A wail of many voices rose, then passed like a cloud. Then a young coed stumbled through the pine boughs.
Remo caught the girl just as she was falling face first onto the asphalt of the parking lot. She sank into his arms. He gently turned her over so her blank eyes stared upward. She whined softly, piteously.
"What happened?" he asked.
The girl looked through Remo, unable to focus her eyes.
"Blood," she said. "Blood everywhere. I heard the noises. I looked up… hit me in the face… wet, couldn't see. I wiped it off… felt ear, eye… blood… Poor Doctor Wooley."
She started to wail and Remo let her down gently and told Smith: "Wait here until I see what's happening."
He ran off between the trees. He heard loud shouting ahead of him now.
Chiun cradled the girl in his arms and touched her on the neck, then rubbed the back of her head. He looked up at Smith.
"She will forget now," he said.
On the other side of the stand of trees, Remo ran past stunned, stumbling students until he found the exit doors that led into Fayerweather Hall's main lecture auditorium.
He stood beside the blackboard staring at the huge pool of blood with the broken-headed corpse in the middle.
He recognized Wooley at once; the body of Lee (Woody) Woodward meant nothing to him.
The red sea of blood reached across both exit doors and was building up slightly in the small declivity formed by the blackboard wall and the incline of the first row of seats.
Remo saw the blood circle around a pair of shoes. The shoes had feet in them, feet that led up to a boy, sitting in a seat, doing an excellent impersonation of advanced catatonia.
He was staring straight ahead and gently touching dried brown bloodstains on his face.
Teachers and students from other classes began to gather around the pool of blood. They stood staring at the corpses of Wooley and Woodward. Several threw up. Some moved around to get a better look, then all started talking at once.
"Did anyone call the police?"
"Yeah. No. I don't know."
"Who did it?"
"Some madman. Woodward tried to shoot old Wooley and this lunatic took off both their heads with that mace."
"Who was he?"
"Dunno. Army jacket, steel-rimmed glasses. Looked like us."
Remo moved outside, walking past huddled moaning shapes. One had thrown up and was trying not to again. Another youth, who couldn't take his eyes off the exit doors, was trying to comfort a girl who was weeping hysterically.
This wasn't a dream. The students who had seen the murders would never forget it; they wouldn't have to strap their heads to a television set to conjure up a fantasy of blood and death. They had seen it, had it dumped into their laps.
Remo walked back through the pine trees. Chiun and Smith were still crouching over the girl.
Before Smith could say anything, Rerno said: "Wooley's dead, Smitty."
"Who did it?"
"I don't know, but I'm going to find him. You can forget the house for awhile," Remo said. "This one's a freebie. Will she be all right?"
Chiun nodded.
"Then leave her and let's go. We've got work to do. So long, Smitty."
Leen Forth Wooley felt something pull at her. She took off her stereo headphones and tried to dig on the new vibrations.
But it was only someone banging on the front door of her house. Usually, she would ignore it because Wooley wasn't home, but the knocking seemed more insistent, faster, than one of her father's usual visitors.
She drifted slowly toward the door, remembering Wooley's injunction to be cautious.
"Who is it?" she said.
"Leen Forth," came a student's young sounding voice. "Your father's been killed."
"Oh, my god," Leen Forth cried and fell backward into the living room. She took a deep breath, then rose and went to the door.
"How did it happen?" she coolly asked the student there, an eighteen-year-old boy with a complexion like pizza and the insecurity of an unfed kitten.
"Murdered. Some maniac at Fayerweather Hall," the student said unfeelingly, then stopped when he saw the effect of his words on Leen Forth.
"Thank you," she said and slammed the door.
So they had gotten to him. All those people with their greed and their promises and their threats, and someone had gotten to William Westhead Wooley because the world was afraid of his genius and wanted to silence it.
Never. Not if she could help it.
She fished in the pocket of her jeans and found the scrap of paper, and dialed the telephone number.
"Yes, Mr. Massello, dead. Murdered. Yes, I know where it is. Yes, I'll be right there. Of course, I'll bring the machine."
Then Leen Forth Wooley hung up the phone and ran from her house toward safety. Toward the houseboat of her father's friend.
Don Salvatore Massello.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Remo and Chiun seemed hardly to be walking, yet they were covering ground as if on the dead run toward Professor Wooley's cottage.
"First we'll make sure that the girl is all right," Remo said. "Then we'll see if we can get the dream machine. I'll need your help."
"Why?" said Chiun.