"Where's the other guy who was here?" the big man said, taking a snubnosed .38 caliber revolver from a shoulder holster. "Hey. I'm talking to you."
"The other guy isn't woolly either," Remo said, still without turning. "He's more like green twill, the kind you get in work pants. Go away."
The big man walked to Remo and put his toe into Remo's shoulder. "A joker, hah?"
He pushed with his toe, but the shoulder didn't move. He pushed harder. The shoulder still didn't move, but the toe did. Toe, foot, leg, and man went toppling backwards, hitting heavily on the living-room floor.
Chiun rose as the man got up to a sitting position. The man aimed the revolver at Remo's back.
"What do you want, fella?" Remo asked.
"The television thing. Where is it?"
"It's over there," Remo said pointing to a 19-inch Silvertone console. "But don't bother turning it on. All the good shows are off."
"That's enough," the man said, as Chiun brushed by him. He began to squeeze on the trigger, and then he felt the gun being turned in his hand. The metal of the trigger was cold under his index finger, and there was nothing he could do to stop the finger from squeezing and the gun went off with a muffled thump, muffled by the gunman's head which Remo had jammed down into the muzzle.
The smaller man at the door had taken out a revolver too. He aimed it at Remo, then felt a stinging pain in the left side of his chest. He turned to his left and saw Chiun there, his face contorted in sorrow, and the man started to say something but no words would come out.
And Chiun pushed him with a long index finger and the man stumbled forward, then went headlong into the picture tube of the television set which broke with a loud crack and a swift sucking hiss of air.
"You broke the TV, Chiun," Remo said.
"No. He broke the television set," Chiun said.
"Now how are you going to watch As the Planet Revolves tomorrow?"
"I am always prepared. I brought my own set. It is in a trunk in my room. Please do something about these bodies."
Remo started to protest, realized it would be unavailing, and got lightly to his feet with a heavy sigh.
The sky was just beginning to brighten when Professor William Westhead Wooley and his daughter arrived back at their home on the Edgewood U. campus.
The two gunmen's bodies were stuffed into garbage pails behind the house when Wooley put his key into the unlocked door, turned and stepped into the living room with his daughter behind him, still rubbing sleep from her eyes.
Wooley saw Remo and Chiun sitting on the sofa.
"Dr. Wooley, I presume," Remo said.
"Who are you?" Wooley said. Leen Forth's eyes opened wide as she saw Chiun, then even wider as she saw the shattered front of the television set.
Wooley saw the set too. "You should have asked me," he said. "You wouldn't find anything in there."
"We didn't try to find anything in there," Remo said. "But the two men who came here to kill you thought they might."
"You still haven't answered my question. Who are you?"
"We've been sent here to make sure that nobody harms you until you talk to a certain man," Remo said.
"And that man is?"
"He'll tell you when he gets here," Remo said. "Now why don't you two just go about your business? Breakfast, whatever, we'll make sure nobody bothers you."
"You're too kind," Wooley said drily. In the kitchen, while he clanged milk and juice pitchers, he whispered to Leen Forth, "If anything happens to me, or it looks like there's going to be any trouble, I want you to call the man we met tonight. Mr. Massello. Here's his number."
"I told you, he looked like a nice man," Leen Forth said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The line in front of Dr. Wooley's house grew as Wooley and Smith talked in the kitchen. In the living room, Remo practiced breathing and Chiun amused Leen Worth by showing her examples of Sinanju paper art-in which Chiun dropped an 8 by 11 piece of paper from above his head, and then using his right hand as a blade slashed pieces out of the paper until, by the time it touched the floor, it had been hacked and cut into silhouettes of different animals.
Patriotism had closed on the first cup of decafflnated coffee, in the kitchen. Dr. Wooley had explained to Smith that he did not really give a damn about the potential applications of the Dreamocizer in both national security and law-enforcement work.
Now Smith was trying sociology.
"Do you have any idea what you could do for our nation? The Dreamocizer would eliminate hate. Aggression."
"You mean why go out and kill niggers when you can do it at home on your own television?" Wooley asked.
"That's crude, Dr. Wooley, but that's more or less the idea, yes. Imagine its application in prisons, in mental hospitals," Smith said.
"You see, Dr. Smith, that's the problem. I don't want to imagine its use in any limited application. I think my invention should go to the public to use as it sees fit."
Smith tried simple avarice.
"I'll match any financial offer you receive," he said.
"Too late," Wooley said. "I've already given my handshake on a deal, and so that's that."
"You know," Smith said, "that there are people who will try to kill you for the Dreamocizer."
"I know that and I want to thank you for sending your two men here last night to protect me and Leen Forth. But I'm no longer afraid."
"There's a man here from New York. His name is Grassione," said Smith.
"Never heard of him."
"He's working for a man in St. Louis. Don Salv-"
"Come on, Doctor," Wooley interrupted. "I'm really not interested in all these horror stories, so if you'll just excuse me, I've got a class to teach today."
"Have it your own way," Smith said, rising from the table. "You're making a mistake, though."
"At least it'll be my mistake."
"One last thing. You don't keep the Dreamocizer in the house here, do you?"