Patricia’s eyes filled with frightened tears.
“Simon!” she sobbed. “Get away, get away!”
And strange things were happening to Inspector John Henry Fernack — things which, in abstract theory, he would have hooted at as fantastically impossible. Faced with the reality of his old adversary’s imminent downfall, a thing which in his heart of hearts he had long ceased to believe possible, he found himself inexplicably on his feet, howling, “What’s the matter, Saint? You gonna let that dumb lug do that to you? Move around, Templar, move around!”
But the Saint seemed finished. He let the referee come between him and the Angel, and staggered along the ropes, apparently helpless and ripe for the knockout blow... He wondered, as he peered at the Angel with eyes that he hoped had a glazed appearance, how many more of those sickening body blows he could have taken if the referee hadn’t parted them when he did...
This, the Saint knew, was the final move in his play, the all-deciding feint. It would, he hoped, open the Angel’s guard sufficiently to permit a blow to the jaw. It would prove something else as well. For he knew that Bilinski’s experience would have warned him against such a trick — unless he had reason to believe that the Saint’s sudden torpor was not faked, but real! For the Angel must know perfectly well that he had struck no blow that could have dazed his opponent to that extent. Nevertheless, he was opening up more and more, as if he expected the Saint to give ground — as if, indeed, he was ready for Simon to collapse about this point. The Saint doubted that the Angel actually knew how this was being achieved. He was taking Spangler’s word for it, and going on past corroborating experience...
The Saint slumped against the ropes, and not one person in the entire mob could have suspected the grim triumph that coursed through his every nerve as the Angel charged in for the slaughter, wide open, a bone-shattering right hurtling at the Saint’s jaw.
But the blow never reached its destination.
For even as the Angel started it, Simon Templar’s right hand came up from where it had been sagging near the floor, and landed, with the approximate velocity of an ack-ack shell and the same general concussive effect, flush on the Angel’s froglike chin. Barrelhouse Bilinski’s feet were jolted up a good three inches off the floor, and when he came down again, his eyes glassy, his arms flailing loosely, he continued all the way down — down to the canvas like a mountainous mass of boneless gelatine.
He lay there twitching slightly, and it was evident to the blindest of the now completely hysterical audience that he would continue to lie there until someone carried him away.
The Saint strolled to his neutral corner as the referee began the formality of counting out the sleeping Angel. He failed to see either Hoppy or Whitey as he leaned against the ropes, and for a moment he was puzzled. Then, through the deafening hullabaloo, he thought he heard Hoppy’s bronchitic foghorn somewhere below. As the referee completed his toll and Mushky leaped into the ring to retrieve the Angel’s carcass, Simon slipped through the ropes and into the midst of the raving, eddying ringside mob, looking about anxiously.