"Destroyer - 025 - Sweet Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"So's my house," said Remo.

Chiun hissed, "Ask him to increase the tribute to my village." Remo waved him off.

"Smitty," he said. "We'll meet you in St. Louis and discuss this some more."

"I can't get away," Smith protested.

"You have to get away. This all won't wait. If you don't go to St. Louis," he said "don't look for us there."

Smith paused for a moment, to try to unravel the logic of that sentence, then surrendered to it. "I'll be there tomorrow," he said.

"Good," said Remo. "Bring enough money for a house."

He hung up and told Chiun, "We're going to St. Louis."

"Good," said Chiun. "Let us go now."

"Why the hurry?"

"Soon those four cowlike females will come to their senses and they will be back. What do I need with four servants?"

Remo nodded.

"When I have you," Chiun said.


CHAPTER FIVE


Dr. Harold W. Smith woke up at 3:45 a.m. He let his wife sleep as he went into the kitchen and prepared one slice of whole wheat toast, light, without butter, one two-and-a-half-minute egg and a four-ounce glass filled with two ounces of lemon juice and two ounces of prune juice, his only concession to the possibility of originality in the kitchen.

He followed the breakfast with a glass of lukewarm water, then re-entered the bedroom where he picked up the two-suiter he had packed the night before, planted a kiss on the cheek of his still-sleeping wife, who tried to swat it away, and then drove to his office.

Something had been niggling at his mind since he had first gotten the name from an informant of Professor William Westhead Wooley of Edgewood University, and he planned to make one last check.

He was waved through the gate of Folcroft Sanitarium, which served as headquarters for CURE, the secret organization he had headed since its formation. When he parked his car in his private parking space in the otherwise empty lot, he took a notebook from his pocket and jotted down a reminder to do something about the front gate security which was becoming a little bit too lax, even for an institution masquerading as a sanitarium for the wealthy ill and an educational research center.

Alone in his office, Smith quickly composed a retrieval memo to be fed into CURE'S computers. He wanted anything on Wooley, Edgewood University, and television inventions.

The computer returned only a trade journal report that said "word has it that a major breakthrough in television technology has almost been perfected and an announcement is expected soon."

That was all.

Smith crumpled up the report and dropped it into the shredder basket next to his desk. He set a series of locks that would prevent anyone but himself from tapping into the CURE computer system for information, then turned out the lights, locked up behind him, and went back to his car.

He bought a New York Times at the airport and when he was safely on the T.C.A. 6 a.m. "early bird" to St. Louis, he started to read the paper, thoroughly, story by story.

And on page 32, he found a story that told him why two major Mafia figures were on their way to the Midwest to meet with an obscure college professor.