The Masked Angel hadn’t appeared yet, but the Saint rather expected that Spangler would try every trick in the bag, including the petty one of wearing down the opposition’s nerves by making him wait.
He failed to spot Pat among the buzzing tide of faces at the ringside, but everything beyond the glare of light centring on the ring was little more than a smoke-dimmed blur. The faces, void of all individuality, were such as one encounters sometimes in nightmare sequences, a phantasmagoria of eyes and noise — hard, critical, and skin-prickingly theriomorphic... He wondered momentarily if Steve was in good enough shape to listen to the fight from his bedside... Connie had been with him nearly all day at the hospital...
A roar like an approaching forest fire filled the packed coliseum with surging clamour as the Masked Angel appeared up the ramp, preceded by Doc Spangler and followed by a cohort of handlers bearing the various accessories of refreshment and revival. The incredible bulk of the Angel loomed up over the apron of the ring and squeezed between the ropes in his corner, his plates of sagging fat quivering like chartreuse jelly. Unmasked now, his ridiculous little nubbin of a head bobbed from side to side in acknowledgment of the roars of the mob, his round little cheeks and button nose more an inspiration for laughter than the fearsome horror his black mask had aroused.
Behind him, Doc Spangler leaned over his shoulder and spoke softly into an ear that was the approximate size and shape of a Brussels sprout.
As the Saint watched them from beneath lowered lids, he felt once again the spectral footfalls of ghostly centipedes parading his spine, knowing that his real danger was as yet undetermined, the point of attack, unknown. How it would come, in what shape or form, he wasn’t quite sure. He’d covered all the possibilities, or so he thought; but whether the threat, the unknown secret weapon that the Angel must surely possess, would come from an act of the Angel himself, or from some outside agent, he wasn’t quite sure. All he had was an idea... He felt its shadow upon him like a ghostly mist, ambient and all-pervading...
The bell clanged sharply a few times; the throbbing hum of the crowd subsided somewhat. The main-bout referee, dapper and fresh in white tennis shoes and flannels, stepped to the centre of the ring and gestured the Saint and the Angel to come to him.
Simon rose, followed by Whitey and Hoppy, and came forward to face the Angel, who shambled up to the referee flanked by Spangler and Mushky Thompson. The Angel towered over them all, an utterly gross, unlovely specimen of so-called homo sapiens.
The referee droned the familiar formula: “...break when I say break... no hitting in breaks, no rabbit or kidney punches... protect yourself at all times... shake hands, come out fighting...”
They touched gloves, and the Saint walked nonchalantly back to his corner. He rubbed his feet a couple of times on the resin sprinkled there while Hoppy pulled the stool out of the ring. The sound of the bell seemed unreal and far away when, after what seemed an extraordinarily long time, it finally rang.