Warren Murphy - Sweet Dreams

"I really don't think I'm up to talking business tonight," Wooley started.

"I understand. I'm sure it's been a long day for you. And before that, long years, perfecting your device. It is patented, isn't it?"

"Yes. A string of patents."

"Good," said Massello, making a mental note to have a search done the next day for all patents in Wooley's name. "Just so that you are not, as your daughter might say, ripped off."

"Not much chance of that. But as I said, I really didn't want to talk business tonight."

"There's just one problem, Professor. As I said, I'm in many businesses around the area and consequently hear many things. I understand that men have come here from out of state, whose only interest is in stealing your invention."

"They'd have to find it first," said Wooley.

"Of course. You would put it away safely." Massello shook his head. "But these are the kind of men who would not stop at anything to get from you your invention. From you… or from your daughter. They would stop at nothing."

"I'll just have to be careful."

"One cannot be careful enough. I hope this won't offend you, Professor, but I know that at times you entertained a visitor in this place. A Miss Hawley?"

"Yes?"

"You have not seen her in some time?"

"No, I haven't."

"You will not. Ever again."

Wooley sank back into the chair.

"I'm sorry, Professor. But I wanted you to know the type of men you are dealing with. These men from New York will stop at nothing."

Massello saw the pained look on Wooley's face and rose from the couch. He came to Wooley's seat and clapped a strong hand on the man's shoulders.

"Come, Professor. It is not as bad as all that. Forewarned is forearmed."

"But I know nothing of violence. I can't expose Leen Forth to those kinds of…"

"You won't have to," Massello said. "I have friends. They will know how to protect you and yours."

The warming clasp of Massello's hand on Wooley's shoulder gave the professor a surge of confidence, a feeling of power.

"You really think so?" he said.

"I swear it. On my mother's sacred heart," Massello said.

The two men Grassione had sent to stake out Professor Wooley's house had only started to phone in their report about the middle-aged man and the Oriental and…

"That's them," Grassione interrupted. "That's them. Now look, the old guy's invented some kind of a television gadget. I want you to get it."

"And what about him?"

"Do anything you want with him," Grassione said.

While the two men were in the telephone booth around the corner from Wooley's house, Doctor Smith had gone, leaving Remo and Chiun behind.

The two men walked back toward Wooley's small house.

"What kind of a television gadget?" the bigger man said.

"Who knows? We'll find out from this professor, before we pop him."

The two men were surprised to find the front door to Wooley's house open and even more surprised to find two men lying on the living-room floor.

The bigger man flicked on the light switch inside the door.

"All right, which one of you is Wooley?"

Remo rolled over and looked toward the two men. "Actually," he said, "Chiun's more woolly. I'm kind of wash-and-wear myself." He turned over again.

The men looked at Remo and at the tiny Oriental whose back was to them, then at each other.

"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.