"By a taxicab driven by a driver who mercifully did not speak once."
"They'll find you then," Smith said. "The cabdriver will remember both of you."
"Yes. We must return to Folcroft. If that is forbidden, we will leave the country, never to return."
"No. All right," Smith said.
He gave Chiun elaborate plans on taking a taxi to one of the entrances of the Massachusetts Turnpike and there transferring to a rented limousine. That rented limousine from Boston would be met on the road by another rented limousine from Connecticut which would finish the trip to Folcroft.
"Do you understand all that?"
"Yes," Chiun said. "One thing more, Emperor, but so small as almost not to trouble you over."
"What is that?"
"Who is going to pay for all these cabs and limousines?"
"I will," Smith said.
"Do I have to advance the drivers the money?" asked Chiun.
"It would be helpful."
"I will get it back from you?" asked Chiun.
"Yes."
"I will get receipts," Chiun said and hung up.
Smith replaced the telephone. He no longer felt like laughing.
CHAPTER NINE
Sheila Feinberg paced back and forth next to the cool brick wall of the big stone-floored, empty warehouse. She slipped off her low-heeled leather shoes. It felt better to have the pads of her feet touching the floor.
"Where did they go?" she demanded.
"I traced them to the Colony Days Inn," a man said. When he spoke the other eight people inside the garage looked at him. They all squatted on the floor in a semicircle as Sheila paced in front of them.
"And?" she said.
"They are gone from there," the man said. He yawned, a large yawn, not a signal of fatigue, instead, the gulping demand for more oxygen typical of large animals which do not get enough exercise.
"Where did they go?" Sheila asked. She turned toward the wall as if counting the bricks, scratched down them with her fingernails in a brief show of anger, then wheeled around.
"We have to get them," she said. "That's all. We have to get them. I want that young one. If only Hallahan hadn't fallen off that roof. He could find out."
"I found out," said the man with a brief display of pique. Sheila spun her head toward him as if he were attacking her. He met her eyes for a moment, then settled deeper onto his haunches and lowered his head. He spoke without looking up.
"They took a cab to the Massachusetts Turnpike and transferred to a limousine. I talked to the driver of the cab. The limousine was from Boston and was headed South. I have to wait for the limousine driver to get back to find out where he took them."
"Stay with it," Sheila ordered curtly. She added, "I know you'll do a good job."
The man looked up, smiling contentedly as if someone had stroked his neck. It was good to be noticed and praised. Especially by the leader of your pack.
It might even mean, that night, that he would get first feeding rights. Before all the good parts were gone.
CHAPTER TEN
The sun poured in through the one-way window of the hospital room. Beyond the window were the dark gray waters of Long Island Sound, now as flat as slate on a typical breezeless, airless New York City day. The humidity made people on the street feel as if a towel had been pulled from boiling water and dropped onto their faces.
Inside the room was the coolness of an air conditioner. As Remo woke up, he noticed it and noticed also that, for the first time in many years, he did not smell the faint charcoal flavor that air conditioning pumped into one's lungs.
He blinked his eyes and looked around.
Smith was sitting in a chair alongside his bed. He looked relieved to see Remo awake. His usual pinched-lemon look was replaced by the look of a lemon that had not yet been cut or squeezed. For Smith, whole lemon was happy; pinched, twisted, cut, squeezed, and juiced lemon was normal.
"You don't know how much fun it is to wake up and see you sitting there," said Remo, surprised by the thickness of his own voice. He usually didn't sleep that heavily. "I mean, some people wake up and see the woman they love. Or the surgeon who just saved their lives after a four-day operation. I see you, sitting there like a boa constrictor waiting to corner a mouse. It fills the heart with cheer."
"I've seen your wounds," said Smith. "You're lucky to see anyone."
"Oh, those," said Remo. "Chiun took care of them." He looked again around the room. "Where is he anyway?"
"He went down to the gymnasium. He said something about wanting to see the place where everything started to go wrong for him. I think it was the gymnasium where you two first met," Smith said dryly.
"Yeah. Well, forget that. Listen, have you got a cigarette?"
"Sorry, I don't smoke. I gave it up when the surgeon general's report came out. I thought you represented all the danger to my health I could handle."
"It's nice to be home," Remo said. "Holler out in the hall and get me a cigarette, will you?"
"Since when have you been smoking?"
"On and off. Every so often," Remo lied. He really wanted that cigarette and could not understand why. It had been years since he had smoked. Years of training had finally brought him to understand breathing was everything. All the tricks, all the magic, all the skill of Sinanju were built on breathing. Without it, nothing was possible. With it, nothing was impossible. The first thing one learned was not to breathe smoke.
But he wanted the cigarette nevertheless.
Smith nodded and went into the hall. While he was gone, Remo inspected the room. He realized, with a little shock, it was the same one in which he had awakened after being saved from the gimmicked electric chair.
Sentiment? For old time's sake? Not from Smitty. Remo was in that room because that room had been vacant. If the only vacancy had been in the boiler room, Remo would have been sleeping in the furnace between shovelfuls of coal.
It was the usual hospital room. White. One bed, one chair, one bureau, one window. But the window was a sheet of one-way glass through which Remo could see, but which was a mirror from the outside.
Smith came back with two cigarettes. "You owe them to the nurse in the hall. I told her you'd give them back to her. She said it was all right, but I told her you'd return them tomorrow. By the way, she thinks your name is Mr. Wilson and that Chiun is your valet."
"Don't tell him that." Remo said and yanked the cigarettes from Smith's hand. One slipped and fell to the floor.
Remo put the filtered cigarette to his mouth. Smith lit it from a book of matches that had exactly two matches. Remo wondered sometimes if the man was human. Two cigarettes, two matches. Smith could have taken an hour, walking the corridors looking for somebody with a free pack of matches with only two matches left in it.
Remo took his first huge inhale as Smith retrieved the other cigarette from the floor and put it, along with the remaining match, in the bureau next to Remo's bed.
The first taste made Remo cough. Had it always tasted so bad? He knew it had. Back when he had been smoking, he often quit, sometimes for weeks at a time. That first puff when he weakened and went back was always a choking cough-producer, like the body's last shout of warning before surrender. The second puff was better and halfway through the cigarette it was as if he had never stopped, not even for an hour. It was that way again.
"Try to get me a pack, will you?" Remo said. "Put it on my room bill."
"I'll see what I can do," Smith said, then briefed Remo on what was happening in Boston.
The killings were continuing. Police had shot one of the tiger people. "It was a housewife. Unfortunately, she died so we didn't get a chance to study her and see if there's an antidote."
"That's a shame," Remo said.
"Now they're screaming for massive Federal intervention, and with you and Chiun out of it, I guess there's no alternative. What happened to you anyway?" asked Smith.