"The pageant," the chauffeur said dourly as he passed on to the next guest.
"A play," Chiun explained. "It is like television." He placed his mask over his face with great ceremony. "O lovely one," he intoned, "when I behold your gracious ways. . ."
"Shhh," someone interjected as the lights dimmed and the figure of Felix Foxx, unmasked, stepped up to a dais on the far side of the room.
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"Ladies and gentlemen," he began.
Chiun clapped wildly. "It is good to encourage actors," he said.
"We are gathered here tonight to partake of the miracle of Shangri-la. The stripping away of the years, the defiance of time, the triumph of youth and beauty are the province of the esteemed few who hear me now."
"Hear, hear," Chiun yelled.
Foxx looked into the darkened crowd, then continued: "As Coleridge wrote of the dreamer in his immortal poem Kubla Khan: 'Weave a circle 'round him thrice, and touch his eyes with holy dread, for he on honeydew has fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise.' In Shangri-la, we are all such dreamers, weaving our own magic circle, privileged to partake of the milk of Paradise ourselves. . . ."
"With a needle full of drugs from the body of a dead girl," Remo said to Chiun.
"Silence, unenlightened one," Chiun snapped. "He is a fine actor. Perhaps on the level with Bad Rex in 'As the Planet Revolves.' Not as good as Cheeta Ching."
"And so it is in this spirit of magic that we begin the Exit of Age. Will the players come forward?"
Foxx stepped off the dais. At the same moment, Chiun rushed forward, elbowing those in his way toward the far corners of the room as he stepped up on the platform.
"We will begin with an ode written by myself. It describes the sorrow of the Korean virgin Hsu T'ching after the passing of the warrior, Lo Pang, in the province of Katsuan during the reign of Ko Kang, regent of Wa Sing," Chiun said.
A low moan of dismay went up from the crowd as the players in the pageant tried to mount the dais and
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were pushed off by Chiun, who swatted them away like flies as he recited*. Two men managed to mount the platform, and took Chiun by either arm. With a slight jerk Chiun sent them sprawling against the walls.
While everyone's eyes were on the crazy old Oriental on the stage, Remo was watching Felix Foxx on the right side of the room, near the archway into the small kitchen that served the guests in the ballroom. Ignoring the spectacle Chiun was creating on the dais, Foxx whispered something to the chauffeur. The chauffeur nodded. Remo didn't like the look on the chauffeur's face as he handed Foxx a huge red and black mask. He liked it even less when Foxx slipped out of the room.
Remo followed, pushing past the guests crowded into the dim amber-colored room, but by the time he reached the archway, Foxx had returned, a martini in his hand, his face covered by the mask. He recognized Remo with a cold nod and a brief uplifting of his glass. As Foxx wandered around the room, Remo's eyes never left him.
"And, lo, the wind, wild as the fury of the warrior's spear. . ."
"Couldn't we please get on with the pageant?" someone suggested.
Chiun sniffed contemptuously. "Lo, the wicked wind . . ."
Foxx was behind Remo. With his peripheral vision, Remo could trace the movements of the swaying white toga as it inched slowly around to the rear of the room until Foxx was directly behind him. Remo concentrated on his own feet, which would pick up the vibrations of footfalls through the floor. The ones he sensed were nearly balanced, but not quite. There
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was apprehension in them, an almost imperceptible haltingness. And he was carrying something. Nothing as heavy as a gun, but something, held in front of him so that his weight pitched slightly forward.
"Thus rode Lo Pang into Katsuan, wielding the horns of the antelope . . ." Chiun spoke.
And then the room was bathed in total darkness.
There was a stampede. There was panic and terror. But even before the first scream, Remo felt the man behind him pitch forward with the weapon in his hands, and Remo knew what it was while it still swooped overhead.
Wire.
It looped and sang downward, slicing through the air in front of Remo's face. He followed the momentum of the wire with his palms, jutting them forward and down to throw his assailant off balance. Remo kicked backward and connected with bone in a sickening, muffied crack, then used the leverage of his own position to toss the man overhead. To the accompaniment of frenzied shrieks, the man landed with a thud, halfway across the room.
A handful of people had pulled out cigarette lighters to illuminate the suddenly darkened room in dim, unconnected patches of light. Remo took one of the lighters and brought it close to the unmoving figure on the floor, his black and red mask at a crazy angle to his body.
Don't let him be dead, Remo thought in a rush of panic. If he'd killed Foxx, all his secrets would go with him. / should have been more careful. I knew he was coming. I should have pulled back. . . . He stripped off the mask. Beneath it, eyes open and glazed, a thin trickle of blood escaping from his mouth, was the lifeless face of Foxx's chauffeur.
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"Chiun!" Remo called. But Chiun was already beside him, his face pressed against the outside wall.
"He is gone," the old man said. "The gates outside have closed."
"Gone?" someone screamed. "Foxx?"
Suddenly Remo was surrounded by people acting as if they were in a burning airplane. "What about the injections?" a man asked. "We'll miss the injections."
"Guess you'll just have to wait," Remo said irritably, trying to pull himself away from the grasping hands and loud wails of the guests.
"We can't wait," a woman sobbed. "We'll die. You don't understand. It has to be tomorrow." She was clutching Remo like a drowning person. "It'll be too late. We're dead. We're all dead."
"Aren't you all being a little dramatic?" Remo said, forcing his way toward the open door. Outside, Chiun was already making his way through the five-foot-high snowdrifts. "Please. I've got to go."
"No, don't go," she screamed. "You helped us before. You've got to help us now. Help us! You have to. You owe it to us!"
She struggled and squealed as a pair of hands pried her loose from Remo. In the darkness, Remo had to squint to see who his rescuer was.
It was Posie. She was smiling, a strange, sad smile. "Don't worry about us," she said.
"Do you know where he's going?" Remo asked.
She shook her head. "Wherever it is, he wants to be alone," she said with a sexy Mae West irony. "He's cut all the power lines and locked the outside gate. I've just checked the basement. The treatments for us are gone."
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"I'm sorry, Posie," Remo said. "I guess the next few days are going to be rough for you. Without the drugs, I mean."
"It's okay, "she said. She smiled, but her face had a hollow, frightened look. "He'll leave tracks that you can follow. That is, if you don't freeze to death. You have a terrific body, but I'd throw something over it besides that toga if I were you."
Remo looked down at the flowing white drape with embarrassment and tore it off. "Can you keep everybody under control here until I get back?"
"Sure," she said. "But don't bother hurrying back. You won't make it in time, anyway."
"What are you talking about?"
"Just get Foxx," Posie said. "He's the one who's responsible for what's going to happen here."
"Is everybody nuts?" Remo said. "You all act like some stupid injection is a matter of life and death."
He hesitated for a moment. Her face suddenly looked drawn and . . . old, Remo thought. But she smiled, and the image passed. Even at seventy, Posie Ponselie was a gorgeous creature.
"Just spoiled," she said winsomely. "Don't worry about us. We'll stay inside and tell ghost stories by candlelight." She touched his face. For a moment, he thought he saw that same impossible aged look creep over her stunning features. "Remo," she asked haltingly, "will you do something for me before you leave?"