Chapter one
At this moment Simon Templar was not quite enjoying the thrill of a lifetime.
Relaxed as much as the immediate carpentry would permit in his ringside seat between Hoppy Uniatz and Patricia Holm, he blended the smoke of his own cigarette with the cigar-and-sweat aroma of the Manhattan Arena, and contemplated the dying moments of the semi-final bout with his sapphire eyes musing under lazily drooping lids. Never addicted to obtaining his thrills vicariously, the man who was better known to the world as “the Saint” would have found small cause for excitement even if he had been addicted to such sedentary pursuits. Being there anyhow, he slouched in easy grace, the clean-cut lines of his face etched in a bronze mask of sardonic detachment as he watched two gladiators move about the ring with all the slashing speed of ballet dancers in leg-irons performing under water, and dedicated himself uncomplainingly to whatever entertainment the soiree of sock might provide.
In the great world outside there were uncountable characters who would have considered his presence there with no equanimity. Some of them, who in one way or another had participated in much shadier promotions than prize fights, would have considered it a personal injustice that anyone like Simon Templar should still be at large when so many of their best friends were not. Others, whose standard of righteousness was vouched for by at least a badge, would have moaned just as loudly that there was nothing basically unhappy about a policeman’s lot except what the Saint might plant in it.
If Inspector Fernack, for instance, had seen him there, that bulldogged minion of the law would have pondered darkly. He would have sensed from long experience in previous encounters with this amazing modern buccaneer that the Saint could have no orthodox interest in such a dreary offering of Promoter Mike Grady’s salon of swat. Of course the main bout between Torpedo Smith and the celebrated Masked Angel would probably be more interesting, but Simon Templar wasn’t there just for the entertainment. That was something John Henry Fernack would never have believed.
And on this occasion, for instance, he would have been right.
Jeers swept in derisive breakers over the two Ferdinands in the ring without in the least disturbing the equilibrium of their mitt minuet. The massed feet of the cash customers began to stamp in metronomic disapproval, and Simon’s chair jumped as the box-car brogans on his left added their pile-driving weight to the crashing cantata. Their owner’s klaxon voice lifted in a laryngismal obligate, a brassy, belly-searching ululation with overtones reminiscent of the retching bellow of a poisoned water buffalo. This, the Saint recognised, was merely Hoppy Uniatz’s rendition of a disgusted groan.
“Boss,” Hoppy heaved, “dis is moider!” The narrow strip of wrinkles that passed for Hoppy’s forehead were deep with scorn. “I oughta go up dere and t’row ’em outta de ring.”
Hoppy’s impulses were beautiful in their straightforward simplicity and homicidal honesty. The small globule of protoplasm that lurked within his rock-bound skull, serving the nominal function of a brain, piloted his anthropoidal body exclusively along paths of action, primitive and direct, unencumbered by any subtleties of thought or teleological considerations. The torture of cerebration he left entirely to the man to whose lucky star he hitched his wagon. For, to Hoppy, the Saint was not of this ordinary world; he was a Merlin who brought strange wonders to pass with godlike nonchalance, whose staggering schemes were engineered with supernatural ease to inevitable success through miracles of intellect which Hoppy followed in blind but contented obedience.
The Saint smiled at him tenderly.