"'Bout ten-thirty this morning. Funny thing happened. The phone went dead almost as soon as I rang your room. I went to your door and yelled that there was a phone call but all I heard was the television on inside, and I didn't push it."
"I know you didn't push it," said Remo.
"How's that?"
"You're breathing, aren't you?" said Remo and when he slipped into the middle room he was very quiet because a frail, elderly Oriental with a wispy beard sat on the floor in lotus position, golden kimono draped immaculately around him.
The television set with the taping device to catch the other channels and then run the concurrent shows consecutively so that not one second of one soap opera would be missed was on.
Remo sat down quietly, not even rustling the couch. When Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, was enjoying his daytime dramas, no one, not even his pupil Remo, disturbed him.
In the past, some, by accident, had thought this was just an old man watching soap operas and had failed to treat this moment with reverence. They were no longer among the living.
So Remo sat as Mrs. Lorrie Banks discovered that her young lover loved her for herself and not her new face lift operation performed by Dr. Jennings Bryant, whose eldest daughter had run away with Morton Lancaster, the noted economist, who was being blackmailed by Doretta Daniels, the former belly dancer who had purchased the controlling shares in the Elk Ridge Cancer research hospital, and was threatening to close it down unless Lorrie disclosed where Peter Malthus had parked his car the night Lome's eldest daughter was run over and crippled for weeks, during the night of the flood when Captain Rambough Donnester had run away from the dark incident in his past, leaving the entire city of Elk Ridge exposed to the elements without the protection of the Air National Guard.
Lorrie was talking to Dr. Bryant, wondering whether Peter should be told about his mother. It occurred to Remo that just about two years earlier the actress was discussing whether someone else should be told some other gloomy thing about a relative, and what made these dramas different from reality was not so much what happened but that everyone was so all fired concerned about it. To Chiun, however, this was beauty and, as much as anything could be, a justification for American civilization. He was further convinced that this was the epitome of American culture when, in an exchange program with Russia, America had sent the New York Philharmonic—as Chiun said, "keeping the good things home." In exchange, Russia had sent the Bolshoi Ballet, which Chiun knew was also second-rate because their dancers were clumsy.
It was four-thirty in the afternoon when the last commercial on the last show was finished, a movie came on, and Chiun turned off the set.
"I do not like your breathing," he said.
"My breathing is the same as yesterday, Little Father," said Remo.
"That is why I do not like it. It should be quieter within you today."
"Why?"
"Because today you are different."
"In what way, Little Father?"
"That is for you to understand. When you do not know how you are each day, then you lose sight of yourself. Know this, no man has ever had two days alike."
"Did we get a phone call from upstairs?"
"There was a rude interruption, but I did not hold it against the maker of the telephone call. I endured the rudeness and the callousness and the lack of consideration for a poor old man enjoying the meager pleasures in the quiet twilight of his life."
Remo looked for the telephone to return the call. He found a hole where the cord had been snapped clean from the wall. He looked for the detached phone and not until he saw a dark hole in the white wood dresser did he realize where the phone had gone. The cracked body of the instrument was imbedded in the back of the dresser, welding the entire piece of furniture to the wall.
Remo went into an adjacent bedroom and dialed a number. This number did not activate a telephone directly, instead it sparked a series of connections across the country, so that there was no single line making up the connection by the time a phone finally did ring in the office of the director of Folcroft Sanitarium.
"Hello," said Remo. "Uncle Nathan called."
"No," said Dr. Smith. "Uncle Marvin called."
"Yeah, right," said Remo. "I knew it was somebody."
"I tried to reach you before, but we were disconnected and I thought you might have been clearing something up at the time."
"No. The phone rang while Chiun was watching his shows."
"Oh," said Smith heavily. "I have sort of a special problem. An accident happened to someone in a rather strange way and I thought you and Chiun might be able to shed some light on it."
"You mean he was killed in a way you don't know and you'd figure Chiun or I would know."
"Remo, please. There's no such thing as a completely secure telephone line."
"Whaddya going to do? Send me a matchbook with invisible ink on it? C'mon, Smitty, I've got more important things in my life than playing security games."
"What is more important in your life, Remo?"
"Breathing correctly. Do you know I'm breathing the same today as yesterday?"
Smith cleared his throat and Remo knew it was the sound of unhappiness, that Smith had heard something he did not wish to deal with because he was afraid that further answers might confuse him more. He knew that Smith had recently given up trying to fathom him and was beginning to accept Remo like Chiun. An unknown quantity that served well. It was a major concession by a man who loathed anything he could not put in some order, well-labeled and perfectly filed. Mysteries were anathema to the head of the organization.
"On second thought," said Smith. "Send your Aunt Mildred a birthday greeting. She's fifty-five tomorrow."
"That means I'm supposed to meet you at O'Hare Airport information at three in the afternoon. Or is it three in the morning? Or is it Logan Airport?"
"Morning. O'Hare," said Smith dourly, and Remo heard the receiver go dead.
On the flight from Raleigh-Durham to Chicago's O'Hare Airport, Chiun suddenly marveled at the hidden skills of Americans. Chiun acknowledged that he should have known that there must be other areas of excellence.
"Any nation that could produce As the Planet Revolves or The Young and the Daring must have other isolated pockets of worth," said Chiun.
Remo knew that Chiun thought airplanes were very close to soundly designed flying objects, so he commented that America was the leader in aircraft and that he had never heard of a Korean-designed plane.
Chiun ignored that comment.
"What I am talking about," he said grandly, producing two torn pieces of white paper between his long graceful fingernails, "is here. This. And in America, too. What a pleasant surprise to find such an art so well performed in a place so far away as America."
Remo looked at the sheets. They were filled single space with sloppy typing.
"This, one can trust. I sent him my birthday and place and time of birth to the exact minute, and I sent him yours."
"You don't know for sure when I was born. Neither do I," said Remo. "The orphanage records weren't that exact."
With a flurry, Chiun's hands dismissed Remo's reservations as inconsequential.
"Even with an inexact date, such excellence of accuracy," said Chiun.
Remo looked closer. On the other side of the papers were circles with strange signs in them.
"What is it?" asked Remo.
"An astrology chart," said Chiun. "And in America, too. I am most pleasantly surprised that the great art, so poorly practiced by so many, is done well and in, of all places, America."