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

"What's the matter?" he said.

"Chiun is explaining how he's not a kvetch," Remo said. "He's certainly not complaining or carping."

"It is a minor thing, Emperor," Chiun said. "Drive on."

Before leaving the campus after the Dreamocizer demonstration, Smith had taken the precaution of driving by Wooley's house and now he was able to find the small brick and frame, ivy-covered building, nestled in a back corner of the large sprawling school grounds.

"Smitty," Remo said as they parked the car across a gravel-paved road from the house, "I know this is a put-on, so why don't you just tell us what you want?"

"This is Dr. Wooley's house," Smith said. "Tonight I saw his television invention. So did other people and I suspect he's going to be a target. I want you to make sure he stays alive until I can talk to him."

"Let's just go in and talk to him now," Remo said. "Then we can go home and let him die."

Smith shook his head. "Procedures," he said. "This may wind up costing a great deal of money. I can't do it until Folcroft's computers are opened by phone in the morning."

"All right," Remo said.

The three men crossed the street to Wooley's front door. Chiun paused on the top step, leaned his hands against the door, then turned to Smith and said: "He is not here. There is no one here."

"How can you tell?" Smith said.

"Vibrations," Remo said. "He's not here. Let's go home. To our hotel."

"No. We have to look inside. He may have been taken away by somebody. Or maybe he just isn't home yet."

Remo snapped the front door lock with a twisting push of his wrist.

There was no one in the house and there were no signs of a struggle. The beds had not been slept in.

"There has been no battle here," Chiun said. "Even the dust of the windowsills is at peace."

"Good," Smith said, and directed Remo and Chiun to wait in the house for Dr. Wooley and to protect him and his daughter until Smith could speak to them.

As Smith went out the door, Remo called to him:

"Smitty, when you're checking your computers for money in the morning, make sure they've got enough left over to buy a house."


When Patti Shea had run from the cafeteria and found a telephone, her instructions from the top network brass had been simple:

"Get that machine and get that professor. We don't care how."

She had spent the rest of the night at the house she had commandeered from Norman Belliveau, calling Dr. Wooley's home but there was never an answer.

After midnight, her own phone rang. It was New York calling. She turned the volume down on the television movie she was watching before answering.

Again her instructions from the network brass were simple and did not invite discussion.