"I know that if we don't stand up for our rights," Horton Droney screamed, spittle flying from his yawning mouth, "the Japanese are going to buy America out from under us."
"Remo," Chiun repeated.
"Okay, Little Father, I hear Security coming up the hall. Just, please, don't kill him. He's a television personality, for Christ's sake."
"Kill?" said Horton Droney III, looking at Chiun's wrinkled face. And then he threw his head back in laughter. He howled the word "Kill" in between spasms of hilarity.
The laughter stopped almost as soon as Remo closed the door behind him. The nurse landed on her white rump when the door she was straining against suddenly came toward her.
Two security guards came running up the hall. "What is it? What's the trouble?" they demanded.
"She is," Remo said, pointing at the hapless nurse.
"I am not!" the nurse said indignantly.
"Who are you, buddy?"
"Horton Droney IV." Remo bared his teeth to the gum line, hoping to create the effect of a family resemblance. The guards hesitated.
"The big guy's son?" one of them asked uncertainly.
"That's right. And it's a good thing I came along when I did. I found this nurse going through my father's stuff. And when I asked her what she was doing, she gave me a lot of double-talk and lifted my wallet."
"I did not!" the nurse cried.
"That's my wallet in her hand right there. Check it out."
"He gave it to me," the nurse protested.
"Hah!" retorted Remo. "A likely story." He hoped he sounded as self-important as Horton Droney IV would sound-assuming that there was a Horton Droney IV.
One of the security guards retrieved the wallet and was about to go through it when the Master of Sinanju glided out of Horton Droney's room.
"All set, Little Father?" Remo asked.
"I have what I want," Chiun replied.
"Good," said Remo, snatching his wallet from the guard's hand.
"Hey," the guard said. And suddenly he found himself on the other side of a closed door. He experienced a moment of profound disorientation. He remembered the hand snatching the wallet from him and then the guy's other hand hooking his belt buckle. Then he was in here. He didn't remember any intervening action. When he noticed the man with the caved-in mouth on the bed, he realized he was in Horton Droney III's room. Then he wasn't alone anymore. His fellow guard sprawled on the floor beside him. The nurse came running in on her own. She closed the door and leaned up again it, her skinny chest heaving spasmodically.
"What are you afraid of?" the guard asked her.
"Everything," she sobbed.
Out on the street, Remo trailed after the Master of Sinanju. Chiun was storming along First Avenue, oblivious of the crowds surging around him.
"Did you get what you wanted?" Remo asked.
"That, and more."
"Tell me about the 'that.' "
"The one known as Shane Billiken lives in a place called Malibu. We are going there."
"I'd better hail a cab," said Remo. He put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. A cab pulled up and Remo opened the door for Chiun.
The Master of Sinanju settled into the rear seat and the cab was in motion before Remo had the door closed after him.
"Kennedy international," he told the driver. And turning to Chiun, he asked, "What was the more?"
"This," said Chiun, pulling a huge set of false teeth from one voluminous sleeve. Chiun held it in a hospital towel to keep his hands clean.
"I guess his secret is out. What are you going to do with them?"
"I do not know," Chiun said casually, and balling the dentures inside the towel, he flipped them out the window. They hit the street, where a bus ran over them. The crack brought a satisfied smile to Chiun's face.
"That's a relief," Remo said. "I thought you were going to kill him."
"Another time, perhaps." said Chiun.
As they approached the airport, Remo suddenly remembered something.
"When do we get to the bare-breasted women?"
"Have patience. We are at least headed in the right direction."
"Anything I can do to get there faster? Like moo?"
"I do not understand this moo you speak of."
"Well, I don't understand the moo you keep talking about either. "
"Obviously we are thinking of two entirely different Moos."
"Obviously," said Remo.
Chapter 5
Dr. Harold W. Smith wore a lemony frown as he shut down the computer system in his office at Folcroft Sanitarium. The sun was setting, and darkness was enveloping Long Island Sound, which showed through the big one-way glass picture window directly behind his desk.
It was the end of a difficult day. He had made an inspection of the psychiatric wing of Folcroft. One of the inmates had been found missing. Not a routine matter in any asylum, for Smith it was fraught with potential serious ramifications. For Folcroft was a cover for CURE, a supersecret government organization, and under the guise of being Folcroft's director, Smith actually ran CURE.
Set up in the early 1960's when the tide of crime threatened to swamp the ship of state called the United States of America, CURE was the brainchild of a young President who had no idea then that an assassin was about to end his term in office prematurely. In those dark days, the handwriting had been on the wall. The nation was breaking down. Two roads lay ahead: anarchy, or a temporary suspension of the Constitution in order to set things right.
The President had come up with a third alternative. CURE. The Constitution would stand, but to root out the criminal elements that were using it to bury America under a mountain of legalistic red tape, CURE was set up to work outside of constitutional restrictions. If known, that would be a tacit admission that American democracy had ceased to work. And so CURE was sanctioned to operate in secret.