"Chiun," Remo said, his voice muffled by the silk scarf. "There's the reception desk over there. Just check us in. And remember who we are."
"I would gladly abandon my knowledge of our identities, if with it I could discard my memories of that monstrosity."
Remo sighed. "Just check us in." He walked toward a row of leather couches and sat waiting.
A uniformed security guard sat behind the desk, doing double duty as receptionist and switchboard operator.
He looked up at the old Oriental standing at the high counter, his face barely visible above its top.
"Yes?" he said.
"Merry Christmas," Chiun said.
"Merry Christmas?"
"Yes. I thought I would bring holiday cheer into your life. Do you like that tree?" he asked, pointing over his shoulder but not deigning to turn around.
"We have one every year," the guard said.
"That is a non-answer to a perfectly good question," Chiun said. "Do you like the tree?"
"I guess so," the guard shrugged. "I never really look at it."
"Save yourself the trouble. Do not look at it."
"Do you have something to do with Christmas trees?" the guard asked.
"No," Chiun said. "I am Doctor Park. A room is ready for my patient, Mr. Williams. What room is it?"
"Oh, yes," the guard said, sitting up straighter on his backless, high-legged wooden stool. "You're in the new wing. Suite 515." His voice conveyed a new respect—while he had no idea who Mr. Williams was, or who this old man in front of him was, he had been cautioned right from the assistant administrator's office that a very important patient named Williams was coming and he should extend all courtesies. And that meant all courtesies.
"How do we find it?" Chiun asked.
"I'll take you there." The guard rose to his feet
"That is not necessary. Just point."
"That corridor there. Take it to the end. That's the new wing. Take the elevator to five."
"Thank you," Chiun said.
"Doctor?" the guard said, still standing.
Chiun nodded to indicate he was listening.
"Aren't you cold?"
"Cold?"
"With just that robe on?"
"Why should I be cold? Is your furnace broken?"
"I mean outdoors. It's only fifteen out."
"Sixteen," Chiun said.
"Same thing," the guard said. "Weren't you cold?"
"I am never cold when it is sixteen out. Remember. Do not look at that tree."
He walked away from the guard who scratched his head, looked at the tree, then scratched his head again.
"How'd we make out?" Remo asked when Chiun stood in front of him.
"Fine. We are in Suite 515. But we must be careful not to catch a cold. I think their furnace is broken."
"It feels warm enough in here," Remo said.
"I know. But it's only sixteen outside."
"It felt like fifteen, Little Father."
"Why don't you talk to the guard? You can compare notes on your favourite subjects: ugly trees and incorrect temperature readings."
"Take me to my room," Remo said. "I am sick and ailing and I fain would lie doon."
"Is this a joke?"
"Take me to my room."
In recognition of the $275 a day it was costing, Remo's suite was bright and cheery, with windows along two walls of the spacious living room, and soft muted lamps in the single bedroom. In place of the normal retch green to be found on hospital walls, the rooms were papered in a light sunshine-yellow flowered pattern.
The suite was also decorated with a small plastic Christmas tree atop a walnut liquor cabinet and by two highly ornamental blonde nurses.
"Mr. Williams," one said as Remo entered the room. "I'm Miss Baines and this is Miss Marshall. We're here to help make your stay pleasant."
Remo started to speak, but Chiun scooted around in front of him, imperiously waved his robed arm toward the door, and said, "Begone."
"Begone?" Miss Baines asked.
"I am Doctor Park. If we need you we will call you."
The nurse smiled uncomfortably, but she and Miss Marshall left the room.
"You didn't have to be so bossy," Remo said after they left.
"It is my understanding that this is the way doctors act," Chiun said. He looked around. "What do you think of this room?"
"Better than some motels we've been in."
"One thing disturbs its symmetry."
Remo raised an eyebrow in a question.
"This," Chiun said. He scooped the small plastic Christmas tree from the walnut cabinet. Holding it at arm's length as if to insure that it would not contaminate him by untoward proximity, he carried it to a closet, dropped it inside and closed the door tightly.
"There. That's better."
"You shouldn't have done that, Chiun. You could have redecorated with tennis balls."
"Redecorated it so that you can again refuse me a promised gift?"
"Promised, Little Father?" asked Remo, who could remember no such promise involving slavery for Barbra Streisand.
"In the eyes of a just man, a thing that should be done is a promise to the world and to himself. It separates just men from pale pieces of pigs' ears."
"Right, Chiun, right, right, right." Remo tried to change the subject. "You are clear on our plan?"
"Yes, I am clear on the plan, but it insults me to call it 'our' plan. It is your plan. You are Mr. Williams, a man of great wealth. I am your physician. We will try to find something suspicious in the hospital. You will let people know you have tax problems, and hope that someone approaches you."
"You've got it."
"I am gratified that you have shared your wisdom with me."
"You know why we're doing it this way, don't you. Chiun?"
"Yes. Because you are stupid."
"No. Because this time, we're going to be smart. In Scranton, I did everything your way. I jumped the line and hit the top. It was beautiful. Except the guy I was supposed to protect was killed. I eliminated seven or eight or something people and it didn't do a damned bit of good."
"That was my way?" Chiun asked. "To gambol about like an intoxicated soldier, wishing people 'Merry Feast of the Pig,' and strewing the landscape with corpses? No. My way is to eliminate the person who is causing the trouble. Play games with as many people as you want but if you do not get the right person, you will have accomplished nothing. Do not blame on me your inability to identify the correct target. I am after all only a poor servant who is not permitted to know the secrets of you and Doctor Smith."
"Well, this time we're going to find out just who's responsible before we go off smacking anyone down."
"And to do this, it is necessary for us to play acting games as a doctor and patient?"
"Sure, Chiun. That's the beauty. With our money, we'll have free run of the hospital. No one'll interfere with someone who sent in twenty-five thousand dollars, cash in advance."
"That is much money?"
"Very much," said Remo, "even for a hospital. It might last as long as two weeks if you don't have Blue Cross and Blue Shield."
"I reserve my judgment on your plan."
"It'll work like a charm," Remo said. "No more violence."
CHAPTER NINE
Dr. Daniel Demmet walked into the office, tossed the gold ring casually on the desk, poured himself a glass of vodka from the liquor cabinet, then sat in a soft leather chair, staring sullenly at the vodka, before raising it to his lips and gurgling half of it down.
"Little early in the day for you, isn't it?" said Kathy Hahl from across the large glass-topped desk in her office.
"It's good any time of day." Demmet's voice had a tear in it, a self-pitying whine.
"Not for a doctor, though," she said.
"For the kind of doctor I am, it's perfectly acceptable," he said.
"Is that what's bugging you?"
"Yes. If you must know, I'm getting tired of all this.
"
"You're just upset because Mrs. Wilberforce didn't turn you on." Kathy Hahl smiled.
"Yeah," he said. "That's part of it, maybe. What was that ring business anyway?"
"Just research," Kathy Hahl said. "Something new I'm trying. Nothing for you to worry about."
"Will she die?" Demmet asked. He drained the rest of his vodka.
"Of course," Kathy Hahl said. "We couldn't very well let her live, could we? Not with her running around shooting her mouth off about how we did in her sweet young son."
"Well, I don't like it anymore."
"Maybe not. But your bookmakers like it because your bills are paid. Your bank account likes it because it's being fed regularly for the first time in a long time. And I like it because… because I like it."
"Join me for a drink?" Demmet asked, waving his glass slightly.
"How about taking a break? You're in surgery this afternoon, aren't you?"
"Yes," he said glumly. "But I can go in as drunk as I want to today. I don't have to kill anybody. Keeping people alive I can do drunk or sober. But killing people, for that only sober will do."
"Don't get maudlin on me. I don't have time today to hold your hand."
"No?"
"No. A very important person has checked into the Robler Clinic."
"Let's kill him right away. Before he has a chance to bitch about the meals."
"This is one we want to keep alive."
"What makes him different?"
"No one knows yet," Kathy Hahl said. "He's travelling under the name of Williams. He's brought his own doctor and he paid twenty-five thousand dollars cash in advance for the use of hospital facilities."
"Williams? I don't know any famous Williamses."
"Obviously, that's not his real name. But I'll find out who he really is. It could well be that he might like to donate some money to Robler in the event of his sudden demise."
"Well, until you decide to zap him, he's no concern of mine. And even then, he might not be."
"What does that mean?" Kathy Hahl demanded.
"I don't like this crap any more. There's just too many of them. And Mrs. Wilberforce was an ugly old ox, but she didn't have anything to do with anything. Not really."
"She was a threat. The way to handle threats is to eliminate them."
"That's the way to handle thirst, too. You're not going to have a drink with me?" Demmet asked.
"No," Kathy Hahl said. She smiled, but there was no humour in the movement of her lips. The smile was steely, micrometer precise, and totally without warmth.
"Well, somebody else will, I suppose," Demmet said angrily. He walked out of the office angrily.
Kathy Hahl watched the door close behind him, then looked down at the glass on her desk and at the gold ring.
Dr. Daniel Demmet might be getting cold feet. That would make him both dangerous and—if the experiment on Mrs. Wilberforce worked as well as it did on Anthony Stace—expendable.
She put the golden ring into her handbag until she had a chance to refill it.
CHAPTER TEN
Mrs. Wilberforce was found where Dr. Demmet had left her, in the bed of her motel room.
He had taken her in the early morning hours. It had been so long since she had had a man. It had been so long. She had abused men and browbeaten them, and when there were no real men around, she had used her son as a surrogate man, trying to break his spirit and will and body. But then when Demmet had just gone ahead and made love to her, without concern for her feelings, almost as if his mind were not there, she realized that she had wanted all the while for a man to rebel against her and to take her.
Demmet did and left her in the bed, thinking how pleasant the sex was, and how impossible it was that the nice Dr. Demmet could have been any part of a cover up involving Nathan David's death. He had told her how hard he had tried to save him, but how there was nothing he could do.
She thought about that just before closing her eyes and trying to sleep. But sleep would not come. First, there was a pain in the left temple and then a pain in the right temple, and then a continuous throbbing pain that made it feel as if there were something inside her head, pounding, trying to tear its way out.
She had gotten up and made her way to the bathroom of the small motel room, and from her personal kit had taken a small bottle of aspirins. She downed two of them. As she threw her head back to swallow the water from the small paper cup, her eyes caught sight of her reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet.
She looked at herself, then leaned forward to examine her face carefully. Sex was supposed to rejuvenate people, she had thought. Put on the glow of happiness. But there was no glow in her face. There were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and heavy bags under her eyes. And there had been no wrinkles and no bags early in the day. The headache, she decided, was worse than she thought. It must really have been wreaking havoc with her system to do that to her face. She hoped that the headache was only a headache, not the first symptom of whatever terrible illness it was that Nathan David had caught. Pneumonia. That would be terrible. Though of course she would have that nice Dr. Demmet to nurse her back to health.
She went back to bed, trying not to think of her headache, but it was five in the morning before she finally fell asleep.
She slept past her usual wakeup time of 6:45. A maid came into the room at 9:30, saw her in bed and sneaked out again. When the maid came back at 12:30, she still saw no do-not-disturb sign on the door, went in and saw Mrs. Wilberforce still asleep in the bed. She became suspicious this time and called softly to try to awaken her. But there was no response from the bed.
The maid called the manager who had checked Mrs. Wilberforce in the day before.
"What is it?" the manager asked when he finally made his way to the room. "I hope it's important."
"This woman won't wake up," the maid said. "I think she's sick."
The manager paused in the doorway. "Let's see," he said. "Oh yes, this is Mrs. Wilberforce. She checked in yesterday." He stood hesitantly in the open doorway of the room. "Mrs. Wilberforce," he called. "Mrs. Wilberforce." There was no movement under the covers.
"Mrs. Wilberforce," he called again, this time loudly.
"She won't answer," the maid said. "I think she's sick."
"Well, she'd better be sick or your ass is going to be in real trouble," hissed the manager, who had adopted this manner of speaking to the young Puerto Rican maid after the girl had committed the unpardonable sin of refusing to spend an afternoon with him in one of the motel's empty rooms and, even worse, threatened to tell his wife if he should persist in asking.
The manager swallowed once. Invading women's bedrooms was not the kind of thing managers did happily. "You keep your twiff right here," he whispered to-the girl, making sure that he had a witness to his entry. He brushed past the girl brusquely and walked around the edge of the bed.
He began to call Mrs. Wilberforce's name to the form hidden under the covers. There was still no response. He gently grabbed a section of blanket that he thought concealed an arm. He shook slightly.
"Mrs. Wilberforce."
There was a faint groan from under the blanket. Carefully, the manager pulled the cover down from the face of the person under the blanket. He paused, looking at the face, then recoiled sharply.
"This isn't Mrs. Wilberforce," he said excitedly.
"It isn't?" said the girl, moving into the room.
"No. Come look," he said, waving the girl forward. She walked nearer, at first hesitantly, then boldly. She came around to the side of the manager and looked down at the face of the figure in the bed. Involuntarily, she let out a gasp.
The face that lay there was as ugly as sin, as old as time. The skin was dried and brown with the deep cracked-mud wrinkles of extreme age. The hair was gray and there were occasional long hairs jutting out from the cheeks, the chin—long white wiry hairs, the kind grown by witches.
"Mrs. Wilberforce is a much younger woman," the
manager said. "I checked her in yesterday myself. This isn't her."
The head on the pillow moved slightly. Muscles in the eyelids seemed to flicker and then slowly, as if waiting for death to come and grant her reprieve, the rheumy eyes opened and looked blankly at the man and woman by the bed.
The lips moved slightly, but there was no sound. They moved again, the muscles at the corners of the mouth twitching spasmodically, and then the mouth opened and a tired scratch leaked out:
"I am Mrs. Wilberforce."
Chiun was watching television and Remo was lying on the couch practicing meditation when the telephone next to the green velvet sofa rang.
"This is Smith," said the voice, all lemons and bitternesses. "I have just learned that Mrs. Wilberforce… I believe you met her… has been taken to Robler Clinic."
"What's wrong with her?"
"I don't know. She was found sick in her motel room outside the city about an hour ago. You understand the connection, of course?"
"First her son, then her. Why, I don't know."
"Try to find out."
"Anything new elsewhere? Anything come up with the IRS investigations?"
"Nothing that we know of. Whatever Wilberforce may have been working on was largely in his head. We'll probably never know. Keep in touch. By the way, this line is secure. We've had our own men check it."
Remo slowly returned the receiver to the telephone, then hopped off the couch. He looked at Chiun's back, who appeared to be in a trance, fixated by the images on the television screen. No need to bother him, particularly since there was no chance of bothering him. Chiun would not move from the set until his shows were over. The room could be bombed, flooded or set afire. When the smoke had cleared, the water subsided and the debris settled, Chiun would still be there in full lotus watching Dr. Lance Ravenel solving the problems of the world with wisdom and kindness.
Remo wore a tan tee-shirt, brown double-knit slacks and gumsoled glove-leather slip-ons that were handmade in Italy.
"Well, I'm going now, Chiun," he said loudly.
There was no answer.
"I may never return. This is my most dangerous mission," Remo said.
Silence.
"Yet it is a far far better thing I do than I have ever done," Remo said.
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