Leslie Charteris - Call for the Saint

Simon rose, followed by Whitey and Hoppy, and came forward to face the Angel, who shambled up to the referee flanked by Spangler and Mushky Thompson. The Angel towered over them all, an utterly gross, unlovely specimen of so-called homo sapiens.

The referee droned the familiar formula: “...break when I say break... no hitting in breaks, no rabbit or kidney punches... protect yourself at all times... shake hands, come out fighting...”

They touched gloves, and the Saint walked nonchalantly back to his corner. He rubbed his feet a couple of times on the resin sprinkled there while Hoppy pulled the stool out of the ring. The sound of the bell seemed unreal and far away when, after what seemed an extraordinarily long time, it finally rang.

The Saint turned and moved almost casually out of his corner to meet the slowly approaching Angel. Bilinski shuffled forward, peering between forearms lifted before him, his body almost doubled over so that his elbows guarded his belly while his gloves shielded his face. No legally vulnerable square inch of his body was unprotected. He came forward steadily, inch by inch, making no attempt to lead or feint, merely coming forward with the massive low-gear irresistibility of a large tank, peering intently, cautiously — almost fearfully, Simon thought — between the bulging barriers of his ham-sized arms.

The Saint moved around him in a leisurely half-circle, every muscle, every nerve completely at ease, relaxed, and coordinated. He was oblivious of the crowd now, studying his problem with almost academic detachment, the latent lightning in his fists perfectly controlled. He couldn’t help feeling the same guarded wonder that he knew Torpedo Smith, and for that matter all of the Angel’s opponents, must have felt at the apparent impotence of the Angel’s attack right up to the moment of the blow that sent them on the way to oblivion. He thought to himself, “Nothing happens the first round... nothing ever happens the first round...” The crux of his problem, he felt sure was what the Angel did to open his victims for the inevitable knockout later on...

Bilinski, apparently growing tired of following Simon round the ring, stopped in the centre and remained there, crouched, merely revolving to follow the Saint’s lackadaisical circumvolutions about him.

The cash customers began to shake the stadium with the drumming of their stamping feet in the familiar demand for action. A demand, Simon thought, which was no more than fair... He stepped in, threw a left that cracked like a whiplash against the Angel’s fleshy forearms, and crossed with a downward-driving right that strove to crash past into the massive belly beyond. But the Angel instinctively brought his arms closer together so that the Saint’s gloved fist thudded into their bone-centred barrier.

Bilinski, visibly startled by the numbing shock of the blow, even though he did catch it on his guard, flung his arms about the Saint in an octopus-like clutch, sagging slightly in order to let his overwhelming weight smother his opponent’s efforts to strike again; but Simon, familiar with the old strength-sapping trick, merely relaxed with him and waited for the referee to come between them.

From her seat at the ringside Patricia Holm, her blonde hair wild with excitement, her hands gripping the arms of her chair, pleaded with tense anxiety, “Watch him, Simon, watch him! Be careful!”

“He’d better watch while he can,” Inspector Fernack gibed sardonically. He leaned back in his seat beside her and yelled, “All right, you Angel, shake him loose and let him have it! Give him one for me!”

The referee was still battling to break the Angel’s drowning-man grip when the bell ended the round.

As he walked to his corner the Saint noticed that there were no boos from the crowd over the inaction of that opening round. There was merely a more intense current of anticipatory excitement, as though everyone felt that they were about to witness a phenomenon of nature which, while it might be delayed somewhat, would take place as ineluctably as a predicted eclipse of the sun...

The betting, Simon knew, was not on whether or not he’d be knocked out, but rather precisely when and how that cataclysmic event would occur.

Hoppy wiped non-existent perspiration from the Saint’s brow.

“Dat foist round wuz slow-motion, boss,” he rasped encouragingly. “Howja feel?”

The Saint smiled coolly.

“Fine. Where’s Whitey?”

“He forgot de towels.” Hoppy thrust the mouth of the water-bottle at Simon’s lips. “Take a drink?”

The Saint leaned back and turned his face away slightly as the water poured out of the uplifted bottle and slopped over his neck and chest.

“Chees, boss!” Hoppy peered at the Saint’s face. “Dijja get any?”

“All I need. Wet my face.”

Hoppy reached about vaguely for a non-existent towel, seized the Saint’s dressing-gown draped over the edge of the ring apron, and used it instead to mop the moisture from Simon’s face and body.

“Hoppy,” said the Saint in a low voice, as his faithful disciple started to fan him with the robe. “Hoppy, listen.”

“Yeah, boss?”

“This is important,” Simon said quickly. “Keep the cork in that water-bottle — understand? Don’t let anyone try to spill the water that’s left in it. Do you get that, Hoppy?”

Hoppy nodded foggily.

“Yeah, but... but...”

“Hold on to that bottle!” Simon said urgently, obsessed with the nightmare problem of impressing a course of action on Mr Uniatz’s reflexes beyond any possibility of confusion. “Don’t let it get away from you. I want it after the fight. Put it in your pocket or in that robe — and keep it under your arm. Don’t drink out of it whatever you do. If anyone tries to spill it or break it, grab him and hold on to him! Is that clear?”

“Sure, but I don’t get it, boss. Why—”

The warning whistle blew its shrill alarm, and Simon sprang to his feet as Hoppy ducked out of the ring, taking the stool with him.

The bell clanged and the Saint moved out... He could only hope that his hunch was right, that he had really penetrated the mundane secret of Doc Spangler’s psycho-hypnotic technique. If he guessed wrong, there might still be catastrophic surprises in store. He was answering a gambit of whose ultimate denouement he was not at all certain.

Now the Saint opened up. He darted in with the effortless speed and cold-eyed ferocity of a jungle cat, his lithe body moving in a fierce harmony of scientific destruction, his shoulders flinging a shower of straight javelin-like blows, striving to penetrate the fortress wall of wrists, arms, and gloves that guarded the Angel’s head...

Bilinski began to give ground, crouching lower and lower beneath the onslaught. Suddenly the Saint changed his mode of attack, his fists winging up from beneath in a series of whiplash uppercuts. One of them managed to catch the Angel on his nominal forehead, jarring his head back momentarily. Almost simultaneously with the first blow, another crashed through the Angel’s guard and left the little bulb of nose a bloody splotch.

Bilinski began to give ground faster, the first glimmer of real fear in his dull little eyes. But still he refused to retaliate; he went on catching the Saint’s blows on his arms, gloves, shoulders, elbows, rolling instinctively with every one that he caught, like the battle-conditioned veteran he indisputably was. And he felt the ropes touch his back he leaned against them and bounded forward again, taking advantage of their spring, hurling his gross tonnage against the Saint and flinging his arms about him once again, shuffling around so that the Saint’s back was to the ropes instead. Inexorably he pushed Simon backwards against the rubberised strands.