"Stay with me," she said.
"I will."
"I mean tonight. Stay here with me."
"I don't . . ."
"I don't want to be alone," she said. "Stay with me." He felt her hands reach up to his face and touch his cheeks. She turned his head toward her and then reached up and kissed him on the mouth. For a moment, he considered his position. He was a married man. A father. A man on a mission. He had no time for such things; no right to engage in them. And another voice inside his head said, You are also a man, and he surrendered himself to Mildred Pensoitte's kiss.
"That was nice," she said when she pulled away from him.
"Yes," he said. It was nice and he was a man, but he was still a husband, a father, and a man with a mission.
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There would be no more of that tonight, he told himself sternly.
"Do you think it was all right that we ran away from Birdie's room?" she asked.
"I think you had to do it. Otherwise you'd be dragged into the mud by the press. The society might be hurt too," he said.
"You understand things like that, Harry," she said. "Almost as if you had done them before."
"An active imagination," Smith said.
Mildred smiled at him, then rose and walked from the room, leaving Smith to sit in silence, thinking.
He was supposed to be finding a presidential assassin, and here he was playing kissy-face with a woman. And he had no excuse for it. And what of Irma? Good, sweet, kindly Irma who was back home in Rye, New York, patiently waiting for his return.
Was it fair to her?
He wished that he could reach Remo and Chiun. He had spent so long in his office that now it was a symbol of how he dealt with the world. Shut away from it, and that was best because he did not know how to deal with it. Even the one-way glass in his office windows was a symbol. It let him look out into the world, but reminded him that he should not try to be of the world.
He was sure that Remo and Chiun were enjoying themselves Dmewhere and when they got back, he would certainly have something to say to them about duty and responsibility. And about who was paying the bills.
He glanced at his wristwatch. Night had long ago dropped onto the city, and Mildred had left the room almost forty minutes ago. For a moment, he felt the pang of fear in his throat, and he walked quickly along the hallway outside the living room. He stopped outside a closed door at the end of the hall and called her name.
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"Come in," answered her soft voice.
He opened the door. She was in her bed. The room was lit only by a small reading lamp. The sheet of her bed was pulled up to her long, lovely throat.
Her flesh was white and cool-looking.
"I thought you . . . well, I'm sorry. I was wondering if you were all right," he said.
"I thought you'd never come," she said. "Come in."
"No," Smith said. "1 just wanted to be sure that everything was okay."
"Everything is not okay."
"No? What's the matter?" he asked.
"It won't be okay until you're here with me, Harry."
He took a step inside the room. Slowly she pulled the sheet down, off her naked body, and extended her arms to him.
He took another step. Then stopped.
"I can't," he said. "I just can't."
"You said you'd stay," she said in a pouting voice. She made no effort to pull the sheet back up.
"1 will. I'll stay outside on the sofa. You'll be safe," he promised.
"But will you?" she asked.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was mid-morning when the travelers from Wales landed in Sinanju.
"Watch for snakes," Remo said.
The boy, Griffith, holding fast to Jilda's hand, looked around at the bleak forbidding, landscape. "So this is the land of the great Chinee," he said, awestruck. "Would they be invisible, now?"
"No, boy," Emrys said. "But watch where you're walking. Hoa, what's wrong?"
The boy sank to his knees, wrapping his thin arms over his head. " 'Tis a-terrible strong force," the boy groaned.
Remo felt dizzy. "I feel it, too. Music." The air was filled with dissonant sounds that were somehow strangely familiar. "There's music coming from somewhere close."
Jilda and Emrys looked at one another. There was no music that they could hear. "Come," she said, picking up the boy in her arms. "You're both tired."
"Can't you hear it?" Remo slapped his hands over his ears. "The loudest music I ever heard. Oh ..."
He fell. Emrys rushed over to him. "What is it?"
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"Can't move." He tried to sit up. Not a muscle worked. Even his fingers were immobile. And the discordant music kept roaring in his ears.
Emrys slid his burly arms beneath Remo and lifted him. "We're near the cave," he said, making his way inland at a trot.