Call for the Saint by Leslie Charteris

Author:Leslie Charteris [Charteris, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780340003763
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1946-01-15T10:46:20+00:00

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 overnight 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 the 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 curb.

"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 brow furrowing painfully. "Maybe it wuz an uppercut dere against de 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

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