Leslie Charteris - Call for the Saint

Pat was on her feet, jumping up and down.

“Get away from him, Simon!” she screamed. “Get away from him!”

“Aw, sit down!” Fernack blasted at her. He cupped his hands about his mouth and yelled, “Knock him kicking, Angel! Hit him one for me! For Fernack!”

Pat turned on him furiously.

“Yes,” she shouted, “for poor feeble Fernack!” and brought a flailing hand down on the top of the detective’s derby, jamming it down over his eyes.

A localised area of laughter was swallowed in a sudden earthquake as the crowd surged to its feet en masse.

The Saint was obviously in trouble. He was still against the ropes, even as Torpedo Smith had been, shaking his head as though trying to clear it, as the Angel, close up to him, pumped short deliberate blows into his body. They lacked concussive snap, but were nevertheless sickening with the monstrous weight that lay behind them. The Angel seemed to be trying to shake the Saint loose to give himself room for a conclusive blow. That he would succeed seemed a matter of a very brief time. The Saint was already staggering and apparently holding on blindly.

In the Saint’s corner, Hoppy Uniatz, his face tortured into a mask of pleading horror, leaned over the bottom strand of the ropes, his clenched fists pounding the canvas desperately.

“Boss!” he begged, his raucous voice screeching with the intensity of his emotion. “Boss, get away from dem ropes. Don’t let him crowd ya! Boss!”

Patricia’s eyes filled with frightened tears.

“Simon!” she sobbed. “Get away, get away!”

And strange things were happening to Inspector John Henry Fernack — things which, in abstract theory, he would have hooted at as fantastically impossible. Faced with the reality of his old adversary’s imminent downfall, a thing which in his heart of hearts he had long ceased to believe possible, he found himself inexplicably on his feet, howling, “What’s the matter, Saint? You gonna let that dumb lug do that to you? Move around, Templar, move around!”

But the Saint seemed finished. He let the referee come between him and the Angel, and staggered along the ropes, apparently helpless and ripe for the knockout blow... He wondered, as he peered at the Angel with eyes that he hoped had a glazed appearance, how many more of those sickening body blows he could have taken if the referee hadn’t parted them when he did...

This, the Saint knew, was the final move in his play, the all-deciding feint. It would, he hoped, open the Angel’s guard sufficiently to permit a blow to the jaw. It would prove something else as well. For he knew that Bilinski’s experience would have warned him against such a trick — unless he had reason to believe that the Saint’s sudden torpor was not faked, but real! For the Angel must know perfectly well that he had struck no blow that could have dazed his opponent to that extent. Nevertheless, he was opening up more and more, as if he expected the Saint to give ground — as if, indeed, he was ready for Simon to collapse about this point. The Saint doubted that the Angel actually knew how this was being achieved. He was taking Spangler’s word for it, and going on past corroborating experience...

The Saint slumped against the ropes, and not one person in the entire mob could have suspected the grim triumph that coursed through his every nerve as the Angel charged in for the slaughter, wide open, a bone-shattering right hurtling at the Saint’s jaw.

But the blow never reached its destination.

For even as the Angel started it, Simon Templar’s right hand came up from where it had been sagging near the floor, and landed, with the approximate velocity of an ack-ack shell and the same general concussive effect, flush on the Angel’s froglike chin. Barrelhouse Bilinski’s feet were jolted up a good three inches off the floor, and when he came down again, his eyes glassy, his arms flailing loosely, he continued all the way down — down to the canvas like a mountainous mass of boneless gelatine.

He lay there twitching slightly, and it was evident to the blindest of the now completely hysterical audience that he would continue to lie there until someone carried him away.

The Saint strolled to his neutral corner as the referee began the formality of counting out the sleeping Angel. He failed to see either Hoppy or Whitey as he leaned against the ropes, and for a moment he was puzzled. Then, through the deafening hullabaloo, he thought he heard Hoppy’s bronchitic foghorn somewhere below. As the referee completed his toll and Mushky leaped into the ring to retrieve the Angel’s carcass, Simon slipped through the ropes and into the midst of the raving, eddying ringside mob, looking about anxiously.

“Hoppy!” he called.

Through the unbroken pandemonium and the pleas of the newspaper reporters and cameramen converging upon him he heard Hoppy again, this time more distinctly: “Boss, I got him! I got him!”

“Where are you?” Simon shouted.

“Under de ring! This way!”

The great pipe organ burst into “Hail the Conquering Hero Comes” as Simon peered beneath the apron and saw, silhouetted against the supporting joists, Mr Uniatz holding down a set of kicking arms and legs by the simple expedient of sitting on the body that sprouted them.

“He gives me an argument when I don’t let him spill out de bottle,” Hoppy explained in stentorian confidence. “So I do like ya tell me.”

“Bring him out,” said the Saint.

Several score spectators crowded around, seething with excitement, while the photographers, frustrated in their efforts to get the Saint back in the ring, aimed their cameras at him crouched under the apron. Their flashbulbs went off in broadsides as Hoppy wrestled with his quarry.

The blue uniforms of policemen were converging on the spot, and over the hubbub and the pealing of the organ Simon heard the brassy tones of another familiar voice approaching.

“One side, get outta the way! One side! What’s going on here?” Inspector Fernack trumpeted as he fought his way through the crowd.

Hoppy finally dragged out his kicking clawing captive by the collar of its turtle-neck sweater.

“He tries to pull dis rod on me!” he said, and handed the gun to Simon. He yanked the man to his feet, as Fernack broke through the final barrier of humanity. “Stand up, youse!”

As the Saint had expected, it was Whitey Mullins.

“What the hell goes on here?” Fernack demanded, and Simon handed him the gun.

“Take this, John Henry. I’ve got a slug I dug out of a pawnshop doorframe that I think’ll fit it. And I’ll give you odds that the bullet that laid out Steve Nelson will also fit Whitey’s gun.”

Simon and Patricia were in Steve Nelson’s hospital room next morning when Inspector Fernack arrived. Connie Grady was also there, accompanied by a subdued and sympathetic Michael. Mr Uniatz was also present, accompanied by a breakfast bottle of bourbon. It was like Old Home Week.

“I hear you’re doing fine, Champ,” Fernack said. “How soon is Grady going to match you with the Saint?”

“From what I heard on the radio,” Nelson answered, “maybe it’s a good thing I’m retiring.”

Connie squeezed his hand.

“If you’d like to tell me more about this,” Fernack said, with as close to a tone of respect as he had ever used in speaking to the Saint, “I’d be willing to listen. We picked up Spangler last night, by the way — he was just packing for a trip.”

“Congratulations, John Henry.” Simon grinned. “Never let it be said that the Police Department lets lawns grow on its feet.”

Fernack grimaced.

“What I want to know,” he said, “is how you figured Whitey was working with Spangler.”