“Sure, just follow me,” he said. He turned to Simon. “I’ll check on the Angel’s hand-wraps on my way back.”
They disappeared round a turn from where the roar of the crowd was flowing like the muted roar of distant surf.
The Saint went on with Hoppy to his dressing-room, feeling the ghostly fingers of peril once more playing their familiar cadenza along his vertebrae and up through the roots of his hair... He knew, his every instinct told him, that tonight he was fighting for greater stakes than glory or dollars. Tonight would be more than a mere encounter with padded gloves. Tonight he would be fighting for his life.
A swarthy snaggle-toothed character in a dirty polo shirt was seated on a broken-down chair as they entered the dressing-room. Hoppy recognized him at once.
“Mushky,” he growled. “I fought you was in de Angel’s corner.”
“So I am, chum, so I am,” Mr Mushky Thompson agreed affably. “I gotta take a gander when you bandage de Saint’s hands.”
“That’s what I admire about this business,” Simon remarked cheerfully. “Everyone trusts everyone else.”
Hoppy fixed Mr Thompson with a baleful glare.
“Out, ya bum,” he ordered.
“Now wait,” Mushky protested. “It’s de rules. I—”