The light changed. The other cabbie took off before the first driver could warn him of the deadbeat fare.
The first driver buried his head in his steering wheel and sobbed until a traffic constable ticketed him for blocking the right of way.
Chapter 12
Remo Williams kept looking at his inner watch.
Some people had an inner child. Remo had an inner watch. No matter what time it was, Remo always knew it to the nanosecond just by looking into his mind. He also had an inner compass, an inner alarm clock and inner thermometer.
The inner watch wasn't like his inner compass, which was the natural magnetic crystals in his brain recently discovered by biologists. Or his inner alarm clock, which was his biological clock. Or his inner thermometer, which biologists hadn't discovered yet because it was hidden in the left earlobe. The inner watch worked off whatever time zone Remo happened to be in. It was a function of his Sinanju training, just as all the unusual abilities Remo had come to take for granted were. But watches, as Chiun was fond of saying, were a Swiss confidence trick. It was not possible to have an inner watch any more than it was possible to have an inner can opener, Chiun had once insisted to Remo.
"So what time is it?" Remo had asked back on that long-ago day.
"Three hours before sunset."
"Four of five by my inner watch."
"There is no such technique," Chiun had scoffed. "Next you will be claiming you have an inner can opener."
"Not so far," Remo had retorted lightly. In time, he figured it out. He didn't have an inner watch. He had a perfect time sense-the same as Chiun. But where Chiun's sense of time was Eastern, and expressed in terms of hours past dawn or before sunset or moonrise, Remo's was calibrated into hours, minutes and seconds. In other words, Western style.
He figured that whenever he saw a clock, his brain simply and silently ticked off the seconds, minutes and hours after that, resetting itself whenever he came upon another clock.
It even compensated for daylight saving time. Provided Remo didn't forget twice a year.
It was exactly 3:48:09 by Remo's inner watch when the door to the Folcroft basement opened, sending a slowly elongating triangle of light down the concrete steps and falling on the body of the dead IRS agent Chiun had left there.
Remo was dreading this. All day long he had dreaded this moment. He had hurried back to Folcroft after paying a visit to the Lippincott Savings Bank, and relieved Chiun, who then left for Grand Cayman Island. Even with good connections and no hitch on the ground, it was bound to take the Master of Sinanju all day to complete his assignment.
That left Remo to baby-sit the all-important gold while Folcroft was being turned upside down by IRS agents.
Eventually he knew someone would come looking for the dead guy. And Remo was right.
"Anybody down there?" a voice from the top of the stairs called down.
Remo stood motionless in the dark. There were no windows in the Folcroft basement, so no betraying light beyond the spear of illumination coming from the stairs. He said nothing.
With luck the guy would go away. Of course, it was only a matter of time before someone ventured down. No one had gotten around to searching the basement yet, so the gold was safe.
The man at the top of the stairs started down. His hands brushed the rough concrete walls audibly, feeling for a light switch. When he found one, it went click. That was all.
"Damn!"
The man snapped the switch again rapidly. He was wasting his time. Remo had pulled the fuse on the basement lights.
The man came down anyway. He hadn't any flashlight-that much was sure. So when he tripped over the body at the foot of the stairs, he was surprised.
"Hey!" he said, getting up.
Remo could see perfectly in the near darkness, so he saw the man fumble on hands and knees until he encountered the inert body of the first IRS searcher.
"Jesus H. Christ!" he said, recognizing the touch of cool, dead human flesh.
The IRS man scrambled to his feet, stumbling back toward the stairs.
Remo had no choice then. The guy was going for help. He moved in.
His feet whisking silently over the concrete, Remo caught up with the man just as his hand got hold of the worn wood railing. Remo's hands went to the man's throat and squeezed hard.
The man went stiff, and Remo eased him off the stairs and laid him out beside the other stiff. Remo knelt down and whispered into the man's ear. "You'll be all right, pal. Consider this a caffeine-free coffee break."
Then he squeezed again, and the man went out like a TV.
Maybe, Remo thought as he crept to the top of the stairs and eased the door shut, the lid would stay on the basement until Chiun got back. Of course, that meant they still faced the problem of getting a ton of gold out of Folcroft under the noses of the IRS.
So he retreated to the triple-locked door and checked his inner watch again.
It was 4:01:28 and Remo hoped Chiun got here soon. Between the burned-plastic stink coming from Smith's computers and the disagreeable odor emanating from the dead IRS guy, this was no pleasure post.
Chapter 13
It was damage-control time.
IRS Special Agent Jack Koldstad hated doing damage control.
It was the second day, and so far, they had found no sign of illegal activity in Folcroft Sanitarium. It was exactly what it appeared to be-a private hospital.
Except for the drumming. Everyone was reporting it now, but no one could find the source.
The birds still circled the building, too. Koldstad had put an agent on them around the clock. The man had reported the birds always vanished around sundown and were back in place at the crack of dawn.
"I told you to follow them to their roost."
"That's just it, sir. They don't appear to fly off."
"Are they roosting on the roof?"
"No, sir, it's just that when it gets dark, it's hard to see them. I lose sight of them in the darkness. But they're always back with the sun."
"Well, they have to go somewhere."
"If they do, sir, it's not clear where."
"Tonight I want you up on that roof with a high-intensity spotlight and that scoped rifle. I want those birds taken down."
"Yes, Mr. Koldstad."