The door of the number one dressing-room beneath the floor of the Manhattan Arena rattled and shook as the sportswriters milled about the corridor outside and protested their exclusion. Who, one of them shouted, did the big ham think he was, Greta Garbo?
Behind the locked door Kurt Spangler rubbed his shining bald head and listened benignly to the disgruntled din.
“Maybe I should oughta give ’em an interview, huh, Doc?” The pink mountain of flesh lying on the rubbing table lifted a head the general size and shape of a runt egg-plant. “I don’t want they should think I’m a louse.”
The un-Masked Angel blinked, his little brown eyes apologetic beneath the shadow of brows ridged with the compounded scar tissues of countless ancient cuts and contusions.
“Never mind what they think,” Doc Spangler beamed comfortingly. “Let them disparage you — revile you — hate you.” His sonorous voice sank confidingly. “It’s exactly what we want.”
The Angel sighed unhappily. His head dropped back on the rubbing table as the two handlers pulled off the gloves, tossed them in a corner, and proceeded to rip off the hand wrappings of gauze and tape.
“The more the newspapers hate you,” Doc Spangler expounded, “the more cash they’ll pay to see you get beaten.” He rubbed his hands, considering the Angel with all the pride a farmer might display surveying his prize hog. “Kid McCoy, for instance,” the doctor illustrated. “He made a fortune on the hatred of the mob. They paid to see him fight in the hope he would be slaughtered. Only he never was — not till after he became champion, anyway. And neither will you be, my lad. Not as long as you continue to follow my instructions.”
The Angel grunted as Karl, one of his handlers, kneaded the mountainous mesa of his belly. His naked body, a pink mass of monstrous convexities, gleamed beneath the bright incandescents with a sheen of oily sweat that high-lighted the ruby splotches where Torpedo Smith’s gloves had exploded. His flat button nose, the distorted rosette of flesh that were his ears, furnished further evidence that Dr Spangler’s discovery, far from being a supernova in the pugilistic firmament, was actually a battle-battered veteran, the survivor of an unnumbered multitude of beatings.
“I did like you said wit’ Smith, didn’t I, Doc?” the Angel mumbled.
“You did indeed! You followed my instructions to the letter tonight. Always remember to keep covered till your man seems a bit careless.” Spangler patted one beefy shoulder. “You were great tonight, my boy.”
The Angel lifted his undersized noggin, a grateful grimace on his pear-shaped face.
“Thanks, Doc.” He sank back. “I always try to do like you say.” He sighed like a deflating dirigible. “But why do the crowd gotta t’ink I’m a crum? I radder they should like me. I like them.”
Doc Spangler sighed patiently, but was spared the need for further exposition by an increased burst of banging on the door. He turned resignedly to the fox-faced thug who was unlacing the Angel’s ring shoes.
“Maxie, perhaps you’d better go out and have a word with our journalistic friends.”
Maxie nodded briefly. He went to the door, yanked it open, and stepped outside into a stream of vivid excoriation.
Doc Spangler listened a moment with admiration as the reporters’ protests faded gradually down the hall.
Karl, the other henchman, had ceased his ministrations and was listening with a certain degree of envy. “Doc,” he suggested, “maybe better I should go and help chase ’em away, yah?” His accent was a curious blend of Yorksville kraut and Bowery bum.
Doc Spangler smiled, glancing at the half-open door. Only Maxie’s distant profanities were still audible, and that, too, finally ceased.
“I think Maxie has everything under control,” Spangler said pleasantly. “Better finish taking off the Angel’s shoes so he can take his shower and get dressed. We’ve got to have some supper.”
The Angel heaved up to a sitting position.
“I’m hungry,” he announced heavily. “I wanna double porterhouse and shoestring potaters.”
Spangler’s colourless eyes flitted tenderly over the Angel’s three-storied bay window.
“You’ll have a triple filet mignon with truffles à la Waldorf Astoria three times a day if we can win the title.”
The Angel grinned dully.
“Leave it to me, Doc. I’ll take Nelson.”
“Of course you will — if you’ll always remember to do exactly as I tell you. It was only by obeying my instructions that you got through that first round tonight — and don’t forget it. I won that fight for you, my lad.”
“Congratulations,” said the Saint.
“Yeah,” Hoppy rasped, kicking the door shut behind them. “Nice woik, Doc.”
For a paralysed second, Dr Spangler, Karl, and the massive Angel composed a tableau of staring surprise. Then Spangler’s florid wattles grew even more crimson.
“Who the devil—”
“Forgive us,” the Saint interrupted. He took the cigarette from his mouth and flicked the ash reflectively, indicating Mr Uniatz, who stood beside him with the black snout of a big automatic protruding from one hairy fist. “My friend and I couldn’t resist the temptation, Doctor — especially when your man left the door to pursue those reporters down the hall.” He forbore to add that Maxie was, at the moment, reposing peacefully in a corridor broom closet where Hoppy had stuffed him after an exceedingly brief encounter. “Put away the gun, Hoppy,” he reproved. “This is strictly social.”
Hoppy obeyed slowly. He was staring at the naked mass of the Angel as if what mental equipment he possessed failed utterly to accept the evidence of his eyes.
“Ged oudda here,” Karl grated tonelessly.
His voice, like his bushy-browed eyes, was flat, dull, and deadly. The Saint appraised him with a glance — a short, squat, powerfully constructed character whose prognathous jaw matched the cubist lines of his shoulders.
“For de luvva mike!” Incredulous amazement raised Hoppy’s bullfrog bass a full octave. Rapturous recognition slowly illumined his corrugated countenance like dawning sunlight on a rock pile. “Bilinski!” he shouted. “Barrelhouse Bilinski!”
The Angel, who had been favouring Hoppy with the same open-mouthed concentration, slid slowly off the edge of the table to his feet. A reciprocal light dawned on the fuzzy horizon of his memory and spread over his humpty-dumpty face in a widening grin.
“For crize sake! Hoppy Uniatz!”
They practically fell into each other’s arms.
“Well, well, well,” the Saint drawled. “Old Home Week. Perhaps you two would like to be alone?”
“Are you de Masked Angel?” Hoppy burbled with hoarse delight. “You?”
“Yea, sure, Hoppy, dat’s me!”
“Boss, dis is Barrelhouse Bilinski. Barrelhouse, meet de Saint!”
“Ged oudda here!”
Karl’s voice rose half a decibel, his right hand sliding toward a pocket.
“I wouldn’t if I were you, comrade.” The Saint smiled deprecatingly, a glint in his eyes like summer lightning in a blue sky. His hand was thrust negligently in a pocket of his beautifully tailored sports jacket. “I’d hate having to put a hole through this coat, but your navel is such a tempting target.”
Karl’s hand dropped to his side.
“Doc, this is me old chum from way back when!” The Angel turned to Spangler eagerly. “Hoppy Uniatz!”
“Delighted... Now, Karl,” Doc Spangler said reproachfully, “don’t be a boor.”
“Me and Barrelhouse useta beat each udder’s brains out every week!” Hoppy effervesced hoarsely. “We barnstorm all over de country oncet. One week I win, next week he wins. What a team!”
“I can imagine,” the Saint murmured.
Spangler smiled at Simon with revived benevolence.
“I might have known who you were, Mr Templar, but you rather caught me by surprise, you know. I hardly expected a visit from the Saint at this particular moment.”
“The pleasure,” Simon bowed, “is all mine.”
“Not at all, my dear fellow. I... er... I’ve rather expected this visit — at some time or another, knowing of your parasitic propensities.”
The Saint lifted an eyebrow.
“Parasitic?”
Dr Spangler chuckled.
“Forgive me. I was merely referring to your habit of living on other people’s enterprises.”
“Meaning, no doubt, that you think I’ve come for a cut of your take in the Masked Angel — is that it?”
Spangler shrugged deprecatingly.
“What else?”
“Doc, whassamatter, huh?” the Angel queried with a puzzled grin which exposed several broken teeth. “What’s he want?”
“Take it easy, Barrelhouse,” Hoppy rumbled. “Dis is strictly social.”
The Saint laughed.
“You’re wrong, Doctor.”
“Am I?” Spangler said. “I’ve always known that at some unexpected point in the strange geometry of providence our paths must surely cross some day. We have much in common, Templar. We would work well together.”
Mockery danced in Simon’s azure eyes.
“You must be psychic, Doctor, to have recognised me so quickly. I can’t recall our ever having met before.”
“True,” Spangler nodded graciously. “However, your face has appeared in the public prints on several occasions I can recall.”
“And so has yours,” said the Saint reminiscently, “generally tacked on post-office walls beneath the word ‘Wanted.’ ”
Spangler chuckled.
“You amuse me.”
The light in Simon’s eyes settled into two steely points.
“Then laugh this off. Torpedo Smith is dead.”
The startled sag of the fat man’s jaw was too sincere a reflex for simulation. His stare shifted uncertainly to Karl standing beside him.
“Vot der hell!” Karl’s beetling black brows matched his sneering snarl. “You tryink to scare somebody, hah?”
The Angel scratched his jaw bewilderedly, the whole unlovely mass of his gross nakedness quivering like jelly as he turned to his manager.
“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.