"That's Valerie," Remo said. "She's in a closet, don't worry about her."
"She's the woman from the museum?"
"Right. Don't worry about her. When are you going to Maine?"
"I was just leaving."
"Have fun. If you want to know where the skiing's good, I know a great guidebook."
"Oh, really?" said Smith.
"Right," said Remo. "It tells you all about the illimitable skills and the indomitable courage of the author. It tells you all about the politics of the downslope trade and rips the mask of hypocrisy off the faces of the ski resort owners."
"I'll be at Seboomook Mountain. How's the skiing there?"
"Who knows?" Remo said. "The book doesn't get into things like that."
After hanging up, Remo gave Valerie her choice of options. She could go with them to the Edgemont Estate or she could stay tied up in the closet. If she were anyone else, there might have been a third option. She could be set free on the condition that she keep her mouth shut and not tell anybody anything.
He paused. Twice, he thought. Twice in five minutes he had worried about someone else's life. He savored the emotion before deciding he did not like it.
For her part, Valerie decided to go with Remo and Chiun, working on the assumption that she could never escape from a closet, but if she were outside with them, she might be able to slip away.
Or, at least, yell loud and long for a cop.
Jean Louis deJuin smoked a Gauloise cigarette in a long ebony filter that tried manfully but unsuccessfully to hide the fact that Gauloise cigarettes tasted like burned coffee grounds. He looked through the sheer draperies from the third floor window of the red brick mansion out onto the grounds between the building and the road beyond.
Uncle Carl stood alongside deJuin's red leather, high-backed chair and watched with him. DeJuin casually flicked ashes from his cigarette onto the highly polished wood parquet floors that had been set in place, individual piece by individual piece, back in a day when wood was something that craftsmen used, and not just a temporary stop on the road to the discovery of plastic.
"It was too bad about Reddington," Uncle Carl said.
DeJuin shrugged. "It was not unpredictable; still it was worth the attempt. Today we try again. All we need is one of those two men, and from him we can learn the secrets of the organization he works for. Do we have people looking through their rooms?"
"Yes, Jean Louis. As soon as they left, our men went up to look through the rooms. They will call if they find anything."
"Good. And the computers in Paris are analyzing the various capacities of American computer systems. If that secret organization is, as it must be, tied tightly into a computer system, our own computers will tell us where."
He looked up at Carl and smiled. "So there is nothing to do but enjoy the day's sport."
DeJuin snuffed his cigarette out on the floor and leaned forward to look through the open window. Three stories below him, twelve-foot-high hedges crisscrossed each other at sharp right angles, in the form of a geometric maze covering almost an acre.
Eliot Jansen Edgemont, who built the estate, had been an eccentric who made a fortune out of jokes and games, and during the twenties, half of America's families had owned one Edgemont game or another, back in the days before America had been mesmerized into thinking that sitting next to each other and sharing a communal stare at the photoelectric tube constituted a rich and full family life.
He invented his first game at age twenty-two. When no game manufacturer would buy it, he himself produced and sold the game to department stores. At twenty-six he was wealthy. At thirty he was "America's Puzzle Master," spinning out from his fertile mind game after game, all of them bearing the Edgemont emblem, a large block E set into the middle of a geometric maze.
For the maze had been the linchpin of Edgemont's success. While his early games had been successful, the first that had swept America in a craze had been a board game built around a maze. It was inevitable that the maze motif be built into Edgemont's life, and when he built his estate in Englewood, New Jersey, he copied a European idea for a maze of hedges on the grounds. Life Magazine had done a full color spread on it once: "The Mysterious Mansion of America's Puzzle King."
The story did not mention any of the more unusual aspects of Eliot Jansen Edgemont's life. Most specifically it did not mention the orgies that took place in the maze that separated the house from the road.
Then, on one fine summer day in the late 1940's, two male guests caught the same girl in the maze at the same time, and in the resulting argument over property rights, one of the men was killed.
The scandal could not be hushed up, and various legions aimed at preserving America from the godless hordes organized boycotts of Edgemont products. The puzzle and home game business had been on the downs anyway, slowly being destroyed by America's new toy, television, and so the old man took his games and went home.
He sold his business and retired to Europe, where people were more broad-minded, and he died there in the mid 1960's of a stroke suffered while tupping a fifteen-year-old girl in a haymow. It took the girl six minutes to realize he was dead.
She told police that Edgemont said something before he died, but she could not hear the word clearly. Even if she had, she would not have been able to repeat it, for it was the secret name of the stone god Uctut.
For Edgemont had been an Actatl.
In the disposition of his estate, the mansion in Englewood passed into the hands of a corporation that was controlled by the tribe.
It was usually seen only by workmen who kept the hedges trimmed and the buildings in good repair, except on days like this, when the Actatl needed a place to conduct some business.
Today there were no workmen on the grounds, and as Jean Louis deJuin looked down into the center of the maze that covered more than an acre, he smiled in satisfaction.
Everything was going very well.
He looked up as a blue Ford pulled up outside the spike-topped high metal gates two hundred yards from the house. Raising field glasses to his eyes, he watched as Remo, Chiun, and Valerie got out of the car. The two men, he thought, did not really look impressive. Except for the thick wrists on the white man, neither showed any indication of special physical prowess. But he remembered that the white man had gone through some of the Actatl's best warriors like a Saracen blade through flan, and he did not make judgments on appearances anyway.
The gate to the estate had been locked at deJuin's order with a new heavy-duty chain and padlock. As he watched, deJuin saw the padlock and chain fall away under the hands of the Oriental as if they were paper.
Then the two men and the woman were walking between the twelve-foot-high walls of hedge toward the house, which sat on a small rise two hundred yards away. The alley through which they walked was about six feet wide.
DeJuin moved back from the window, set down his binoculars, and glanced down into the main body of the maze. Everything was ready.
The three people had reached the end of the hedge-lined walkway. A wall of hedge prevented their going farther ahead and they must choose now to turn left into the maze or go back. The Oriental looked behind them at the gate. He spoke, but deJuin could not hear the words.
The white man shook his head no, grabbed the girl roughly by the elbow, and turned left. The Oriental followed slowly.
Then they were into the maze, turning right, turning left, the white man leading the way, following the small paths down blind alleys, then turning back, slowly, steadily working their way toward the center.
The telephone on the floor next to deJuin buzzed slightly, and he nodded for Uncle Carl to answer it.
He stared at the three, and when they were deep in the heart of the labrynth, deJuin pulled the sheer curtain back a few inches and leaned forward toward the open window.
He made a small gesture with his hand, then leaned onto the windowsill to watch. This was going to be interesting.
"Why are we here?" Chiun demanded. "Why are we in this place of many turns?"
"Because we are going to that house to get Bobbi back. Remember her? You let them take her because you were busy watching your television shows?"
"That's right," said Chiun. "Blame it on me. Blame everything on me. It's all right. I'm used to it."
"Stop carping and-"
"So it's carp again, is it?" said Chiun.