"You wouldn't see your nose in front of your face, even your big white one," said Chiun.
"All right. I have a big white nose. Now tell me what's going on."
"What didn't go on is the question," said Chiun. Remo saw Poo's father. He nodded hello.
"Poo's father says she is untouched," said Chiun. Baya Cayang nodded deeply.
Remo shrugged.
"Poo's father says there will never be a son." Remo shrugged.
"Poo's father has been nice enough to keep this horrible fact from the village. The fact is, Remo, you have let us all down."
Remo rustled the scroll.
"What am I looking for?" he asked.
"I am looking for a grandson."
"And I'm looking for Mr. Arieson. The next time I see him I want to be able to defeat him. Or is this your way of just tricking me into reading the scrolls?"
"What you want is all there. Find the treasure of Sinanju and we will be able to handle Mr. Arieson."
"Now I know you're pulling my leg. You've been trying to get that treasure back for years."
"Without it, you will never be able to handle Mr. Arieson."
"I don't want to handle him. I want to defeat him."
"Only the dead have seen the last of him," said Chiun.
"Now what does that mean?" asked Remo.
"Why have you not treated Poo properly?" asked Chiun.
"I'll get to it. I'll get to it. I'm good for it. What about this nonsense with the Greeks, and the servant to the Tyrant of Thebes?"
"Read it," said Chiun.
"I've read it. I've read it. The tribute goes on for pages."
"And?"
"And I don't understand."
"Look around you at the empty rooms. If they were not empty you would understand."
"If they were not empty this whole place would be gathering dust now with lots of junk."
"It is that junk we need now."
"I don't need it at all," said Remo.
"You need something," said Chiun. "That precious blossom awaits untouched, losing the blush of her youth while you refuse your duty to house and home, and shame us before my good friend Baya, a good and decent man who has done nothing to us but give us his treasure of a daughter."
"I'll do it. I'll do what I have to, but I don't have to do it right away. It would help if I didn't get a runaround with these scrolls, and got some clear answers."
"You got clear answers. You were just too dim to see them," said Chiun. "There's nothing we can do about Mr. Arieson without the treasures anyhow. So enjoy the delights Poo has to offer."
"I'm not giving up," said Remo, and returned to the room Chiun had set aside for him. It was not a room for living, but one of the treasure rooms. The scrolls had been neatly laid out on a pale square piece of flooring. Something had sat on it for centuries, and the wood had become indented even though it was rare and valuable African mahogany, one of the hardest woods known to man.
The placement of the scrolls on this indentation in the floor obviously was some kind of message. But how could a place be a message? Remo rubbed his hand along the indentation in the wood. He could feel the crushed cells ever so slowly expand back from their compression, and he felt something else on his fingerpads. Dust. There was dust here in the four-foot-by-four-foot indentation.
He captured the particles in the oils of the ridges of his finger and held the dust up to the light. It was pale white. A fine white powder. No. Not powder. Marble. Something made of marble had been where the scrolls of Sinanju had been set for him.
He read the account again. It was a fairly typical service of Sinanju. A great and renowned philosopher had joined with a hero to demand an end to corruption and oppression in Thebes. The people were behind them, because the tyrant, like all basically weak people, was afraid to let anyone speak. The people had wanted to be more democratic, like Athens. They had even sent an emissary to Athens to learn their system of democracy.
No one in Thebes was on the side of the tyrant. He could not speak well, think well, or govern well, and to boot he was a coward in battle, something that offended the Greek idea of heroism. However, he did have one thing. Knowledge of the Masters of Sinanju and a willingness to pay well.
Naturally he won, and the philosopher and hero were found dead in a ravine outside the city one morning. It was said that they had dueled and the hero had desecrated the philosopher's body in a despicable way before attempting to return to Thebes, when he fell and cracked his head against a rock. Outraged, the people swarmed into the street, abandoning their loyalty to the two who were no better than murderers. Naturally it was a Sinanju service that had made the deaths seem like that.
Remo read the story again. It was followed by the usual list of tributes, and the form was the same as the rest of the House of Sinanju histories. What was strange about this story was that it was not an introduction of a new technique. The sacrilege murder had occurred first many centuries before, in the East. It was just an adaptation. But there was not even a hint of Mr. Arieson or anyone operating like him.
An old service not even new in 500 B.C., and an indentation from something marble on the floor of an empty treasure house in Sinanju.
So what?
So there was someone out there Remo couldn't get a handle on, and this wasn't telling him how. "Master Remo. Master Remo. It's for you," came the voice. It was a young boy who had run up from the village. "The telephone in the baker's house has rung for you. Gracious Chiun has given me a piece of gold to run up here and ask you down to the house."
"He's there now?" asked Remo.
"Yes, he left the great House of Sinanju and with the baker went to see your beloved wife, Poo. They are all there with the mother. They are waiting for you, too," said the boy.
"Anyway, I can take the phone call up here."
"Master Chiun had it transferred to the baker's house so you would not be disturbed on your wedding night. No one would dare change an order from the Great Chiun."
"All right," said Remo. "I'll take it."
The call was a relay from Smith. He was all but sure Arieson was at work again in Northern Ireland. Had Remo found anything that could stop him yet?
"No," said Remo, staring at the tear-soaked moon face of Poo, the daggers of her mother's eyes, the distaste of her father, and Chiun totally, siding with that family.
"Can you talk now?"
"No," said Remo.
"I think the man who calls himself Arieson is behind the kidnapping of the Prime Minister of England."
"Arieson? Where in England?"
"In Bath, obviously," said Chiun.
"Ask him how he knows it's in Bath," said Smith.
"If you take the scroll of the years of the horse, pig, and dragon, roughly your years for A.D. 112, you will not only find out why Arieson is in Bath but you will find out where in Bath."
"He's kidnapped the Prime Minister there, Little Father."
"And they can't find her, is that correct?"
"Yes. That's what they're saying. They don't know how they could have lost her," said Remo, repeating what Smith was telling him.
"They can't find her because they don't know where to look," said Chiun. "Take the scrolls with you. You'll find her. But you won't be able to stop Mr. Arieson, so don't even bother. This is where you should be bothering, with this poor, beautiful, lovely creature who wants only for you to deliver what you vowed here in your ceremony."
"I'll be right over to England, Smitty," said Rema. Poo, he found out, had just learned another word. It was "Harrods."
Chapter 8
Remo parked Poo in the Britannia Hotel in a suite of rooms overlooking one of the many little parks in London.
Before he left, she asked: