"No," Smith said quickly. "Not right away." He looked at his watch for a moment, then said: "In seventeen minutes."
"You got it, Doctor Smith," she said, looking at her own wristwatch. "Should we symphonize our watches? Like they do in the spy movies?"
Smith smiled his thin-lipped grimace. "No, Hildie. We'd get it all wrong. What do we know about spy movies?"
He turned and continued walking toward the elevator.
The door to Smith's office had always squeaked. Blake Corbish had found this terribly annoying, and one of his first acts had been to have a maintenance man oil the hinges. When that didn't totally silence the door, he had had the hinges replaced.
The door was now absolutely silent. Without warning, Blake Corbish heard a voice behind him say, "Hello, Corbish."
Corbish wheeled in his chair, shocked. Shock turned to horror when he saw Smith.
For a moment, he could not get words out of his mouth. Then he said, "How… Smith… how… ?"
"How isn't really important now, is it?" Smith said coldly. "I'm here. That really should be more than enough for you to worry about, by itself."
Corbish moved to his feet; Smith's hand moved to his pocket and brought out a .45 caliber automatic.
"Well, well," Corbish said. "A weapon. I wouldn't have suspected it of you."
"I don't generally carry them," Smith said. "But this was a gift. From a man who tried to kill me in a Pittsburgh motel."
Smith waved the gun at Gorbish. "Sit back down. You've got time yet. There are some things I want to know."
"You think I'll tell you?"
"Yes, I think so," Smith said, his eyes locked with Corbish's, the words coming from his mouth even though his lips did not even seem to move. "It's rather interesting, but we once had a study done here. It showed that forty-eight hours was the absolute limit that a man could withstand torture. I know you'll talk."
Corbish grimaced. He knew the study. Smith had proved that it was accurate. "What do you want to know?"
He expected Smith to quiz him on changes in procedure, in personnel, in the operation of the computers. Instead, Smith asked, "What have you carried outside this building?"
"Excuse me?"
"Have you taken any papers home?"
"No," Corbish said, answering truthfully.
"All right. Who else knows what this place is? Besides Broon, that is. He took his information with him."
"No one."
"Not even his daughter?" Smith said. His tone of voice made it clear he knew Corbish was lying. Corbish could see Smith's hand tighten around the grip of the automatic.
"I wasn't thinking of her," Corbish said. "She's dead."
"You?"
Corbish nodded, and picked up the straight pen from his desk, twirling it nervously between his fingers.
"Well, then I guess we have everything we need, don't we?" said Smith.
"How did you get away from Remo?" Corbish asked.
"When I left him, he was verifying just who was supposed to run this organization. By now, I'm sure he knows you are an impostor."
Corbish grinned. He dropped the pen and stood up. 'It wouldn't matter, you know, what anyone else told him. Give me five minutes with him, and I'd have him believing the moon is made of cheese."
Another voice came from the doorway.
"The only cheese in this place is you." It was Remo's voice.
Smith turned slightly toward the door, just enough to see Remo and Chum in the open doorway, and just enough to enable Corbish to reach across the desk and pull the automatic out of Smith's hand.
"All right, you two," he called, waving the automatic. "Move in here. Close the door."
Chiun closed the door. He and Remo moved toward the front of the room. Smith stood motionless at the side of the desk.
"I told you once before," Corbish said to Smith, a savage smile on his mouth, "you're too old for this sort of thing. Now we're going to have to retire you. All three of you. With honors, of course."
"Just an academic question," Smith said. "Were you telling me the truth? You took nothing out of here?"
"Yes, it was the truth. Why would I need to take anything out? I've got everything I need right here. Everything."
Smith nodded.
Chiun moved slightly away from Remo, as Remo kept moving toward the window side of the room. Corbish followed both of them with his eyes, first one, then the other.
When there was five feet between them, Corbish yelled, "All right, you two, stop right there."
"Mr. Garbage," called Chiun.
Corbish looked to the old Oriental. As soon as his eyes moved, Smith reached down and snatched the straight pen up from Corbish's desk. Turning it over in his hand, he swung his right arm forward, and the pen, point-first, smashed into Corbish's right eye. Smith pressed until the point and the pen stopped.
Corbish's mouth dropped open. The pen stuck from his right eye socket like some hideously misplaced antenna on a Martian mutant. A sound started to come from his mouth. The gun dropped from his hand and thudded on the desk.
"I… I…" he said, then fell forward onto the desk. As he fell, the end of the pen slammed against the desk blotter and the weight of his falling body drove it deeper, through his eye and into his brain.
He paused on the edge of the desk there for a moment, as if frozen, and then his body slowly slid off and dropped to the floor.
"Not enough wrist action," Remo said.
Smith turned to him.
"No," Remo said, "I'm not kidding. When you do something like that you've got to snap the wrist at the last moment. Almost like cracking a whip. That's what gives the extra zap."