"Search me. I just made that up."
Chiun padded up to his pupil and looked up at him with chill hazel eyes.
"Do not trifle with me, rootless one."
"Hey, if I'm to be Reigning Master some day, shouldn't I be trustworthy enough to handle the village gold? Besides, if only one person knows, the IRS can't torture it out of you."
"Wild yaks could not wrench this secret from me-if I only knew it."
Remo shook his head firmly. "Can't take that chance. Sorry."
"But Remo," Chiun said plaintively, "if harm befalls you, the secret of the gold goes to your grave."
"I guess you'd better see that no harm befalls me," said Remo, smiling thinly. "That reminds me. Where's Beasley?"
"I do not know. He was escaped. But the Dutchman is secured. The drooling idiot did not possess wits enough to leave his cell when it was open."
"Well, that's one break today. What about Smith?"
"I have released him."
"Then I guess it's up to Smith to try to put a lid on things," said Remo.
"Then we will remain here until these matters are resolved," said Chiun, his eyes questing about the basement suspiciously.
"You're only saying that because you think if you keep sniffing around, you'll stumble across your gold."
"It is somewhere."
"It is safe. That's all you need to know," said Remo, trying to suppress a grin. It was rare that he put one over on the old Korean.
Chapter 22
Big Dick Brull sent his onyx black Cadillac Eldorado tearing through the Folcroft gates like a hearse trying to catch up to a funeral procession. It swept up the road and stopped at the main entrance.
The door opened. A black brogan came out and struck the asphalt like a jackhammer punch.
Dick Brull stepped out and strode into the lobby. There was no guard, no one to stop him. Not that anyone would dare. The look of intensity in Dick Brull's hard eyes usually stopped an ordinary man in his tracks. Brull clomped through the lobby, his feet making distinct reports that bounced off the walls. Where Dick Brull walked, people took notice. Wherever Dick Brull entered, it became his domain.
The lobby was spacious and empty, but the striding feet of Big Dick Brull filled it as if he stood forty feet tall.
His pumping legs took him to the elevator. He gave the button a punch. The elevator, as if intimidated, responded without hesitation. The steel doors parted. Brull stepped aboard. He stabbed the second-floor button. The door closed.
The elevator whisked him up, and he stepped out, pausing. The corridor was empty. His icy black eyes swept left and right. They came to rest on the plain door marked Dr. Harold W Smith, Director.
Shooting his cuffs, Dick Brull stormed toward that door. The hard tapping of his shoe heels warned anyone who knew that dreaded sound that Big Dick Brull had arrived, Big Dick Brull was on-site. Big Dick Brull was taking charge.
And the devil take the man who saw it otherwise.
AGENT PHILIP PHELPS was literally shivering before the sound of footsteps outside the office door.
"Now you're in for it," he muttered to Harold W. Smith, who stood pale faced and grim.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you hear that sound? That's Dick Brull."
"Who?"
"Big Dick Brull. The guy you just asked about. He's the most feared assistant commissioner in the service. Better straighten that tie of yours before he sees it."
"I do not work for the IRS," Smith said.
"You do now"
"Is Brull responsible for this outrage?"
"He's the man."
"Then I'll have words with him."
"It's your ass," said Agent Phelps as the door flew open.
Harold Smith's eyes went to the door, which was reverberating against the wall where it slammed.
A man stood in the doorway. The first thing a person noticed about him was the shock of virile black hair over a face like a thundercloud. It was not a face made for smiling. The lines of the man's face went all the wrong ways. Possibly he had never smiled in his entire adult life. His brow was a scowl, his mouth a frown, his eyes hard and black and uncaring.
Big Dick Brull stood in the open door, and his head turned in one direction then another like a deliberate radar dish, his black eyes tracking every face.
"Report!" he thundered, his voice as big as all outdoors.
Heels clicked. "Agent Phelps, sir."
"Where's Koldstad?"
"In rehab. Third floor, sir."
"What was that commotion I heard on my way in."
"DEA agents, sir."
"What happened to them?"
"They stormed ashore without warning."
"You deal with them?"