"You are," said Chiun.
"I mean Mr. Blomberg."
Sheriff Wyatt watched. The little gook smiled an amused little smile and bowed. Frail little fellow, thought Wyatt. Funny, he did not invite the sheriff in, so as the little gook began to shuffle off to get his queerio boss, Wyatt stepped into the house behind him.
And suddenly, surprisingly, there was a sharp pain in the sheriff's gut and a blur as if the little old man's hand had come out from behind him with a knife in it, and Sheriff Wyatt heard:
"You were not invited in."
And the little gook hadn't even broken his shuffling stride, and he had left a knife in Wyatt's stomach. Wyatt just knew it, and he was afraid to look. He clutched the searing pain, feeling for the blood he knew must be there.
"Oh, sweet mercy, Jesus, no," moaned Sheriff Wyatt. He felt gingerly around the deep wound. No blood yet. His hand could go no farther. He steadied himself against the frame of the door. He groaned, praying that the other white man would find him. Then he heard a voice that had to be Remo Bloberg's.
"Chiun, c'mon, will you please?"
Then the gook's voice. "It is a nothing."
"Well, the sheriff doesn't think so."
"If I had killed him, you would have been upset. But do I get thanks for my thinking of your welfare? No. I get rebuke."
What the hell were they talking about? thought Sheriff Wyatt. It must be a knife that the sneaky little dink had slipped into him.
"Just lean back," said the white man. "Take your hands away from your stomach. That's it. Now keep your eyes shut just the way they are."
Sheriff Wyatt felt an even sharper pain around the wound like a hand slapping, opening the knife wound farther, and then he felt no pain at all. The no pain felt so good that tears welled in his eyes before he knew they were there.
He opened his eyes and looked down for the knife the white man must have removed. But there was no knife. There was no wound. There was no mark on his shirt. A miracle. He always knew Jews knew the mysteries of miracle healing.
"Thank you, thank you," said the sheriff, regaining his composure. "What did you do with the knife?"
"What knife?"
The one the little gook stuck in me."
"There was no knife."
"I know a knife wound when I been wounded. I'm charging that little dink with assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon."
"Do you have any pain?"
"No."
"Do you have a wound?"
"Doesn't look like it."
"Then how are you going to accuse him of sticking a knife in you?"
"There are ways we have," said Sheriff Wyatt, hitching up his gunbelt.
"Look. He never cut you. He just affected nerves beneath the skin. Painful. But harmless."
"Oh," said Sheriff Wyatt, peering past Remo Blomberg at the frail creature standing calmly and quietly in repose near a vase, as if both were moulded from the same frail piece of porcelain. "Listen boy," Wyatt boomed to the elderly Oriental. "Next time you try any of that funny business with stomach nerves and stuff, you had it, boy. Heah? Don't say I didn't warn you."
There it was. Those grins. Those queerio grins on both this Remo Blomberg fella and that gook. Like the grins the day before, when they arrived in San Aquino." Remo glanced at the notches on his gun and just smiled goose-faced at each other like two fagolas.
"That goes for you too, Mr. Blomberg, no disrespect meant, but where would any of you be without the law?"
"Call me Remo," said the young new owner of Feinstein's.
"Sure, Remo," said Sheriff Wyatt.
In the car Wyatt said he was not familiar with Jewish names and what did Remo stand for?
"It's not really a Jewish name," said Remo.
"Yeah, what kind is it then?"
"It's a long story," said Remo. He wore a white sports shirt and blue slacks with Italian slip-on shoes. He felt very relaxed.
"We got time," said Sheriff Wyatt.
"It's a long story I'm not going to tell you," Remo said. Then he smiled.
"Well, sure. If it's personal and all. You'll find out, though, that out here in San Aquino everybody sort of gets to know everybody else's stories. Know what I mean?"
"No," said Remo. And they drove in silence to the Curpwell Building where the night watchman let them in. They went past the rows of desks on the first floor, into a secretary's office that was open, then Wyatt stopped, knocked at the polished thick wooden door with its brass inlays.
It opened and Lester Curpwell IV, in dark business suit with vest and a brave smile warming out of a concerned face, greeted Remo with a big handshake.
"I'm glad to meet you but sorry to meet you under these circumstances," he said.
Remo looked puzzled, although he wasn't. He accepted Curpwell's hand and noticed Wyatt look with contempt at the limp wrist.
"Yes, it's confusing," Curpwell conceded. "I'll explain everything, Mr. Blomberg," he said.
Remo noticed two middle-aged men, one dressed casually and the other more formally, standing at seats around a long, dark conference table with a warm yellow overhead light that made the meeting look like a conspiracy. He knew what would be happening, but he must act surprised, he reminded himself.
"Call me Remo," said Remo.
Curpwell graciously led him to the table and introduced him to a Dourn Rucker-call him Dourn-and a Mitchell Boydenhousen-call him Sonny. He watched their eyes as he offered a limp hand, then another limp hand. They hid their embarrassment with dishonest warmth.
Remo could see Wyatt was giving the ceiling an "oh, no, not another bleeding heart" look. Fine.
Remo eased himself into one of the tan leather chairs surrounding the table. The room tasted and smelled of good wood, fine polish and top grade leather, all put together over a century. People sometimes tried to provide this solid conservative feel in a day and discovered they could not get it. They could buy the tables, the lamps and the leather. Even the fireplace and the portrait behind the desk at the end of the room. But they found they lacked the taste of generations of accepted wealth.