King's Curse td-24

by Warren Murphy

  He paused. Twice, he thought. Twice in five minutes he had worried about someone else's life. He savored the emotion before deciding he did not like it.

  For her part, Valerie decided to go with Remo and Chiun, working on the assumption that she could never escape from a closet, but if she were outside with them, she might be able to slip away.

  Or, at least, yell loud and long for a cop.

  Jean Louis deJuin smoked a Gauloise cigarette in a long ebony filter that tried manfully but unsuccessfully to hide the fact that Gauloise cigarettes tasted like burned coffee grounds. He looked through the sheer draperies from the third floor window of the red brick mansion out onto the grounds between the building and the road beyond.

  Uncle Carl stood alongside deJuin's red leather, high-backed chair and watched with him. DeJuin casually flicked ashes from his cigarette onto the highly polished wood parquet floors that had been set in place, individual piece by individual piece, back in a day when wood was something that craftsmen used, and not just a temporary stop on the road to the discovery of plastic.

  "It was too bad about Reddington," Uncle Carl said.

  DeJuin shrugged. "It was not unpredictable; still it was worth the attempt. Today we try again. All we need is one of those two men, and from him we can learn the secrets of the organization he works for. Do we have people looking through their rooms?"

  "Yes, Jean Louis. As soon as they left, our men went up to look through the rooms. They will call if they find anything."

  "Good. And the computers in Paris are analyzing the various capacities of American computer systems. If that secret organization is, as it must be, tied tightly into a computer system, our own computers will tell us where."

  He looked up at Carl and smiled. "So there is nothing to do but enjoy the day's sport."

  DeJuin snuffed his cigarette out on the floor and leaned forward to look through the open window. Three stories below him, twelve-foot-high hedges crisscrossed each other at sharp right angles, in the form of a geometric maze covering almost an acre.

  Eliot Jansen Edgemont, who built the estate, had been an eccentric who made a fortune out of jokes and games, and during the twenties, half of America's families had owned one Edgemont game or another, back in the days before America had been mesmerized into thinking that sitting next to each other and sharing a communal stare at the photoelectric tube constituted a rich and full family life.

  He invented his first game at age twenty-two. When no game manufacturer would buy it, he himself produced and sold the game to department stores. At twenty-six he was wealthy. At thirty he was "America's Puzzle Master," spinning out from his fertile mind game after game, all of them bearing the Edgemont emblem, a large block E set into the middle of a geometric maze.

  For the maze had been the linchpin of Edgemont's success. While his early games had been successful, the first that had swept America in a craze had been a board game built around a maze. It was inevitable that the maze motif be built into Edgemont's life, and when he built his estate in Englewood, New Jersey, he copied a European idea for a maze of hedges on the grounds. Life Magazine had done a full color spread on it once: "The Mysterious Mansion of America's Puzzle King."

  The story did not mention any of the more unusual aspects of Eliot Jansen Edgemont's life. Most specifically it did not mention the orgies that took place in the maze that separated the house from the road.

  Then, on one fine summer day in the late 1940's, two male guests caught the same girl in the maze at the same time, and in the resulting argument over property rights, one of the men was killed.

  The scandal could not be hushed up, and various legions aimed at preserving America from the godless hordes organized boycotts of Edgemont products. The puzzle and home game business had been on the downs anyway, slowly being destroyed by America's new toy, television, and so the old man took his games and went home.

  He sold his business and retired to Europe, where people were more broad-minded, and he died there in the mid 1960's of a stroke suffered while tupping a fifteen-year-old girl in a haymow. It took the girl six minutes to realize he was dead.

  She told police that Edgemont said something before he died, but she could not hear the word clearly. Even if she had, she would not have been able to repeat it, for it was the secret name of the stone god Uctut.

  For Edgemont had been an Actatl.

  In the disposition of his estate, the mansion in Englewood passed into the hands of a corporation that was controlled by the tribe.

  It was usually seen only by workmen who kept the hedges trimmed and the buildings in good repair, except on days like this, when the Actatl needed a place to conduct some business.

  Today there were no workmen on the grounds, and as Jean Louis deJuin looked down into the center of the maze that covered more than an acre, he smiled in satisfaction.

  Everything was going very well.

  He looked up as a blue Ford pulled up outside the spike-topped high metal gates two hundred yards from the house. Raising field glasses to his eyes, he watched as Remo, Chiun, and Valerie got out of the car. The two men, he thought, did not really look impressive. Except for the thick wrists on the white man, neither showed any indication of special physical prowess. But he remembered that the white man had gone through some of the Actatl's best warriors like a Saracen blade through flan, and he did not make judgments on appearances anyway.

  The gate to the estate had been locked at deJuin's order with a new heavy-duty chain and padlock. As he watched, deJuin saw the padlock and chain fall away under the hands of the Oriental as if they were paper.

  Then the two men and the woman were walking between the twelve-foot-high walls of hedge toward the house, which sat on a small rise two hundred yards away. The alley through which they walked was about six feet wide.

  DeJuin moved back from the window, set down his binoculars, and glanced down into the main body of the maze. Everything was ready.

  The three people had reached the end of the hedge-lined walkway. A wall of hedge prevented their going farther ahead and they must choose now to turn left into the maze or go back. The Oriental looked behind them at the gate. He spoke, but deJuin could not hear the words.

  The white man shook his head no, grabbed the girl roughly by the elbow, and turned left. The Oriental followed slowly.

  Then they were into the maze, turning right, turning left, the white man leading the way, following the small paths down blind alleys, then turning back, slowly, steadily working their way toward the center.

  The telephone on the floor next to deJuin buzzed slightly, and he nodded for Uncle Carl to answer it.

  He stared at the three, and when they were deep in the heart of the labrynth, deJuin pulled the sheer curtain back a few inches and leaned forward toward the open window.

  He made a small gesture with his hand, then leaned onto the windowsill to watch. This was going to be interesting.

  "Why are we here?" Chiun demanded. "Why are we in this place of many turns?"

  "Because we are going to that house to get Bobbi back. Remember her? You let them take her because you were busy watching your television shows?"

  "That's right," said Chiun. "Blame it on me. Blame everything on me. It's all right. I'm used to it."

  "Stop carping and-"

  "So it's carp again, is it?" said Chiun.

  "Stop complaining," said Remo, holding Valerie tightly by her elbow, "and help me find our way to the house. I'm getting confused in here."

  "You were confused before you got here," said Chiun. "You have always been confused."

  "Right, right, right. You win. Now will you help me get to the house?"

  "We could go over the hedges," Chiun suggested.

  "Not with this one," Remo said, nodding toward Valerie.

  "Or through them," Chiun said.

  "She'd get cut. Then she'd probably start yelling. I couldn't take it if her mouth was going."

  Remo reached a blank wall of hed
ge. Another dead end.

  "Dammit," he said.

  "If we cannot go through or over," Chiun said, "there is only one thing to do."

  "Which is…"

  "Find our way through this growth."

  "That's what I'm trying to do," Remo said.

  "Actually it is a simple little toy," Chiun said. "Once there was a master, this was many years ago in what you would call the time of the pharaohs, and while in the land of the Egyptians, oh, to what a test he was put with one of these labyrinths and it was only his-"

  "Please, Chiun, no puff pieces for great masters you have known and loved. Bottom line. Do you know how to get through this thing?"

  "Of course. Each master is privileged to share the learnings of all the masters who have gone before."

  "And?"

  "And what?" asked Chiun.

  "And how the hell do we get through this thing?"

  "Oh." Chiun sighed. "Put out your right hand and touch the wall of hedge."

  Remo touched the spiny green bush. "Now what?"

  "Just move forward. Be sure your hand is against a wall at all times. Follow it around corners, into dead ends, everywhere it takes you. You must eventually find the exit."

  Remo looked at Chiun with narrowed eyes. "Are you sure this will work?"

  "Yes."

  "Why didn't you tell me before?"

  "I thought you wanted to do it your way. Running down alleys until they disappeared and then yelling at the plants. I did not know you wanted to do this efficiently. It has never been one of the things you are most interested in."

  "No more talk. Let's get to the house." Remo moved away at a trot, keeping Valerie close to his left side, his right hand extended, fingertips on the hedge wall.

  Chiun moved along after them, seeming only to amble, but staying just a step behind.

  "They found a telephone number in the room," Uncle Carl hissed to deJuin. "It is a number in the state of Maine for a Dr. Harold Smith."

  "Smith?" mused deJuin, still staring into the maze. "Call Paris and have our computer run the name of Smith through its memories." He smiled as he watched Remo reach out his hand and touch the hedge. DeJuin had nodded. So the secrets of a maze were no secret to the old man.

  DeJuin raised his hand slightly in a small gesture, careful not to call attention to himself.

  "And let the fun begin," he said.

  "There is someone in that window, Remo," Chiun said.

  "I know. I saw."

  "Two persons," Chiun said. "One young, one old." He was interrupted as a voice rang out over the maze. It echoed and seemed to come from all around them.

  "Help. Help." And then there was a scream.

  "That's Bobbi," Remo said.

  "Yes," said Chiun. "The voice came from over there." He pointed at the wall of the hedges, in the general pilot's direction of ten o'clock.

  Remo broke away into a run. He let Valerie go. She was unsure of herself, but suspecting she was safer with Remo than away from him, she ran after him.

  As deJuin watched from the window, he saw something that even later he would find difficult to believe.

  The old Oriental did not run after the white man. He looked around him, then raced into the hedge to his left. DeJuin winced. He could imagine what the prickers and thorns were doing to the old man's flesh. Then the old man was in the passageway on the other side of the hedge, moving across the six feet of gravel and charging again into another of the five-foot-thick growths of shrubs. And then he was through that, too.

  "Help, Remo, help," Bobbi's voice came again.

  When the maze was built, it had been designed around a small central court, and Bobbi Delpheen was there. She was tied to a high marble bench. Her tennis shirt had been ripped open and her bare breasts were exposed.

  Behind her stood two men wearing the yellow feather robes. One held a wedge of stone, its two edges chipped into a knife blade.

  They stood looking down at her, and then they looked up. Coming through the hedge directly facing them was a small Oriental in a golden robe.

  "Hold," he called. His voice rang out like a whipcrack.

  The men froze in position momentarily, then both turned and fled into one of the pathways leading away from the central court. Chiun moved to the side of the girl, whose arms and legs were tied to the corners of the bench.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Yes," Bobbi said. Her lips trembled as she spoke.

  She looked up at Chiun then past him as Remo suddenly raced into the clearing. A few paces behind him came Valerie.

  Chiun flicked at the ropes binding Bobbi's wrists and ankles and they fell away under his fingernails.

  "Is she all right?" Remo asked.

  "No thanks to you," Chiun said. "It's all right that I have to do everything around here."

  "What happened?" Remo asked.

  "She was here. The feathered men fled as the Master approached," Chiun said.

  "Why didn't you chase them?" Remo asked.

  "Why didn't you?"

  "I wasn't here."

  "That was not my fault," Chiun said.

  Bobbi stood up from the marble slab that served as a bench. Her tennis shirt hung open and her bosom jutted forward.

  Oblivious to that, she rubbed her wrists, which were red and chafed.

  "You'll never be a tennis player," Remo said.

  Bobbi looked up, startled. "Why not?"

  "Too much between you and your backhand."

  "Cover yourself up. That's disgusting," Valerie shrieked-again proving that beauty is in the eye of the beholder "and that "disgusting" is a 38-C being viewed by a 34-B.

  Bobbi looked down at herself as if at a stranger, then took a deep breath before pulling her shirt closed and tucking the ends into the waistband of her torn shorts.

  "Did they hurt you?" Remo asked.

  "No. But they… they were going to cut my heart out." The last words came out in a gush, as if speaking them slowly would have been impossible, but there was less horror in haste.

  Remo glanced toward the house. "Chiun, you get these girls out of here. I'm going after those two canaries."

  "Girls?" shouted Valerie. "Girls? Girls? That's patronizing."

  Remo raised his left index finger in a caution. "You've been a very good girl up until now," he said. "Now if you don't want your jaw patronized by my fist, you'll shut off that perpetual motion machine you call a mouth. Chiun, I'll meet you at the car."

  Behind him, deJuin heard the two men in feathered robes enter the room. Without looking, he waved them forward to the window. "This will be good now," he said.

  The four men leaned forward to watch.

  "Be careful," Chiun said to Remo.

  "You got it," Remo said.

  He turned, but before he could take a step away, the corridors of the maze resounded with a deep angry baying. The sound was answered by another howl. And another.

  "Oh, my god," said Valerie. "There are animals here."

  "Three," said Chiun to Remo. "Large."

  The baying changed now into angry excited barks that moved closer.

  "Take the girls, Chiun. I'll watch the rear."

  Chiun nodded. "When you leave," he said, "place your left hand against the wall. It will bring you back the way you came."

  "I know that," said Remo, who did not know that.

  Chiun led the girls away down one of the gravel paths leading from the central courtyard.

  The barking was louder now, growing more frenzied. Remo watched as Chiun and the two women hurried down the passageway, then turned left and vanished from sight.

  Along one of the paths to the right, Remo caught his first glimpse. It was a Doberman Pinscher, black, brown, and ugly. His eyes glinted savagely, almost taking on a blood-red glow, as he saw Remo standing in front of the marble slab bench. Behind him came two more Dobermans, big dogs, one hundred pounds each of muscle and teeth that glistened white and deadly, like miniature railroad spikes covered with dental e
namel.

  When they all saw Remo, they drove forward even faster, each trying to be first to get to the prize. Remo watched them coming, the most savage of all dogs, a breed created by intermingling other dogs selected for their size, their strength, and their savagery.

  They moved together now in a straight line, coming at Remo shoulder to shoulder, like three tines of a deadly pitchfork.

  Remo leaned back against the marble slab.

  "Here, poochie, poochie, poochie," he called.

  Remo moved a few feet farther to his right, away from the path Chiun and the women had taken. He did not want the dogs to be diverted from him and go off chasing a random smell.

  With one final growl delivered almost in unison, the three Dobermans moved into the clearing. They crossed the space between themselves and Remo in just two giant strides, and then they were in the air, their muzzles close together, their hindquarters separated, looking like deadly feathers attached to an invisible dart.

  Their open jaws all went for Remo's throat.

  He paused until the final instant, then moved down under the three soaring dogs.

  He sent the center one up over his head with his shoulder. The dog did a slow, almost lazy flip in the air and landed on its back on the marble slab with a splat. He yelped once, softly, then slid-off onto the gravel on the far side.

  Remo took out the dog on the right with an upward thrust of the bent knuckle of his right middle finger. He had never struck a dog before, and he was surprised at how much a dog's belly felt like a man's belly.

  The results of the stroke were the same, too, as with a man. The dog dropped dead at Remo's feet.

  The Doberman on the left missed Remo, hit the marble slab, skidded on its paws, fell off the slab, scrambled to its feet again, and turned back with a snarl toward Remo, who was backing away.

  He came through the air at Remo just as Remo decided he did not like killing dogs, even Dobermans who would gladly kill him just to keep their teeth cavity-free.

  As the dog's massive head turned to the left so its powerful open jaws could encircle Remo's throat, Remo leaned back, pulling his neck away, and the jaws closed harmlessly with a loud click as tooth surface contacted tooth surface.