The man raised his tear-stained face. "It's fate," he intoned.
It was Seymour Burdich, finally divested of his black turtleneck and ankh and draped in the Grecian gown that seemed to be the fashion at Shangri-la.
"You again," Remo said.
"You've given me my life. You're a true hero. I'll do anything for you. Anything?"
Remo thought. "Anything?"
"Anything."
"Good. Wait till Jumbo here comes around, and I'll tell you what you can do for me."
Burdich scuttled toward the windowsill, where the other man Remo had saved, the enormous one, was just coming to. "Mama?" the big red-haired man said weakly.
"Remo. Get your act together."
The stairway outside the bedroom was already thundering with the footfalls of the onlookers. They were coming up like an army. The big man cleared his throat and thrust his hand out at Remo.
"Son," he said, his voice now booming with control, "A young man like you can go far. I'm president of Amalgamated Steel and Iron, Houston, and I want you
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to know there's a vice-presidency waiting for you."
"Can it," Remo said. "Do me a favor?"
"You name it, pard."
"Anything," Burdich said. "I will walk to the ends of the earth for you. I will scale mountains. I will walk on hot coals-"
"I want you to tell everybody that you got up there by yourselves."
"What?" Burdich said, astonished.
Amalgamated Steel drawled, "Listen, boy, some old Chinaman threw me up there, and I'm going to see to it he gets his little yeller nose caved in."
Remo tried to reason with him. "How's it going to make you look if you go around telling everybody that a little old guy weighing a hundred pounds just threw you ten stories into the air?"
"But gawldurn it, they saw it with their own eyes."
"Appearances can be deceiving," Remo philosophised.
"Re-mo! Re-mo!" the crowd shouted in the hallway behind the door.
The big man thought. At last he shook his head and said, "Nope. Sorry, son. You're a fine boy, but justice must be done. Truth is truth, and justice is justice."
Remo picked him up by the ankles and thrust him out the window again. "And accidents are accidents," he said.
Amalgamated roared as he dangled upside-down, his red hair blowing in the breeze. "Okay! I did it myself." Remo pulled him back in. "Though I'll be gawldurned if anybody's going to believe that," he added. "How was I supposed to have gotten myself up there? Playing hopscotch?"
"Tell them it's an old famiiy secret," Remo said. He turned to Burdich, who had positioned himself back at
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Remo's feet and was kowtowing in a rapid series. "That okay with you?" Remo asked.
"Anything. I will swallow toads. I will prostrate myself before the hordes."
"Fine. Prostrate yourself before the horde outside the door for a while."
"Anything you say," Burdich said somberly.
"You too," Remo said, motioning for the big man to leave. "Tell them the story."
When they had left, Remo dashed back toward the window. Chiun was still standing below, looking up scornfully. "Wait for me, Little Father," he said. He slowly lowered himself out of the window, pressing his hands and feet against the surface of the wall. Then he was scaling down the brick as effortlessly as a spider, somersaulting at the last moment to a standing position on the ground.
Chiun's eyes were burning into his. "They called you a hero," the old man said sullenly.
Remo led him to a small recessed window along the house's foundation. "I want to check out the basement," he said.
"A hero! For a piece of work any chimpanzee could have performed."
"What can I do about it?" Remo said, raising the window and snaking inside. Chiun followed. "They didn't know how easy it was to catch those two guys. There's no harm done."
"No harm? No harm? Harm has been done to me. I was the one who sent those louts to the heavens in two perfect opposing spirals. Did you not see the pattern formed when the bodies began their descent?" He was jumping up and down and screeching like a mad bird.
"Quiet down," Remo whispered, distracted. Posie
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Ponselle may have been telling the truth, whether what she said computed with Smitty or not. If she was, then some tangible evidence of her weird story might be in the basement. "Uh, that was good work, Chiun. Really super."
"Do not congratulate me with your cheap accolades. It was not super. It was perfect. One of the most exceptional double-spiral air blows ever executed in all the teachings of Sinanju. But do I, the Master himself, receive so much as a 'well done' from those insipid white persons?" He pointed disdainfully toward the upper floors of the mansion. "Is there even one attempt to reward me with some useless trinket?"
"Chiun," Remo whispered. Beneath the rickety stairwell were stacked dozens of sealed cartons. Each contained thirty vials of clear liquid. "Here's the stuff for the guests."
Chiun paid no attention. "Naturally, not one among them sought to praise the Master of Sinanju in his glory."
Remo felt along the cobwebbed walls of the cellar. The foundation stones had been laid more than a hundred years before. The mortar around them was cracked and mildewed. He tapped the stones rhythmically, one hand following the other, until his hands were flying and the walls vibrated with a low rumble. He followed the stones around three walls. As he approached the last wall, near a dank corner, the sound of his tapping changed almost imperceptibly. He tried the stone again. Unmistakable. There was a hollow place behind it.
Drumming his fingers along the mortar surrounding the stone, he ground it into flying dust. It was new
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mortar, recently laid. He removed the stone easily, and felt in the hollow behind it. A few inches from the surface was what felt like a tarpaulin covering a large geometric shape.
Chiun continued to pace around the basement, expounding on his various psychological injuries. "No," he said. "Instead they look to you. You who have done nothing more than hang gracelessly from a window. . . ."
"Bingo," Remo said. Beneath the tarp was a huge cube of shimmering gold. He craned to see the dimensions of the cube inside the wall. "I wonder how many millions this is worth."
"Are you listening to me?" Chiun groused.
"No." He lifted the stone back into place. Upstairs, he heard the insistent chanting coming from the hallway outside the upstairs bedroom. "Come on. I've seen what I wanted to see. We've got to get back up there."
"Why?" Chiun said, scaling up the wall after Remo. "Have you not received enough undue praise for one day?"
"I just want everything to look normal," he explained. "I still haven't talked to Foxx yet. Until I do, I want everybody to think we're just a couple of nice guys."
"I am nice," Chiun said. "I am the nicest, sweetest, most loving-"
"You practically killed two men," Remo whispered as he vaulted back into the room. "Do you know how much attention we would have drawn if they'd died?"
"Ridiculous," Chiun said. "No one would have noticed. They al! look the same, dressed in those obscene things."
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"I can't argue all day. The plain fact is, you assaulted two people who weren't doing anything wrong."
"Weren't-" Chiun staggered back, speechless. "But did you not see the extreme offense they were perpetrating upon my being?"
"How could I? I was in here."
Chiun's face was steely. "With that woman of the yellow hair and deformed chest, no doubt."
"That's beside the point. What'd they do?"
"They sought to shame me publicly," Chiun said, his eyes downcast. "Publicly. In the middle of a parade."
"You can do better than that," Remo said. "A parade? Out in the snow? Come on, Chiun."