Something was very definitely wrong with Torpedo Smith. He stood shaking his head desperately as if to clear it, holding on to the top strand with one hand and with the other trying to push away the black-masked monster who was now opening up with the steady, relentless power of a pile-driver.
“De Angel musta hit him!” Hoppy yelled. “I told ya, didn’t I? I told ya!” His foghorn bellow rose over the mob’s fierce blood cry. “Smith’s down!”
Torpedo Smith, obviously helpless, had slumped beneath the repeated impact of the Angel’s deliberate blows and now lay where he had fallen, face down, motionless, as the referee tolled him out.
The sea of humanity began ebbing like a tide towards the exits, the vast drone of their voices and shuffling feet covered by the reverberating recessional of a pipe-organ striking up “Anchors Aweigh” from somewhere in the bowels of the coliseum.
“Well, ya see, boss?” Hoppy jubilated as they drifted into the aisle. “It’s just like I told ya. De Angel’s dynamite.”
Pat shook her golden head compassionately.
“That poor fellow — the way that horrible creature hit him when he was helpless! Why didn’t the referee stop it?”
She turned, suddenly aware that Simon was no longer behind her. She looked about bewilderingly. “Simon!”
“Dere he is!” Hoppy waved a hamlike hand towards the end of the row they had just left. “Boss!”
The Saint was standing there, the occupants of the first rows of the ringside eddying past him, watching the efforts of Whitey Mullins and his assistants to revive the slumbering Smith.