.”
“I see.” The Saint’s voice was speculative. “Naturally, he would be upset by tonight’s accident.”
“Accident?... Yes, I know.” She hesitated again. “There was something else... something about you and that... that man you call Hoppy...”
“Oh?”
“You went into the Masked Angel’s dressing-room after the fight. Daddy said there was a brawl.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Simon said gravely. “One of Dr Spangler’s assistants happened to trip on one of Hoppy’s big feet and knock himself out. The Angel fell over a table, causing Dr Spangler to get the wind knocked out of him.”
“But... You... didn’t go down to see this... Masked Angel because you saw something... something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, Connie, if you mean fouling or anything like that, I didn’t see a thing. By the way, it seems the Masked Angel is one of Hoppy’s old chums.”
“Oh.”
“What makes you think there was anything wrong?”
“I... I don’t know. I’m... I’m just afraid.” Her answer was just as vague now as it had been the first time. “I thought you might have been able to... to see something, or... or figure something out. I...”
“Why not drop in for breakfast and we’ll talk it over?”
“All right.” She seemed reluctant to finish, and yet unable to find an excuse to go on. “And thanks again.”
The Saint poured himself another drink, and surrendered the bottle.
“Who was dat, boss?” Hoppy asked.
“A lady,” Simon replied, “who is holding out on me.”
“You can’t trust ’em boss,” Hoppy affirmed, shaking his head. “None of ’em. I know a doll once.” He sighed, shaking his head like a wistful grizzly. “She has coives like a... a...”
“A scenic railway?” Simon suggested.
Hoppy beamed.
“Dat wuz Fanny, boss! All over! I can see her now.” He sighed with stentorian nostalgia. “She was de goil of my dreams!”
The Saint yawned and turned to the bedroom.
“Then let’s go see her there,” he said.
The doorbell rang a sudden prolonged pizzicato.
Simon halted in his tracks. Ghostly caterpillars crawled along his backbone. Instinct, sensitive and prescient, had whispered its warning of further explosions in the chain reaction he had started that night; the clamour of the bell came as if on a long-awaited cue. A faint smile flitted over his reckless mouth.
“Who da hell is dat dis time of night?” Hoppy wondered.
“Open the door and find out,” Simon told him.
Mr Uniatz slipped a meaty hand into his gun-pocket and strode out into the foyer to the doorway.
The Saint heard the door open fractionally; he grinned slowly as he recognised the impatient imperative voice that answered Hoppy’s gruff inquiry. The door opened all the way... The determined clomp of hard-heeled brogans entered the foyer, heading for the living-room door.
“Boss,” Hoppy trumpeted in warning, “it’s—”
“Don’t tell me,” the Saint broke in cheerfully. “Give me one guess — Inspector Fernack!”