"They've been circling a certain ruined castle since last night," Remo said. "When people try to photograph them, the developed pictures show only empty air. I don't suppose you'd have any idea what castle that might be?"
"You tell me," said Chiun unhappily. "You are the deductive genius."
"The castle on Devil's Mountain where we first encountered Purcell," Remo said. "His home. And the place where he's gone to hide and heal. The place where you figured he'd go all along. Am I right?"
"A lucky guess," said Chiun, turning the clipping into confetti with fussy motions of his fingernails.
"I'm going to Saint Martin."
"That does not worry me. What worries me is: will you return from Saint Martin?"
Chapter 35
When the plane banked over Saint Martin, Remo could see Devil's Mountain, a black horn of evil thrusting up from one end of the beautiful French-Dutch island in the Caribbean.
"There it is," Remo said, pointing to a tumble of white stones high on a ledge overlooking the bay.
"I see no purple terrorbirds," sniffed Chiun. He was thinking how much Devil's Mountain reminded him of Mount Paektusan.
But they saw the pterodactyls when the taxi driver brought them as far as he dared to go. The rumor on the island was that the former inhabitant of Devil's Mountain, the feared Dutchman, had returned from the dead to haunt his ruined castle.
Remo paid the driver and they started walking.
The pterodactyls arose from the ruins and made lazy circle over the ledge. They ignored Remo and Chiun, who had begun to scale the sheer side of the volcanic mountain.
"Remember," warned Remo. "You had a shot at him. Now it's my turn."
As they climbed, the music seeped into their consciousness, the subliminal sounds of the Dutchman's disordered mind. The sky turned purple, a deeper purple than the pterodactyls. As if envious of the richer hue, the pterodactyls lifted silent wings and flew into the heavens. They were absorbed by the lowering purple sky.
"I think he's playing," said Remo. "Good. That means he doesn't know we are here."
"He does not know anything," said Chiun worriedly. "Look! "
A gargantuan face broke over the lip of the ledge, like a whale surfacing. It leered, huge and cruel with slitted hazel cat's eyes and a pocked yellow complexion.
"Nuihc," Remo whispered.
"Listen," Chiun said.
"Father! Father!" The voice was thin and sad, but the vocal violence of the cry carried alarmingly.
"It's Purcell. What's he doing?" Remo wanted to know.
Chiun grasped Remo's wrist with clawlike hands. "Listen to me, my son. I think we should go from this place. "
"No way. The Dutchman is up there. I haven't come this far just so you could talk me out of this."
"He has gone over the edge."
"He did that a long time ago," Remo said, shrugging off Chiun's grasp. Chiun's hands reasserted themselves. "Over the edge into madness. Observe. Listen to the music. "
The face of Nuihc, smiling with silent cruelty, lifted like a hot-air balloon. Hanging beneath it from cables, like a wicker basket, was a tiny human-size body. The Nuihc balloon floated into the purple sky. It popped and was gone.
"Looks to me like he's just playing mind games," Remo said.
"Mark the sky. It is purple, the color of the mad mind."
"Fine. It'll make him easier to handle."
"He has nothing to lose now," Chiun warned.
"You can stay down here if you want to, Chiun. Either way, you stay out of it."
Chiun let go of Remo's arms. "Very well. This is your decision. But I will not wait below. I have already stood at the base of Mount Paektusan. This time I will accompany my son to the summit."
"Fair enough," said Remo, starting up again.
The higher they climbed, the steeper the mountain became. The air was warm, not cooled at all by the freshening sea breeze. Beyond them, the water stretched blue-green toward infinity. But above, the sky hung suffocatingly close, like a velvet hanging.
Remo was the first to reach the ledge. The castle ruins covered it. Once sparkling battlements had lifted to the sky. Now only one turret stood. The rest had fallen into great broken blocks like a city lost for thousands of years.
Down in the ruins, the Dutchman walked, his purple clothes loose against his body, his short blond hair sticking up like a cartoon of a man who has jammed a wet finger into an electrical socket.
Remo climbed onto a block of granite and called down to his enemy.
"Purcell! "
The Dutchman did not react. Something in the sky held his attention.
Remo looked up. High in the early-morning sky, like a diamond in a jeweler's case, the planet Venus shone like a star.
Chiun came up behind Remo. "What is he doing?" he asked.
''Search me. He's just staring at the sky."
"No, at that star."
Down below. the Dutchman pointed an accusing finger at the bright planet. His harsh voice ripped up from the center of the ruins. "Explode! Why don't you explode?"
"You're right," said Remo. "He has gone around the bend."
"We must stop him," declared Chiun.
"That's my idea," Remo said resolutely.
Chiun hurried after him. "No, not for revenge. Remember the Dutchman's other powers. The ones that are not illusions. "