The firearms expert carried a pistol in his hand so the assassin was silent. He did not want him to get off a shot to alert anyone else. He raised the knife next to his right ear and let fly. The blade bit flesh and the firearms expert dropped. His gun fell uselessly onto the grass. Again the knife was cleaned and the body dragged across the putting green to be deposited with the others.
The assassin walked back across the green. It would be easy to go on, he thought. A houseful of sleeping people. Pruiss. Theodosia. The Indian. The two bodyguards. More blood for his knives.
His hand touched the front doorknob, then released it. It would be nice but it would be unprofessional. He would do what he was paid to do. He walked off back to the woods.
Theodosia slept. Remo had again gone to Step 22 of his 27 but she seemed to climax only when she wanted to climax and it jarred Remo that she had been invulnerable to him.
She slept now on his arm, knowing that Pruiss would not be out of his bed to surprise them together. Remo had reopened the hall door. He was lying in bed, thinking, when he heard a hissing sound.
"Sooooo," came the voice from the door, in a high pitch of indignation.
"Yes, Chiun," Remo said with a sigh.
"Here you lie rutting, as all you people do so well..."
"Don't knock it," Remo interrupted. "Step 22 tonight. First time ever."
"I am not interested in the vulgar details of your vulgar activities. Your life is a vulgarity and nothing in it would surprise me," Chiun said. "But perhaps you can spare me a moment so I can tell you something concerning why you are here."
Remo dropped Theodosia from his arm and sat up in bed. Her head hit the pillow with a thud and she woke up also. She looked at Remo, then at Chiun standing in the doorway, wearing his brown sleeping kimono.
"What?" she began to say.
Chiun ignored her. He looked at Remo. "The assassin has been here," he said.
Remo looked at him in something close to disbelief.
"Yes, that is right, white thing," Chiun said. "Look at me with your mouth hanging open. While you two were behaving like rabbits in a box, he was here."
"What happened?" Remo asked.
"He did not enter the building. He moved outside. He moved many times in many different directions. He practiced his art. He is gone now."
"Is Wesley all right?" Theodosia asked. She started to get out of bed.
"He is as all right as one can be who has a faithless woman," Chiun said.
"The bodyguards," Remo said.
Chiun raised his hand. "There is nothing to be done tonight," he said. "What has occurred has occurred. We will deal with it tomorrow."
Remo slumped back onto the pillow.
"Now, if you two can find it in yourselves, I would suggest some sleep," said Chiun.
Without even a whisper of sound, he left the room. Theodosia stared at the open door.
"How does he know what happened outside?" she asked.
"Because he is the Master of Sinanju," Remo said. "Go to sleep."
But he did not take his own advice.
Chapter eight
When he arrived at the small suite of offices that housed Rev. Higbe Muckley's operation, there was a sign on the inside door.
It read: PLEASE WAIT. COMMUNING WITH GOD.
Inside the inner office, Muckley knelt alongside his secretary. They looked at a cross on the wall.
"Oh, God, their hearts were hardened and they do not hear our message," Muckley said.
"Amen," said his secretary, who kept her back very straight because she had a tendency to fall over when she leaned too far forward.
"Open their hearts to Your goodness, so they will receive our message of the glories of faith," Muckley said. He reached his right hand around the back of his secretary and touched the side of her right breast, through the thin jersey material of her top.
"Amen," she said.
"Why do evildoers persist in the land?" the Reverend Muckley asked the piece of plaster on the wall. He cupped her breast in his right hand and felt its soft weight. It sent a tingle up his right arm as it always did.
"Amen," his secretary said. She leaned fractionally toward the right so all her breast could lay against Muckley's palm. He kneaded the flesh.
"Help us get rid of Pruiss and evil, etcetera etcetera, etcetera and I'll think of more later," Muckley said.
"Amen," the secretary said, as Muckley climbed on her.
"Don't forget 'Hallelujah,' Sister Corinne," Muckley said.
"First you got to give me a hallelujah, Reverend," said his secretary.
"Ask and you shall receive," said Muckley.
"Oh, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah," she said a few moments later.
The Reverend Higbe Muckley, A.B.D., A.C.D., B.C.D., and B.E.D., was sitting behind his desk when his secretary ushered Will Bobbin into the inner office. The letters in his name meant nothing, except trifecta bets he had made and won at the race track in the last several years. His secretary paused in the doorway.
"Type those letters right up, Sister," he said.
"Yes, Doctor," she said. She winked at him, which Bobbin saw in the polished glass door of a wall-mounted bookcase.
He grinned at Muckley who cleared his throat and asked officiously, "Now what can I do for you, Brother Bobbin?"
Bobbin closed the office door.
"It's what I can do for you, Reverend," he said. He twisted the curl of hair over his right temple.
"What did you have in mind?"
"You've been bombing out," Bobbin said. "You've been here a couple of days already and nothing but yawns."
"It takes time to bring people to act against evil," Muckley said.
"Hogwash," Bobbin said. "You can't get these people riled up against Pruiss because he's cutting their taxes. That's the truth and you know it and I know it so let's not dawdle over that."
Muckley shrugged. "What do you have in mind, Brother?"
"I've got something that'll wake them up. Something more powerful than taxes. Something that'll get these people steamed and marching, just to make sure Pruiss gets his butt out of town."
"What would that be?" Muckley asked.
"More powerful than money," Bobbin said. "Sex."
Muckley looked up at him sharply.
"Picture this," said Bobbin. "Proof that Pruiss isn't out here for solar energy. He's out here to turn this nice middle-America, hogbelly and pancakes-for-breakfast county into the pornography capital of the United States? How about that?"
"You got proof?" Muckley asked.
"Yes."
"Then we'll get that sucker," Muckley said. "That'll get them marching."
"My idea exactly," Bobbin said.
Muckley searched Bobbin's face and said, after a pause, "I don't know anything about you, Mr. Bobbin."
"That's the way I want it."
"What do you get out of this?"
"Does it really matter?" Bobbin asked. "Can't you believe I'm doing it just to stamp out evil."
"That's fine in fund-raising letters," Muckley said. "But what are you really doing it for?"
"Let's just say I'm going to get out of it everything I want."
Muckley shrugged. "Whatever," he said. "You said something about proof that Pruiss is here to do pornography. You got that proof?"
"It'll be here in the morning plane from New York."
"Bring it in, brother, and let's see what we can do."
As he left the building, Will Bobbin thought that it was incredible that such fools could rise to positions of prominence. Muckley's idea of selling the ministry to allow people to buy at discount was a good idea, and probably the only idea the man had ever had or would ever have. And yet it had been enough to make him a national figure. Will Bobbin would play him like an accordion, to keep the wheels rolling until they rolled right over Wesley Pruiss and his solar energy scheme.