Warren Murphy - Bottom Line

She had gotten into the research a decade before when, just out of medical school, she had taken a job in a laboratory and been exposed to the famous flat-worm experiments, in which flatworms were trained to respond to light. Then the trained worms were cut up and fed to other flatworms who immediately developed the same response to the light stimulus.

The eccentric doctor for whom she worked had been inclined to dismiss the experiment as a curiosity but it became the pivot of Dr. Elena Gladstone's life. She never published any of her findings or original research. Somehow, in the back of her mind, there had always been a feeling that there was a profit to be turned through this research and this profit would be in direct proportion to how much she knew and how little others knew.

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She was dressed and, barefooted, started downstairs.

Ruby had seen the guard sitting just inside the front door of the building, and she had seen a small office ofl: to the side of the main laboratory room. She went into the office and struck a match, to satisfy herself that the room had a window through which she could escape if it became necessary.

She closed the door behind her, locked it, opened the window, and went over to the desk. The name-plate read "Dr. Gladstone."

Ruby switched on the desk lamp and turned her attention to the filing cabinet behind the desk.

It was locked but her lock picks quickly opened it. She whistled softly to herself as the top drawer opened. In the back of the drawer were patient folders and there were the Lippincotts. Elmer, Lem, Douglas, and Randall. She moved the desk lamp closer to the file cabinet, then spun around in the swivel chair so she could read the reports more eas-

iiy-

Elena Gladstone casually unlocked the door to the laboratory, stepped inside, then froze against the wall. At the end of the hallway, light was pouring from her office. Silently, she walked down the hall, pressed close to the wall. She peered in through a corner of the window in the door. There was a woman inside, a black woman with an Afro, sitting at the cabinet, reading her files. Behind the desk, the solitary window in the office was open, obviously for fast escape if it became necessary.

Who was she, Elena wondered. Perhaps she had

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some relationship to that private detective who had come snooping around a few weeks before.

Noiseless on her bare feet, Elena moved away from the door and went back out the front door of the laboratory. In a hallway closet, she found what she was looking for, secreted the small can inside her shirt and walked to the front of the building.

The guard looked up when she approached. As if stricken by guilt, he tried to hide his copy of Hustler Magazine under some papers on the desk.

"Hello, Doctor," he said. "What are you doing

up?"

"Just walking around, thinking," she said. "This is

what I want you to do."

She explained it very carefully, then had Herman repeat it. He did not understand his instructions but he nodded and said he would do just what she ordered.

Dr. Gladstone walked outside into the cold December air and as she stepped outside, behind her, Herman began counting softly to himself, "One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand

and ..."

When the count had reached sixty, Herman stood up. Whistling loudly, he walked toward the laboratory door in the rear of the building. Even though the door was unlocked, he fumbled with the knob for awhile, then reached inside and flipped on the laboratory light.

In Dr. Gladstone's office, Ruby had heard the whistling and turned off the desk lamp. In the dark, she had replaced the Lippincott folders in the rear of the file cabinet. She stood near the open window,

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waiting. She heard the fumbling with the doorknob in the outer office, and then her office was semi-lit as the lightswitch outside was turned on.

Ruby didn't wait to see the guard follow the last of his instructions, which were to turn around, go back to his desk, put on his coat and go home early.

Ruby stepped up on a book case to hoist herself through the window. Her body was halfway out when Elena Gladstone stepped out of the shadows alongside the building.

As Ruby looked up and saw her, Dr. Gladstone raised a can of Mace and sprayed it in Ruby's face. It hit the young black women like a punch, taking the wind out of her lungs. She could feel it tingling on her face and the burning sensation in her eyes, and then she could feel her body start to grow numb and her ringers slipped from the windowsill and Ruby fell back inside, on the office floor, unconscious.

Elena Gladstone, stepping carefully in her bare-feet, so she did not step on glass or sharp pebbles, came back around the front of the building. She checked to make sure that the guard had gone, locked the door behind her and walked into her office, to see just what she had captured.

Remo was up before the sun and when he stepped out into the living room of the hotel suite, he saw Chiun lying in a pink sleeping kimono on the grass mat, his hands folded steeple-like in front of him, staring at the ceiling.

"What's the matter, Chiun? Trouble sleeping?"

"Yes," said Chiun.

"Sorry," said Remo.

"

"You should be," said Chiun as he rose to a sitting position.

"I didn't have anything to do with it," Remo said. "I don't snore. And I keep the door to the bedroom closed so you won't complain about my breathing or the springs in the bed squeaking or anything like that. Find yourself another patsy."

"A lot you know," Chiun said. "Who was it who put us in a hotel where the elevator squeaks? And if people were not always coming to this floor to look for you, the elevator would not always be squeaking and keeping me awake."

"Looking for me? Who?" Remo asked.

"And if people were not always slipping messages for you under the door, I might just be able to get some rest," Chiun said.

Remo saw the crumpled note on the floor. He smoothed it out and read it aloud:

"Dear Dodo. What you're looking for is Lifeline Laboratory on East Eighty-first Street. Ruby."

He looked at Chiun. "When'd this come?"

"You're not going to ask me how I knew it was for you?"

"No. When'd it come?"

"Who knows? Two hours ago. An hour ago."

"And you read it and didn't do anything? Ruby's probably gone to this place and she might be in trouble."

"One, I did not read it because it was not addressed to me. I am not 'Dear Dodo.' Two, if that Ruby woman wrote it and is going wherever that place is, she will not be in trouble because she can take care of herself, that one, which is why she would

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make a fine mother for someone's son, if someone had but the brains to see that, but one cannot expect too much of a stone."

Remo was on the telephone to Smith and when the light flashed, Smith's wife was downstairs preparing breakfast so Smith spoke from his bedroom.

"Yes, Remo. The Lifeline Laboratory. I told her to alert you before she went there. All right. Keep me advised."

When he hung up with Remo, Smith turned the receiver of the phone upside down to expose a panel of buttons. With practiced fingers, he pressed a 10-digit sequence. There was no buzzing ring of the phone. There was only silence for thirty seconds and then a voice said "Yes, Dr. Smith."

"On the Lippincott matter, our people are closing in," Smith said.

"Thank you," said the President of the United States as Smith hung up.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was a pain in the neck.

Ruby knew it was a pain in the neck and as she struggled toward consciousness, her mind asked what was a pain in the neck. Remo. Remo was a pain hi the neck. Working for the government was a pain in the neck. If she had had any sense, she never would have gotten involved with the CIA and then with CURE. She would have just kept running the Afro wig shop in Norfolk, Virginia, building her business, moving on to other things, and socking enough money away to retire by thirty.