Reaching down, Smith drew open a desk drawer and took up a fire-engine red telephone receiver.
"Yes, Mr. President?"
Smith listened. So did Remo and Chiun.
"Yes, Mr. President. But you understand as Chief Executive you are not empowered to order CURE into action. You can only suggest missions."
Smith listened to the President of the United States.
"I will consider the matter," said Smith. "Thank you for the call." And he hung up.
"That was the President," Smith said, closing the drawer.
"Do tell," said Remo.
"He wants the organization to look into these derailments."
"So you told him no?"
"No. I told him that I would consider it. There is no point in alarming him with our recent findings at this juncture."
"I'd say all the dead bodies, not to mention the near-nuclear catastrophe over the last day or two, is worth an alarm or two."
"This President would be ordering us into action at the drop of a hat if encouraged to think of CURE as an instrument of executive-branch power," said Smith. His eyes went to the new katana.
"Be careful," said Remo. "It's got a button on it like the other one. We avoided touching it."
Smith nodded. Removing a Waterman pen from his vest pocket, he tapped the handle. It sounded solid. Carefully he laid the blunt end of the pen to the button and pressed it.
The button made a distinct click.
And the blade sank into the black glass of his desktop as if slipping into a pool of still black water.
Aghast, Smith recoiled.
"Did you see that!" Remo exploded.
Everyone got down on the floor and tried to see under the desk. They saw nothing at first. Then the blade reappeared.
Like a falling feather, it floated through the kick space, touched the floor and promptly sank into the varnished pine planking.
"What's under this floor?" Remo asked.
Smith croaked, "The laundry room."
"Have it evacuated," Remo said, racing for the door, Chuin, a flapping silvery silk wraith, at his heels.
Smith grabbed the telephone.
BY THE TIME they reached the laundry room, the door was hanging open, and two workers in starched whites were outside, looking rattled.
"You see a floating sword by any chance?" Remo demanded.
"You tell us. Did we?"
"Not if you value your jobs," said Remo, going in.
Inside they looked up at the ceiling. It was unbroken. But that was to be expected. They looked down at the floor. No sign of any blade. There was nothing in the big industrial-size washing machines except hospital laundry.
"The basement!" said Chiun.
Exiting, they warned the laundry-room staff to stay out of the room until told otherwise. They looked more than happy to comply.
They bumped into Harold Smith as he stepped out of the elevator.
"We think it's in the basement," said Remo. Smith nodded.
They took the stairs. At the foot of the creaky wood-plank steps, Smith flicked on the lights.
He didn't get much in the way of illumination.
"You know, you might have sprung for light bulbs brighter than twenty-five watts," Remo said.
"This is not a work area," said Smith.
They searched the basement and found nothing.
"It has dropped into the very earth itself," Chiun intoned. "Never to be seen again."
"What's directly under the laundry room?" Remo asked Smith.
Smith blinked up at the pipework radiating from the big boilers and furnaces that supplied Folcroft with heat and steam. He seemed to be reading them like a map.
"The computers!" Smith gasped. Hastily he took a key ring from his vest and strode to a concrete wall broken by a wooden door.
Unlocking the door, he opened it. A steady industrial humming became audible. Reaching in, Smith tugged at a drop cord, and a dangling naked light bulb came on-another twenty-five-watter.
They entered.
The room was a small space crammed with mainframe computers and short jukeboxlike optical WORM drive slave units. They were the source of the low humming-and the heart of CURE's information-gathering network.
In the center of the floor, looking as solid as the concrete on which it lay, sat the katana blade.
Gingerly they surrounded it.
"Looks solid to me," Remo said.