"I am calm," Chiun hissed as he strode over to the heap of bodies in the doorway and propelled one of the dead men through the picture window with a crash of shattering glass. "Miserable, destructive wretches," he said. He kicked another into the kitchen. The body came to rest at the base of the refrigerator, which crumpled around it. "They have no respect for property," Chiun said, flinging another limp figure upward with a snap of his wrist. The body shot into the ceiling, where it stuck halfway, its corduroy-clad legs hanging limply down like a grotesque chandelier.
"Okay, you've made your point. I'll get rid of the bodies," Remo said, quickly pulling two of the dead men out into the yard. Chiun spun another through the back door, knocking it off its hinges.
"I'm doing it, I'm doing it," Remo shouted from the yard.
"Never will an old man find peace in these violent times," Chiun muttered.
An hour later, Remo had dumped most of the dead into the ocean and returned to the wreckage of the villa.
"Him, too," Chiun said tightly, gesturing with a thumb toward the man in corduroys whose lower half hung suspended from the ceiling.
"Oh. I forgot." Remo tugged gently at the legs, grunting as he tried to pry the body loose. "Hey, what were these guys doing here, anyway? Did you think to ask before you knocked them off?"
Chiun sniffed. "Who knows what lunacy impels men who smash televisions?"
"I mean, were they trying to rob you?"
The old man paused and gave Remo a puzzled look. "Actually, I think they were trying to kill me," he said.
"What for?"
Chiun made a face. "How should I know? The white mind has always been inscrutable. Stupid is always inscrutable."
"These men are all black," Remo said.
"Close enough."
"Well, what'd they do?"
Chiun rolled his eyes in exasperation. "The usual. They came inside, playing with their knives and guns." lie swept' an open ten-inch switchblade into the bushes with his toe. "They were hooting in that incomprehensible language, and in a moment they had all departed for the Great Void. Except for the one with the dancing feet who smashed my television. By the way, his remains are in the carpet of my bedroom."
"Oh, come on," Remo groaned. He trotted into the room to see. "This is gross," he called over his shoulder as he picked up the rolled-up carpet. "Couldn't you just kill him and leave it at that?"
"But he broke my television," Chiun explained. "Just as Mrs. Wintersheim..."
"Yeah, yeah." Too tired to stand on ceremony, Remo hoisted the carpet onto his shoulder and returned to the living room, where he yanked the other body out of the ceiling, with a shower of dust and plaster. The man in the corduroys tumbled to the floor like a sack of cement. "Well, I can't figure it out," Remo said. "Nobody even knows us here, and this makes three times today that someone's tried to ice one of us."
"You, too?" Chiun asked in a tone of voice that immediately struck Remo as too casual.
"Twice," Remo said, eyeing him slowly. "And you know something about it, so speak up. What's going on?"
"I know nothing." Chiun's fingers twitched toward the plaster-covered body. "Take this mad dog away."
Something caught Remo's eye. It was lying on the floor beside the dead man, coated with fallen debris. "This must have fallen out of his pocket," Remo said, picking it up.
It was a plastic card the size of a credit card, only it had no markings on it except for a wide metal band running along its length. "What do you think it is?" Remo asked, turning the card over in his palm.
Chiun snapped it out of his hand irritably. "Clean up this rubbish first," he said. "Later will we solve the riddles of this ill-mannered island." He tossed the card onto an end table while Remo dragged the corpses outside.
There was something strange about this night. Remo felt it as he hauled the dead men toward the cold mist of the ocean. He tossed in the rolled-up carpet.
Well, why shouldn't the night be strange? The day had been weird enough. Smitty, for one thing, with his transparent talk about taking a vacation on an island near the one that Remo and Chiun were on. Harold W. Smith didn't take vacations, not with his employees, at any rate. Then the murder attempts. Two for Remo and one for Chiun. Something was going on here, and whatever it was, Smith knew about it. Remo was here for a reason, although he couldn't imagine what it was. All he knew was that something lurked on this island paradise, something dark and frightening. Chiun was right. Some vacation.
A rustling sounded in the distance, Remo looked behind his shoulder. Nothing. That was what was strange about this night, he realized as his eyes moved from the night-blackened coastline to the sky. There was no moon. Sometime in the past hour a cloud cover had blotted out the moon and the twinkling stars that were the only light outdoors at night. Without them, the island was as black as the innards of Hell.
The rustling sounded again, closer, with the pat-pat-pat of approaching footsteps on the sand. Remo listened. They were coming from the west, the direction he had walked home from. He gathered his thoughts together, trying to remember. West was Fabienne's house and Devil's Mountain and that winding goat-herders' road he had taken with Pierre, and the shipyard with its modern security system...
The shipyard.
Now he remembered. When he walked back from Fabienne's, the lights at the shipyard had been off. They had been blazing when he had gone up the winding road with Pierre, but coming back, the place was dark and invisible.
The steps came closer. Whoever was coming was running. As far away as the runner had to be by the sound of his footfalls, Remo could hear out-of-breath panting. He set down the body he was carrying and squatted a hundred feet or so away. Close enough so that he, with the heightened night vision drilled into him over the years, could see the runner before being seen himself.
The running figure came forward at full speed, then fell with a thud over the body of the man in corduroys. The runner got up, explored the body briefly, then let loose with a howling, high-pitched scream. A woman's scream.
Fabienne. Remo ran toward her. She turned tail and dashed madly for the woods, fighting and kicking and squealing like a banshee. She wailed, "No, no!" as Remo finally got her in his grip.
"It's all right. It's me, Remo."
"Remo?" She turned hesitantly. "Oh, Remo." She flooded with tears and held onto him. She was shaking wildly. Her breath came in gulps. "He came for me," she shrieked hysterically, the words tumbling from her between long, hoarse breaths. "In the house... after you left... His hands were on my throat... going to kill me..."
"Hold on," Remo said. "I'm taking you inside. You can tell me there. You're freezing."
"I had to swim... Sharks... afraid of sharks."
"Shhh. You're okay now, little girl." He stroked her wet hair to calm her. When she quieted, he picked her up and carried her into the villa. "You just take it easy till we get you into some dry clothes." He stepped carefully over the pile of rubble in the living room and set her down on a sofa. She was still trembling. Her neck was swollen, and thick bruises circled it like a chain.
Chiun walked in carrying a load of clean towels and a blue silk kimono. "Who is this latest disturbance of the peace?" he asked.
"The woman I went to see tonight. Looks like whoever came after you and me is going for her, too."
After a change of clothing and a stiff shot of Sidonie's rum, Fabienne had stopped shaking and was well enough to talk.
"Thank you," she said, accepting the second glass of island firewater Remo offered her. Her eyes widened as she took in the decimated room. "He's been here, too," she said. She lowered her head in despair.
"Some were, but they weren't a lot of trouble," Remo said soothingly. He saw her focus on the television planted in the wall and added quickly, "They didn't do that. That's just Chiun's idea of interior decorating."