This half-overheard conversation made Cheeta Ching think of something.
"You know, it's quite a coincidence."
Remo made his face blank. "What is?"
"Bumping into you two again like this. Clear across the country."
Remo looked away. "It's a free country. We travel a lot."
"Whose campaign are you with this time?"
"Nobody's. We're in a new line of work," Remo explained, blank-voiced. "We're insurance adjusters. We're out here because Randal Rumpp needed extra fire insurance."
"That's ridiculous!"
To which, Remo offered a business card that identified him as Remo Wausau, with Apolitical Life and Casualty.
"This is awfully unlikely," Cheeta said.
"Tell her, Little Father."
Chiun thinned papery lips. "It is as Remo says," he said with obvious distaste. "We are adjusters of insurance. Temporarily."
"Okay, I believe you," Cheeta said, returning Remo's card.
Remo blinked. He had to will his face still to keep it from dissolving into incredulous lines. The blunt-faced barracuda had bought his lame story on no more strength than Chiun's word. What the hell? he thought. Anything to get us through the night.
Remo settled back as the helicopter pilot wrestled his craft into a soft landing on Fifth Avenue. Maybe when they got into the building, he and Chiun could figure out what was really going on, waste anyone who needed wasting, and split before Delpha decided to flash somebody into asphyxiation.
Remo didn't think his sinuses could stand another high-speed scouring.
Chapter 16
At first, Randal T. Rumpp thought his executive assistant had broken down. She was babbling again. Worse, she was raving.
"It-it's a ghost! A real ghost!" Dorma Wormser cried.
"What's a ghost?" Rumpp asked calmly. It was important to be calm when dealing with the unstable.
Dorma grabbed his arm. "The thing in the trophy room. Come see, come see. You'll see. It's real."
Randal Rumpp looked out the window. The BCN helicopter was fluttering around aimlessly. He wasn't finished being quoted yet, but the chopper didn't seem interested in coming back for more pearls of Rumpp wisdom.
He let his executive secretary tug him to the trophy room, thinking this had better be worth his time.
Randal Rumpp saw right away that it wasn't a ghost. Even though it was white and floated just under the ceiling like a ghost probably would float, it was no ghost.
It looked vaguely humanoid. There were two arms, two legs, a trunk, and a head. The head was not like a human head. It was too big, too smooth, too white, and too hairless, and where its face should have been there was a kind of puffy balloon.
In the dim light, the thing shone. Its edges were misty.
Dorma whispered, "See, Mr. Rumpp? A ghost."
"It's no ghost," said Randal Rumpp, grabbing an original Frank Lloyd Wright chair. He lifted it up over his head and poked at the floating apparition with the chair's hard legs.
The legs went right through the floating white being.
"See? It's unreal," Dorma said.
"It's no ghost," repeated Randal Rumpp sternly. "Get a grip on yourself."
"How can it not be a ghost?"
"Because," Randal Rumpp pointed out reasonably. "It's got two cables sticking out of its shoulders. They look like coaxial cables. Coaxials mean electricity. Ghosts aren't electric."
"How . . . how do we know that?"
"Because we have a grip on ourselves," said Randal Rumpp, moving around to get a better look at the floating thing.
The thing was emitting a kind of soft shine, like a low-energy light bulb. Through it, certain details could be made out. The pulsing golden veinwork. The fact that it wore boots and gloves, and there were straps that snugged at his shoulders.
Randal Rumpp was trying to see what the straps were holding on to when he noticed the thing's belt. The buckle-it was round and white-suddenly blinked red. It was a very angry red color. It made Dorma shrink in fear. Then it turned white again. Then red. It was like something short-circuiting.
Randal Rumpp took this as further proof that the thing was electrical. Randal Rumpp feared nothing electrical. Not even the electrician's union, which could make or break a construction project.
"What does the red light mean?" Dorma wondered from the safety of the open door. She looked ready to bolt.
"It means," Randal Rumpp said, pointing to the Sears DieHard battery clearly strapped to the floating thing's back, "that its power is running low."
"I don't understand."
"That makes two of us. Where did it come from?"
"I think . . . I think it came from the telephone . . . ."
Rumpp scowled. "Telephone?"
For the first time, Rumpp noticed the phone off its hook.
He turned to his cowering assistant. "I told you not to touch the phones!" he shouted.
Without warning, the glowing thing came to life. It grabbed at its belt buckle, then went dim and fell to the floor with a thud.
Dorma screamed and fled. Randal Rumpp knelt beside the thing. He reached out to touch it and, to his surprise, he got the slick, plasticky sensation of touching something like vinyl. His fingers recoiled. He hated vinyl. Especially vinyl siding. It offended his sensibilities. His first home had had vinyl siding. The day he'd traded up to his first condo, he'd had it torched so no one could throw it back in his face when he became famous.
The thing lay supine for only a minute. Then, with a sound like a respirator, the white bubble that was the thing's face crinkled inward. It expanded. Contracted again, crinkling. The crinkling was something seen, but not heard.