Hoppy groaned and followed like an exhausted elephant.
They found Nelson near the Fifty-Ninth Street entrance of Central Park, alone.
“Whitey’s got another of those headaches,” he explained. “I think maybe that bullet Karl grazed him with last month must have shaken his brains up worse than he admitted.”
The Saint nodded, breaking into an easy, jogging trot beside Nelson as they struck out northward along the side of a winding park road.
“Could be,” he agreed.
Mr Uniatz climbed into the car again and waited disconsolately for several minutes in order to give them a good head start. Then he started the car up and followed slowly behind.
Some thirty minutes later the Saint and Steve Nelson were jogging eastward along the inner northern boundary of Central Park, following the edge of the park road. The Saint’s long legs pumped in smooth, tireless rhythm as he breathed the dew-washed fragrance of blooming shrubs that covered the green slopes. At that early hour there was practically no traffic through Central Park, and he filled his lungs with air untainted by the fumes of carbon monoxide and tetraethyl lead... During the past weeks the regimen of training in which he had joined Steve Nelson had tempered his lithe strength to the whiplash resilience of Toledo steel and surcharged his reflexes with jungle lightning, and as he ran his blood seemed to tingle with the sheer exultation of just living. He drank deeply of the perfume of the morning, smiling at a sky of the same clear blue as his eyes, his every nerve singing, feeling his youth renewed indestructibly.
He glanced back once at the brooding shadow of Hoppy’s face behind the wheel of the car far behind, and chuckled softly. Nelson, trotting beside him, asked, “What’s funny?”
The Saint nodded over his shoulder.
“Hoppy. He’s miserable. Nobody to talk to. Nothing to drink.”