"Are you joking?" he asked.
"No," Remo insisted. "I told you where they were. I figured you'd take care of them. I said I wasn't going to kill them, Smitty."
"Yes, but surely under the circumstances..." Smith paused, thinking. "It has been several days since you left Medford," he said, his tone reasonable. "With no one to take care of them, perhaps the animals have died already."
"If you do send someone out there, you might want to check the toolshed in the barn," Remo suggested, thinking of Mona and Huey Janner. "And make sure they don't get within sniffing distance when they crack the door."
"Why?" Smith asked.
But Remo had already hung up the phone. "What's your problem?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju once he'd dropped the phone in its cradle.
"Besides you?" Chiun asked aridly. He didn't look up from his work.
"Ha-ha," Remo said. "You acted like you'd been gut-stabbed when I said the BBQs could kill people."
"A Master of Sinanju cannot be stabbed. Oh, the clumsiest of us has been known on occasion to be mauled by feral kittens, as has been noted in the annals of the House, but stabbed? Never."
"Judith White was no kitten, Little Father," Remo said.
"Perhaps," Chiun replied vaguely.
He wrote for a few long minutes, quill prancing merrily as his knotted hand traced perfect lines. Remo stared at the top of his bowed head the entire time.
As the time wore on, Chiun grew more annoyed. Though he tried to mask it, the quivering tufts of hair above his ears belied his increasing agitation.
At the point when the old Asian could take it no longer, Remo spoke.
"You boxed one of them up and shipped it back to Sinanju somehow, didn't you?"
The shock on Chiun's face faded the instant he glanced up at Remo. He saw that his pupil was only guessing.
"Pah, leave me," he spit, turning back to his scrolls. "You are interrupting my train of thought. I was just at the point in the history where the kitten trapped the foolish assassin in a burning building." He waved a dismissive hand.
Remo got to his feet. He began walking slowly to the hall. In the doorway, he paused.
"You know, Chiun, between the BBQs and this mysterious movie deal of yours, you're building up a lot of secrets lately," Remo warned. "You just better hope Smith doesn't find out."
"Smith knows only that which I tell him," Chiun said with indifferent confidence.
"If you say so," Remo replied. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."
Chiun looked up in time to see his pupil leave the room. His aged face puckered in displeasure. Remo could be so irritating at times.
The old Korean returned to his work. On the paper, he wrote the Korean symbol for ingrate. Although it wasn't much, the mark did help to ease a bit of his great burden of suffering. But only a bit.
EPILOGUE
In a few short weeks, the gruesome murders in Boston passed into the realm of local folklore. Dr. Judith White joined the ranks of the Boston Strangler and Lizzie Borden as citizens of the Hub and surrounding Essex, Middlesex and Norfolk Counties vied to outdo one another over the backyard fence with tales of how they had almost encountered the "killer doctor." Around the rest of the nation, things returned to normal.
In a small room in a strip motel in rural North Dakota-away from all the idle gossip-a lone figure looked critically at herself in the long bathroom-door mirror. She had requested the room farthest away from the office. It offered the kind of privacy she liked.
She had ordered dinner not long before and didn't want to be disturbed while she was eating. The human predilection for rudeness was one of the things about them she most despised.
Judith White examined the sprouting mound of pink flesh at her shoulder. At the moment, it was as large as a baby's arm and hand, but that would change quickly enough.
She considered herself lucky to have had the foresight to include starfish DNA in her new genetic code. The sea creatures were able to regenerate parts that had been torn off. Now she could, as well.
Hers had been a daring plan. One that involved great personal risk. But it had worked. She hadn't been followed. The world thought that Dr. Judith White was dead. She would allow mankind that small luxury. For now.
She flexed and opened the small hand. It was important for its growth that she exercise the new limb. How long it would take to mature, she had no clear idea. But so far, eating seemed to help its growth spurts.
As she wiggled her tiny pink fingers, she heard a car slow down outside her motel room. Rapid feet ran across the gravel drive. All at once, there came a sharp knock at the door.
"Pepe's Pizza!" a harried young voice called from outside. A cold wind rattled the motel windows.
She draped a robe over her shoulder, covering her tiny baby arm. Judith stepped from the bathroom. It was time for Judith White to feed. And she had no intention of having pizza for supper.
With the purpose of a hungry feline, she stalked over to the closed motel door, purring gently.