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house like a cannonball on legs.
He found the house sparsely decorated, but in an unmistakable Asian decor. He
ran through the house, ready for anything.
There was nothing. Every room was empty.
Remo made three circuits of the house before he finally gave up.
The garage was as he had left it. He checked for tracks. As before, faint wet
smears of fresh rattlesnake tread stopped short of the convertible's rear
bumper.
Remo stood looking at those tracks for a long time.
Then all life, all energy, seemed to drain from his hard face. Woodenly he
stumbled back toward his own car.
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He squeezed in behind the wheel and reached for the ignition key.
He lost it then.
His eyes rolled up in his head and his bruised face hit the steering column.
The horn gave out a long blast that startled the entire neighborhood, but Remo
Williams didn't hear it.
He was dead to the world.
Chapter 8
Remo Williams knew where he was before he even opened his eyes.
The smell gave it away. It was a combination of hospital disinfectant and
Pinesol.
Folcroft Sanitarium, the cover for CURE.
A familiar lemon-lime after-shave was sour in Remo's nostrils.
"Hi, Smitty," he croaked.
"Remo, it's Smith," Harold Smith hissed.
"Would I say, 'Hi, Smitty,' if your name was Jones?" Remo retorted without
humor.
Slowly he opened his eyes. The light hurt like needles.
"How long?" he asked the hovering face of Harold Smith.
"You were brought here four hours ago."
"Chiun?"
"I tried to notify him. He is not at your home. In fact, it has been
vandalized."
"I know," Remo said. "I was one of the vandals."
"Remo, before the doctor returns, I must have your report."
Remo shut his eyes again. A kaleidoscope of images tumbled in his mind's
eye-the vanishing limousine, the inexplicable footprints, and the tall man in
the fur hat.
"I don't know where to start," he admitted.
"Where is Zhang Zingzong?" Smith demanded.
"With Chiun."
"And where is Chiun?"
"For all I know, he drove a big black limo straight into the Twilight Zone."
"I do not appreciate your humor at normal times," Smith lectured, "and
especially not now.
"I'm not joking, Smith. I don't know where Chiun is. The last I remember, I
was getting into my car outside that weird garage."
"You were found on a residential street in New Rochelle.'
"Yeah, there. I followed the limo. It went into the garage. But it wasn't
there when I went in. That was the second time that little kung-fu acrobat
pulled that trick on me."
"Who?"
"The chauffeur with the mask," Remo said.
"Are you delirious?"
"Check the garage if you don't believe me. The limo isn't there."
"You are not making any sense," Smith clucked. "I will come back when you are
again yourself."
Remo opened his eyes. He reached out and took Smith by the wrist. He squeezed.
Smith's face twisted with the pain.
"No time," Remo said tightly. "You gotta take me back there. I gotta find
Chiun. I think he's left."
"Left CURE?" Smith said huskily.
"CURE. America, everything. I don't know yet. We had a fight, but I can't
believe he'd throw everything we had away over a lousy fight. It must have
something to do with that dingdong Chinese student."
"Zingzong," Smith said. "His name is Zhang Zingzong."
"Whatever. He and Chiun were fighting all last night. They made such a racket
I checked into a motel. When I went back this morning, the limo was there, but
most of Chiun's steamer trunks were gone. You know he never takes that many
unless he's planning to go back to Sinanju. Then I got the stuffing kicked out
of me by that kung-fu bozo."
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"You, Remo?"
"Hate to admit it, but he was good."
"I will undertake a search for Chiun. Please let go of my wrist."
"I said," Remo added, squeezing so hard Smith's forehead broke out in a sweat,
"there's no time. Screw your computers. Take me back to that garage. The limo
went in there. It's gotta still be there, or it's not anywhere."
"Very well," Smith said stiffly. "The doctor thinks there is no internal organ
damage. But are you up to walking?"
"Help me up."
Unhappily Smith allowed his shoulder to be used as support. Slowly he eased
Remo up to a sitting position.
"Where are my clothes?" Remo asked, grimacing.
Smith handed him a pile of clothes and primly turned his back while Remo
painfully slid into them.
"Lead the way," Remo said, getting to his feet with arthritic difficulty.
"Are you certain this is wise?" Smith asked doubtfully.
"Screw wise. We can't waste time."
Remo let Smith drive. He regretted it as soon as they pulled into traffic.
Smith drove like a maiden aunt. He slowed down at every yellow light, stopping
dead and looking both ways before proceeding through stop signs, and observed
the speed limit as if his car would self-destruct if the indicator touched the
fifty-six-mile-an-hour mark.
"Will you please pull over and let me drive?" Remo pleaded.
"No," Smith said firmly. "I do not wish to be ticketed."
Remo was sprawled in the back seat of the old car, trying to stay comfortable.
It hurt to shout. So he stopped shouting.
Finally Smith called back.
"I believe it is this street," he said.
Remo sat up, looking around.
"Yeah," he said. "Dead ahead. The white garage by the Spanish-style house."
Smith brought his battered car to a crawling stop.
Smith got out and opened the door for Remo. Remo had to be helped out. He
hated letting Smith help him, but saw no choice.
Remo walked to the garage door on his own.
"See the tracks?" Remo said, pointing.
Smith nodded, seeing the rattlsnakelike treadmarks in the snow. It looked like
two rattlers had slept side by side.
"Okay, let's go around the side," Remo suggested.
"Is this safe?"
"Screw safe. You'll understand when we get inside."
Remo pushed in the door and waved Smith into the cool dim garage interior. The
windows were grimy, cutting off outside light.
What little light there was fell on a tiled stone floor, and there was no sign
of any car, black or white.
"You mentioned a black limousine," Smith pointed out.
Remo's expression was loose with doubt. "I meant a white convertible."
"Well, which is it?"
"You don't understand, Smitty," Remo said. "The black limo drives in here, the
door closes, but by the time I get inside, it's turned into a white
convertible. Linda like Cinderella's pumpkin."
"I see no car."
Remo walked toward the garage door.
"There were tracks here. You can still see them. They were the limo tracks,
not the convertible's. I compared the treads."
Smith said nothing. He looked at Remo through his rimless spectacles as if in
pity.
"Don't look at me like that!" Remo shouted. "I swear it happened twice. The
limo goes in and vanishes into thin air."
"I see no evidence of any such phenomenon," Smith complained.
"No shit," Remo said testily. "That must be why the dictionary lists
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'disappears' as a synonym for 'vanishes.' "
Smith was looking at the floor. He knelt and felt the ground. His hands came
away with a smear of oil.
With a disdainful expression he extracted a white handkerchief from one pocket
and dry-wiped them clean.
"There must be a light somewhere," he said absently.
He found one and turned it on. Weak yellow light washed the garage interior.
It came from a dangling bare bulb.
"That helps," Remo said sourly. "Now we can see the limo that isn't here
better."
"Did you notice the floor pattern?" Smith asked severely.
"How could I?" Remo snapped back. "The convertible took up most of the
interior."
"Look."
Remo looked. The floor was broken into rectangular sections. But certain
crisscross lines were deeper than the others. They formed a long rectangle
slightly larger than an automobile.
"Why didn't I figure this out before?" Remo said acidly. "It just slid through
the cracks like an unemployed cockroach." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]