He turned to follow Remo and Smith. No one bothered them as they left Tuesday's Pub.
In the Volkswagen Smith had rented at the St. Louis Airport, he outlined their plan.
Smith would go on to the conference at Edgewood University and see what Dr. Wooley's "television breakthrough" was all about.
Remo and Chiun would wait for Smith until he contacted them.
He had arranged a place for them to stay.
In a hotel.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Whatever Dr. William Westhead Wooley had done, it had hit a nerve, and his simple technological conference had turned into an event.
Hundreds-from the media, from scientific foundations, from industry-babbled amidst the remnants of their fruit cup, broiled brisket of beef, and snow peas dinner.
The booze had been flowing since the welcoming cocktail party. Dr. Harold Smith had found himself standing next to a greasy-looking man who was escorted by a six-foot-four, two-hundred-fifty-pound goon type and an Oriental in a black suit, who made the color look like a social judgment. The man insisted upon talking to Doctor Smith about how NBC's second season wasn't as good as ABC's season and CBS didn't have anything on the air that was any good at all, not counting Rhoda and Archie Bunker, and if he had something to say about it, there'd be game shows at night, because that was how you found out how people really acted, by taking real people and waving money in front of them.
Doctor Smith was about to excuse himself when a hush fell over the cocktail party.
Patti Shea had appeared. The Queen of Television.
Men's mouths were loosely open; women's were tightly shut. She was wearing a maroon gown, severely cut and open to just above the navel. The color of the dress did more than make her straw-gold hair stand out. It picked it up and pushed it in the crowd's face.
Patti Shea sighed heavily, causing her breasts to rise which created a major seismic disturbance at the front of her dress. Several matronly ladies sat down.
Patti's right leg moved forward to walk into the room. Her dress clung to it momentarily, then her creamy leg appeared through a slit in the garment which reached up to the thigh.
As she moved into the room, everyone made a desperate attempt to take their eyes off her. One man blinked and sat down. Norman Belliveau was biting his lower lip so hard it bled. Another man tilted back and fanned himself.
Some whistled silently, some winked at their friends, but no one ignored her-not until Patti had taken her seat at a table in the front of the room and the room again lapsed into normal activity. Some kept looking. Her crossing of her right leg over her left sent the man on her right reeling and the man on her left painfully remembering not to stare, at the expert elbow-in-the-ribs urging of his wife, who had decided that the teased hair on which she had spent $35 that morning looked cheap.
Lee (Woody) Woodward, the head of college affairs, had risen hastily from his seat at the head table and started tapping on his glass, which no one could hear because Stanley Weinbaum, director of admissions, was busy shouting: "Sit down everybody. That means sit down."
As usual, no one paid any attention. Little by little, however, they began to drift toward their seats as plates of artificial vanilla, flavored chocolate, and fake strawberry ice creams were dropped off at their tables.
Woodward rose to deliver his opening address, one he had written himself, filled with choice tidbits about the little man of the business industry, the unsung praises they all deserved, and his fervent hope of the good write-up their respective presses would give Edgewood University when the lights went out.
He had trouble dealing with anything substantive because Dr. Wooley had belligerently refused to tell anyone anything about what technological breakthrough he had made in the field of television. He had insisted only that "everybody be ready for the plop to hit the fan."
Dr. Harold Smith drummed his fingers, sitting at a table in the rear. Get on with it, he said softly to himself.
Arthur Grassione sat across a table from Don Salvatore Massello, smiling gently at the St. Louis kingpin. Grassione was flanked by Vince Marino and Edward Leung, who kept stealing glances at their boss, hoping he would start eating his ice cream so they could begin eating theirs.
In the front of the slowly darkening room, Patti Shea felt two hands grab her legs. She stabbed one with a plastic fork, hearing a muffled groan to her right side. Then she carefully placed a dish of ice cream on her lap. The other hand, meeting no resistance, scuttled up her leg, then closed triumphantly on a melting slab of ice cream. It withdrew hastily.
Suddenly there was a gleam in the front of the room. It wavered in a multi-colored rectangular shape for a moment, then took form. The entire room stared at a bright, full-color motion picture of a countryside.
It was filled with oxen and working people. Then there was a tall young man working in a water-soaked field. He straightened and the audience saw a handsome Oriental face. The strong face looked back and laughed. Another face filled the screen, an old woman chattering away in another language. The face moved out of the picture and there was a small village with yelping dogs and little yellow children playing together happily. A few men talked to one side. Women walked along the path, smiling. They were thin and dirty, but the thinness was the well-fed muscle of a good diet, and the dirt was the refreshing soil of honest, heavy labor.
The image faded and then changed to a sunset. Seen over trees, it was full of golden promise, and peaceful, almost perfect.
The pictures continued on the high screen mounted on the wall behind the head table, pictures of an impossibly mellow happiness.
Suddenly a voice was heard over the buzzing noises.
"These are views of Vietnam, a Vietnam that none of us has ever known. One that probably no Vietnamese has known in the last twenty-five years. For this is a Vietnam of the imagination. The imagination of my nineteen-year-old adopted daughter."
The lights came back up. Standing to the side of the head table was Professor William Westhead Wooley. He pulled aside a small curtain, so the audience could see a teenaged Oriental girl, sitting in front of a television set. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling even with four discs attached to her throat and temples, leading by wires to the television set.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am Dr. William Wooley. And this is the Dreamocizer. It takes your fantasies, your dreams, your hopes… and plays them on your television, just as you envision them."
Silence filled the hall. Don Salvatore Massello leaned forward and looked at the images on the large screen behind the head table, images that were washed out and gray because of the brightened room lights. Arthur Grassione looked at the picture for a moment, then turned away and with a smirk, shared his view with Vince Marino that the device would never sell.
Patti Shea sipped in her breath.
Dr. Harold Smith looked around the room, whose silence was suddenly shattered by a laugh.
It came from the head table, from Lee (Woody) Woodward, the head of college affairs.
"Is that all?" he said, laughing. "Is that all?
Dreams? In full color? Is that all?" He laughed aloud, began to choke on his laughter and reached for a glass of water in front of his ice cream plate.
"Stereophonic sound is optional," Wooley said.
Woodward stopped choking and laughing. "Wooley," he said, "you brought all these people here for that? For a trick?"
The rest of the room was silent. People stared as if at a major highway accident, unable to do anything but sure that something should be done.