Warren Murphy: Chained Reaction

Smith nodded. "It seems that way."

"Then let's go," said Ruby.

"You go," said Remo. "I can't. My heart is broken. Dear, sweet Baisley DePauw. Slavery. From

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the man who gave us such great stage hits as Kill the Honkey and Up Against the Wall, Mother and who's personally gone bail for every maniacal killer in this country if they're the right color. . . ."

"None of them are the right color," Chiun said. "The right color is yellow."

"I just don't believe it. You go," Remo said.

He looked at Euby. Slowly her mouth opened. She was working herself up to screech at him. He could see it in her eyes. He clapped his hands over his ears.

But it wasn't good enough. Ruby let loose a string of curses that would have bubbled wallpaper.

"All right, all right," said Remo. "Enough. I'll go."

" 'Cause you promised," Ruby said.

Remo surrendered. "Because I promised." He looked around and his eyes fixed on Smith. "All right," Remo told Ruby. "I'll go with you, but I don't have to take him along. I don't think I could take that trip. We'll park him someplace so he can get that shoulder fixed up."

"Mama'll take care of his shoulder," Ruby promised.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

The DePauw mansion overpowered the neighboring West Palm Beach mansions like a two-carat blue-white set among diamond chips.

It sat on six acres of land, surrounded on three sides by ten-foot-high white iron fencing whose bars were too close together for a human to slide between. At the back of the mansion was the Atlantic Ocean. A large powerboat, tied up to a dock, could be seen through the estate's front gate.

Inside the gate, leaning against the white brick pillars, were two uniformed guards.

Remo drove past the estate and parked a half block away. "It's probably best if you stay here," he told Ruby.

"I'm going," she said. "Case Lucius is there."

"Brave, too," Chiun said to Remo. "Not only strong and smart, but brave, too."

"I now pronounce you man and wife," Remo said. "Will you knock it off?"

"Ingrate," hissed Chiun.

Remo got out of the car and slammed the door behind him. He was halfway to the DePauw mansion when Ruby and Chiun left the rented car.

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Remo was tired to death of being pushed around, tired of having his mind made up for him, tired of being told what to do and when to do it. Thank God for the Vega-Choppa. It was the first honest dollar he had earned since he stopped being a city policeman a lot of years before.

If he had not given Ruby his promise, he would keep walking right now, past the DePauw mansion, and never look back. Being pushed around. It was what had tired him of working for Smith and for CURE and he was tired of it from Chiun and tired of it from Ruby.

He stopped outside the tall white gate and motioned one of the guards to come over.

"Yes?" the guard said.

"Look. We can do this easy or we can do it hard."

"Easy? Hard?"

"Just let me in," Remo said.

"Are you expected?"

"No. But my winning ways will soon have everybody forgetting that."

"Then I'm sorry, sir, but..."

"Not as sorry as you will be," Remo said.

He reached through the bars of the gate, grabbed the guard's wrist and gently pulled him close. To the other guard, it looked as if the man had stepped forward so Remo could whisper something in his ear.

"Now," Remo said softly. "This is still your wrist I'm holding in my hand. We can keep it a wrist or we can make it into jelly. Take your pick."

"Wrist," the guard said.

"Good. Now call your buddy over."

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"Joe," the guard called out. "Come here a minute."

"Good," said Remo. "Very good."

"Yeah, Willie," the other guard said when he reached the fence but before he could get an answer, his left wrist was in Remo's left hand.

"Now if you both don't want your ping pong careers ended for good, open the gate." He squeezed on Willie's wrist for emphasis and the guard's hand went to the ring of keys at his waist. He fumbled them loose, and used a large brass key to open the gate. It opened and Remo released both men momentarily, slid inside, then resumed his grip on their wrists. He walked them over to the high shrubbery alongside the brick pillars, transferred his grip to their necks, and left them sleeping underneath the japonica shrubs.

When he stepped back to the ceramic tiled driveway, Chiun and Ruby were entering through the gate.

"How was that?" Remo asked. "All right? Did I open the gate well enough for you two geniuses? In your wisdom, do you approve?"

Ruby looked at Chiun. "What's wrong with him now ?" she asked.

"I can never figure out what white people are talking about."

"Me neither," said Ruby.

"Yeah? Yeah?" said Remo. "White people, hah? Big friends, you two, hah? Have him tell you about how God made man and put it in the oven and kept getting it wrong. Have him tell you that, you want to find out what a tolerant warm wonderful person he is."

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"Ignore him," said Chiun. "He knows, better than anyone else, how tolerant I am of inferiors."

"Hah," said Remo, and walked off up the long driveway.

The main house stood at the back of the property, its rear patio extending down to the water line and the docks. There were two small buildings on one side of the house and Remo cut across the slightly overgrown lawns to go to those buildings first.

The first room must have been the gardener's quarters. There were two rooms, immaculately clean. And empty.

The second building, hidden from the street by the first building, was made of fieldstone. Remo tried to look inside, but there were curtains over the windows.

There was a hasp on the outside of the front door for padlocking the small building from the outside, but the door itself was unlocked.

The three stepped into one large room, twenty-five feet square. Thin metal bunks, covered with bare striped ticking mattresses, lined one wall. In a corner was an open toilet bowl and a sink. On another wall, chains had been installed at about the height of a man's shoulders.

Ruby counted the metal bunks. Thirteen. But fourteen men had been kidnapped.

Remo heard a sound.

"You hear it, Chiun?" he asked.

Chiun nodded.

Ruby strained but heard nothing.

"What is it?" she asked. "What do you hear?"

"Some kind of machinery whirring," Remo said.

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He began to look around the room carefully. The sound was loudest near the wall of the building, next to the main DePauw house.

There was a ragged rug under Remo's feet. He kicked it aside and found a trap door with a large sunken ring cut into the wooden floor.

He pulled up on the ring and the trap door lifted noiselessly.

Now Ruby could heard the sound, too. It was a slow, steady whirring. She stood alongside Remo and looked down into the open well. Steep wooden stairs had been erected against the wall, and Remo led the way down.

They were in a tunnel seven feet high and not that wide. It stretched ahead of them for thirty feet and ended at a door. There was a piece of black plastic covering the door's windows on their side. Remo peeled a piece of it away and they lifted it slightly to peer in.

They saw a long conveyor belt and thirteen men standing alongside it. The first seven of them wrapped metal bands around sticks; the last six removed the metal bands and brought the sticks and bands back to the front of the line so the cycle could start over again.

All the men were black. They wore white cotton sleeveless undershirts. The room was illuminated by bare overhead bulbs.

Ruby sipped in her breath.

She started to cry out, but Remo clapped his hand over her mouth.

"What?" he said.

"That's Lucius."

"Which one?"

"The first one on the left side."