"Smitty," Remo interrupted.
"What?"
"Go piss up a rope."
Remo slammed down the telephone. He looked around the apartment again, as if Chiun might have sneaked in while he was on the phone, but the silence was total, overpowering, so strong it rang in his ears, and Remo went over to break the silence, and flipped on Chiun's portable color television set.
The transistorized set broke instantly into picture and sound. It was the morning news, and an announcer with a smile said:
"Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor held a press conference this morning in the Holiday Inn in San Francisco and announced that he will never again set foot in America.
"This came on the heels of last night's highly publicized Blissathon in Kezar Stadium, which turned into a noisy, violent fiasco in which at least three persons died, victims of mob violence."
The announcer's voice faded and then came film of Dor's press conference, and when Remo saw Dor's fat face with the incipient mustache, he growled, deep in his throat, drew back his right fist, and…
Tap, tap, tap.
Remo stopped. There was a tapping on the door. The sound was familiar, as if it were made by long fingernails.
Remo's face brightened, and he brought his right arm to his face to brush away moisture that he had not realized was there.
He opened the door. Chiun stood there.
"Chiun. How are you?"
"How should I be? I have come for my television set. I didn't want to leave that." He brushed by Remo and entered the room. "See, already you are using it, wearing it out while my back is turned."
"Take it and get the fuck out," Remo said.
"I will. I will. But first I had better check it. Not that I think you would steal anything, but, well, one never knows with Americans."
As Remo watched, Chiun stood alongside the set, laboriously counting the knobs, and then counting them again, and then leaning over the vented back of the set and peering inside to examine machinery that Remo knew he did not understand. Occasionally he went "hmmmm."
"I should have killed that fat-faced creep," said Remo.
Chiun snorted and continued his inspection.
"You know why I let him live?" Remo asked. "Because I knew this time you were serious, and he was your new employer. And I wouldn't make a hit on your employer."
Chiun looked up, shaking his head sadly. "You are crazy," he said. "Like all white men. I am sick of whites. That girl was in love with me, and that lunatic with the bag of chicken punched her. And here I thought, it was only baseball that was racist. And Smith. And…"
"Screw it. I should have finished that frog. If I ever see him again, I will."
"Typical white thinking. Doing something in such a manner as to cause more harm than good. Do you know that Indians get very upset when Indians die in foreign lands? Particularly rich Indians. And yet you would go ahead, just like that, poof, and kill him. Well, fortunately you will not commit that folly. I have killed him, and in such a way that sloppiness will never be attached to the name of Sinanju."
Chiun folded his arms and stared challengingly at Remo.
"But I just saw him alive. On the television set."
"Nothing ever sinks into the white racist mind. When a hand strikes the right point in the neck, is the person dead?"
"Yes," said Remo.
"No," said Chiun. "It means that the person is going to die. He is not dead yet. It takes time for the brain to be disconnected from the rest of the body. Some blows are fast. Some blows are slower, and death takes longer. Like long enough for him to return home to India, before he dies of bad kidneys."
"I don't believe it," Remo said. "You would have had to make that kind of stroke without his knowing about it."
"And you are a fool. Have you learned nothing? If a man gets a bump, and then nothing happens immediately that day, he assumes it is healed and was nothing to worry about. You can bump into someone openly and inflict that kind of wound. And in two days there will be no pain, and in two months he will be dead. Any fool could learn that. Any fool but you, that is. Remo, you are a disgrace. A pathetic incompetent desecration of the name Sinanju. I saw you last night using a stone on that Frenchman whose family was trained by my family. A disgrace. A fiasco. Rubbish."
"But…"
"That settles it. I cannot leave you at this level of stupidity. More work is needed to bring you to even the lowest level of accomplishment. Much more work. And I am afraid I must be here to supervise it. Such is the burden of the dedicated teacher, who dares to try to train fools to come in out of the rain."
"Chiun," Remo said, a smile beginning to crease his face. "I can't say… I can't…"
But Chiun had changed the channel from the news broadcast of Maharaji Dor to an early morning soap opera, and he raised a hand for silence as he stared at the set.
And Remo was silent, because no one disturbs the Master of Sinanju during his momentary respite of beauty.
"Practice your breathing," Chiun said. "I will get to you later. And then we can discuss our trip to Sinanju. That is, if you and the other racists have not already forgotten your promise."
Remo turned to the door.
"Where are you going?" Chiun asked.
"To rent a submarine," said Remo.