Bottom Line

"CIA was good for something," she mumbled to herself.

She stood inside the closed door of the laboratory for long minutes, waiting, ready to flee if another alarm had sounded and alerted someone. Her eyes grew accustomed to the dark. She saw the cages lining the wall, cages of rats and mice and monkeys. She examined them clinically. While most people might be afraid of rats and mice, in the neighborhood where Ruby had grown up, they were constant companions, and you didn't stay emotionally fearful of them for long. When Ruby was ten years old, a rat had climbed into her bed and bitten her. She had grabbed it behind the head, and beaten it to death with the spiked heel of her mother's shoe.

The animals quieted as Ruby stood in the room. She listened. Had Zack Meadows been here too? Had he come to find out what was going on, only to

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wind up dead in the Central Park lake? If that was what had happened, Ruby realized she had better be very careful.

There was no point in trying to sleep anymore so Elena Gladstone dressed casually in blue jeans and a plaid shirt and decided to go down to the laboratory to look in on her latest experiments. She had succeeded in conditioning a rat to be afraid of metal, to the point that the rat went berserk if placed in a metal cage. Even after hundreds of experiments, she never lost her sense of wonder that a learned response such as fear, trained into an animal, would produce a substance in the animal's brain that could be isolated, purified, and intensified so that it could be injected into the bloodstream of another animal and produce exactly the same fear.

She had gotten into the research a decade before when, just out of medical school, she had taken a job in a laboratory and been exposed to the famous flat-worm experiments, in which flatworms were trained to respond to light. Then the trained worms were cut up and fed to other flatworms who immediately developed the same response to the light stimulus.

The eccentric doctor for whom she worked had been inclined to dismiss the experiment as a curiosity but it became the pivot of Dr. Elena Gladstone's life. She never published any of her findings or original research. Somehow, in the back of her mind, there had always been a feeling that there was a profit to be turned through this research and this profit would be in direct proportion to how much she knew and how little others knew.

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She was dressed and, barefooted, started downstairs.

Ruby had seen the guard sitting just inside the front door of the building, and she had seen a small office ofl: to the side of the main laboratory room. She went into the office and struck a match, to satisfy herself that the room had a window through which she could escape if it became necessary.

She closed the door behind her, locked it, opened the window, and went over to the desk. The name-plate read "Dr. Gladstone."

Ruby switched on the desk lamp and turned her attention to the filing cabinet behind the desk.

It was locked but her lock picks quickly opened it. She whistled softly to herself as the top drawer opened. In the back of the drawer were patient folders and there were the Lippincotts. Elmer, Lem, Douglas, and Randall. She moved the desk lamp closer to the file cabinet, then spun around in the swivel chair so she could read the reports more eas-

iiy-

Elena Gladstone casually unlocked the door to the laboratory, stepped inside, then froze against the wall. At the end of the hallway, light was pouring from her office. Silently, she walked down the hall, pressed close to the wall. She peered in through a corner of the window in the door. There was a woman inside, a black woman with an Afro, sitting at the cabinet, reading her files. Behind the desk, the solitary window in the office was open, obviously for fast escape if it became necessary.

Who was she, Elena wondered. Perhaps she had

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some relationship to that private detective who had come snooping around a few weeks before.

Noiseless on her bare feet, Elena moved away from the door and went back out the front door of the laboratory. In a hallway closet, she found what she was looking for, secreted the small can inside her shirt and walked to the front of the building.

The guard looked up when she approached. As if stricken by guilt, he tried to hide his copy of Hustler Magazine under some papers on the desk.

"Hello, Doctor," he said. "What are you doing

up?"

"Just walking around, thinking," she said. "This is

what I want you to do."

She explained it very carefully, then had Herman repeat it. He did not understand his instructions but he nodded and said he would do just what she ordered.

Dr. Gladstone walked outside into the cold December air and as she stepped outside, behind her, Herman began counting softly to himself, "One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand

and ..."

When the count had reached sixty, Herman stood up. Whistling loudly, he walked toward the laboratory door in the rear of the building. Even though the door was unlocked, he fumbled with the knob for awhile, then reached inside and flipped on the laboratory light.

In Dr. Gladstone's office, Ruby had heard the whistling and turned off the desk lamp. In the dark, she had replaced the Lippincott folders in the rear of the file cabinet. She stood near the open window,

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waiting. She heard the fumbling with the doorknob in the outer office, and then her office was semi-lit as the lightswitch outside was turned on.

Ruby didn't wait to see the guard follow the last of his instructions, which were to turn around, go back to his desk, put on his coat and go home early.

Ruby stepped up on a book case to hoist herself through the window. Her body was halfway out when Elena Gladstone stepped out of the shadows alongside the building.

As Ruby looked up and saw her, Dr. Gladstone raised a can of Mace and sprayed it in Ruby's face. It hit the young black women like a punch, taking the wind out of her lungs. She could feel it tingling on her face and the burning sensation in her eyes, and then she could feel her body start to grow numb and her ringers slipped from the windowsill and Ruby fell back inside, on the office floor, unconscious.

Elena Gladstone, stepping carefully in her bare-feet, so she did not step on glass or sharp pebbles, came back around the front of the building. She checked to make sure that the guard had gone, locked the door behind her and walked into her office, to see just what she had captured.

Remo was up before the sun and when he stepped out into the living room of the hotel suite, he saw Chiun lying in a pink sleeping kimono on the grass mat, his hands folded steeple-like in front of him, staring at the ceiling.

"What's the matter, Chiun? Trouble sleeping?"

"Yes," said Chiun.

"Sorry," said Remo.

"

"You should be," said Chiun as he rose to a sitting position.

"I didn't have anything to do with it," Remo said. "I don't snore. And I keep the door to the bedroom closed so you won't complain about my breathing or the springs in the bed squeaking or anything like that. Find yourself another patsy."

"A lot you know," Chiun said. "Who was it who put us in a hotel where the elevator squeaks? And if people were not always coming to this floor to look for you, the elevator would not always be squeaking and keeping me awake."

"Looking for me? Who?" Remo asked.

"And if people were not always slipping messages for you under the door, I might just be able to get some rest," Chiun said.

Remo saw the crumpled note on the floor. He smoothed it out and read it aloud:

"Dear Dodo. What you're looking for is Lifeline Laboratory on East Eighty-first Street. Ruby."

He looked at Chiun. "When'd this come?"

"You're not going to ask me how I knew it was for you?"

"No. When'd it come?"

"Who knows? Two hours ago. An hour ago."

"And you read it and didn't do anything? Ruby's probably gone to this place and she might be in trouble."

"One, I did not read it because it was not addressed to me. I am not 'Dear Dodo.' Two, if that Ruby woman wrote it and is going wherever that place is, she will not be in trouble because she can take care of herself, that one, which is why she would

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make a fine mother for someone's son, if someone had but the brains to see that, but one cannot expect too much of a stone."

Remo was on the telephone to Smith and when the light flashed, Smith's wife was downstairs preparing breakfast so Smith spoke from his bedroom.

"Yes, Remo. The Lifeline Laboratory. I told her to alert you before she went there. All right. Keep me advised."

When he hung up with Remo, Smith turned the receiver of the phone upside down to expose a panel of buttons. With practiced fingers, he pressed a 10-digit sequence. There was no buzzing ring of the phone. There was only silence for thirty seconds and then a voice said "Yes, Dr. Smith."

"On the Lippincott matter, our people are closing in," Smith said.

"Thank you," said the President of the United States as Smith hung up.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was a pain in the neck.

Ruby knew it was a pain in the neck and as she struggled toward consciousness, her mind asked what was a pain in the neck. Remo. Remo was a pain hi the neck. Working for the government was a pain in the neck. If she had had any sense, she never would have gotten involved with the CIA and then with CURE. She would have just kept running the Afro wig shop in Norfolk, Virginia, building her business, moving on to other things, and socking enough money away to retire by thirty.

Not her, though. She had to be smart and work for the government. That was the pain in the neck. And Remo, he was a pain in the neck. Chiun and Smith, pains in the neck. Her brother, Lucius. No, he wasn't a pain in the neck. He was a pain in the ass.

Her eyes opened and the pain in her neck was real. It felt like the bite of a June bottle fly and she tried to move her right hand up to the left side of her throat to touch the sore spot but she couldn't. She craned her head and saw that her right hand was strapped down. So was the left hand. So was she. She was lying on a hospital cot, with thick broad bands of canvas holding her down she she couldn't move. And

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it all came back to her. The Mace in the face as she tried to escape. And there, across the room, hanging up the telephone was Dr. Elena Gladstone who had a broad smile on" her face as she turned toward Ruby and walked toward her. The room was brightly lighted with overhead fluorescent fixtures. Ruby had seen that kind of lighting SQmewhere recently. Where? She shuddered as she remembered. In the city morgue, when she was examining corpses.

"How are you feeling, Miss Gonzalez?"

"How'd you know my name?" asked Ruby. . "I know a great deal about you. Your name. Who you work for. What you do. The identities of the American and the Oriental who have been bothering me. Your suspicions about the Lippincott tragedies and the death of Mr. Meadows."

"You drugged me," Ruby said. It was not a question, but more a silent grudging acceptance of an unpleasant fact.

"Yes, dear, I did. Now how would you like to die?

"Either of two ways," Ruby said. "Not much and not at all."

"Neither of those is acceptable," Dr. Gladstone said. "We'll have to find something better."

"Take your time. I'm in no hurry." Ruby's cautious cat's eyes had prowled the entire room. The walls of the room were lined with more cages, holding rats and hamsters. She saw a scalpel on a table across the room. Maybe there was a chance.

"You seemTto have figured out everything about me," Ruby said. "I'm sure impressed by all that science stuff, but I can't figure out what you're doing at all."

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"It's not surprising," Dr. Gladstone said. "Few could."

Pickaninny wouldn't work, Ruby decided. Maybe vanity.

"The advances you've made with peptides are really a breakthrough," Ruby said.

Dr. Gladstone's eyebrows lifted. "Peptides? My, you are well read."

Ruby nodded and ignored the patronizing. "I just don't understand how you can synthesize compounds from one species and make them work in a totally different species."

The redheaded doctor's eyes sparkled with interest. "I don't synthesize them. I use natural compounds. What I synthesized and what made it all work, was . . . well, you recall in organ transplants, the necessity to use anti-rejection medicines so or-" gans from one person would be accept by another's body?"

"I remember," Ruby said.

"I synthesized the basic components that prevent rejection, and found out how to bind those to the peptide compounds. I can move substances from one species to another with one hundred percent effectiveness."

"Incredible," Ruby said. "What got me too was the range of responses you can program. I can see training an animal to be afraid of the dark or of water. But of Orientals? Of clothing or restraints? That's amazing."

"Not really. It's just the natural outgrowth of simple behavioral training. Use an Oriental assistant to abuse animals. When you inflict pain on him, make sure his environment is yellow-colored. They will

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react soon enough. Clothing? You just couple some kind of blanket with electric shock. Then switch to other fabric coverings. Before long, the rats learn. Anything covering them means a painful jolt of electricity, and that knowledge creates peptide compounds in the brain, and those can make a man afraid of the same thing."

"Like Randall Lippincott?" asked Ruby.

"Exactly like Randall Lippincott," Dr. Gladstone's eyes narrowed as she realized the woman strapped to the hospital cot in front of her was still the enemy.

"But why? Why the Lippincotts?" asked Ruby.

"Because we're going to get rid of all of them," said Dr. Gladstone, "and then what they've got is ours."

"Their heirs might have something to say about that," Ruby said.

"They will. They will. And now, dear, if twenty questions is done, I think we have to decide what to do with you."

The telephone rang. Dr. Gladstone answered it, then said "I'll be right there."

She replaced the phone and told Ruby: "Your friends have arrived. This Remo and Chiun. I have to go chase them first and then I'll be back to take care of you."

"I don't mind waiting," Ruby said.

"By the way, if you wish to yell, feel free. But this place is ten feet below the brownstone and is quite soundproof. No one will hear you yell, just as no one will hear you scream."

The doctor left and Ruby let out a hiss of air. That was one mean woman. With no time to waste, she began rocking her body back and forth on the hospi-

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tal cot. She hoped that the wheels had not been locked in place.

They hadn't and a sudden jerk of her body was rewarded by the cot rolling two inches closer to the counter on which she saw the scalpel.

Two inches down. Ten feet to go. Ruby kept rocking.

Elena Gladstone smiled automatically as she walked into her book-lined main office in the front of the brownstone and saw Remo and Chiun sitting before her desk.

"How do you do?" she said. "I'm Dr. Gladstone. I understand you've been sent by Mr. Elmer Lippincott, Senior."

"That's right," Remo said. "My name is Williams. This is Chiun."

"You can call me Master," Chiun said.

"I'm pleased to meet you both," she said. She brushed past Remo as she walked behind her desk. She gave off a heavy femine scent, a scent her body deserved even if the stark white laboratory clothing she was wearing did not. He knew that scent from somewhere.

"What can I do for you?" she asked as she sat down.

"First, it was Lem Lippincott and then Randall," Remo said. "We wondered if you have any explanation for why they did what they did. Mr. Lippincott told us you're the family doctor."

"That's right," Elena said, but shook her head. "I don't know what happened to them. They were both in good health, or as good as sedentary men can be. They had no serious emotional problems that I know

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of. They weren't on drugs or any medication. I don't know what happened to them."

"Randall Lippincott was afraid of clothing," Remo said. "He couldn't stand having anything on his body."

"And I just don't understand that," Elena said. "I've never, in all these years, heard of such an irrational fear."

"You think you could have helped him?" Remo asked.

"I don't know. Perhaps. I would have tried. But I wasn't called when he became ill."

"What kind of work do you do here?" Remo asked.

"This is a life preservation facility. We try to find illnesses before they flare up. We do physical examinations whose goal is to prevent serious illness. If we find someone is losing the tone in his back muscles, for instance, and we have sophisticated ways of measuring that, we prescribe for them a series of exercise that will prevent the trouble before it begins."

"A big place just to look for bad backs," Remo said.

Elena Gladstone smiled at him. Her broad smile usually brought a response from men, an eagerness to please her. From this Remo Williams, it brought nothing but a deepening of his eyes, already dark pools sunk deep into his skull. He looked vaguely Oriental himself, she thought, and wondered if he were somehow related to the old Oriental who sat silently at her desk, examining the sharpened pencils in her pencil holder.

"It's not just bad backs," she said. "We work the entire range of potential health problems. Hearts,

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blood pressure, chemical deficiencies in the body, arterial problems. Everything."

"And that's all you do?" Remo was obviously unimpressed, she thought.

"And we do some basic research on lab animals. That's more a hobby of mine than one of our main functions," she said. "Mr. Lippincott has been very generous in supporting our work."

Chiun had touched the tips of two pencils together, sharpened tip to sharpened tip. He was holding them together with just his index fingers on the rubber erasers. The two pencils were spread out in front of him, like one long pencil, with two points in the center and an eraser on each end. He seemed intent on the pencils. Remo looked at him and seemed annoyed.

Dr. Gladstone was interested. She had never seen that done before.

"With two of the Lippincott sons dead," Remo said, and she snapped back to attention toward him, "we have to worry about the third son."

"Douglas," she said.

Remo nodded. "Right. Douglas. Does he have any medical problems we should know about?"

"None. He's the youngest son. He exercises regularly and he's in good shape. I'd be very surprised if Douglas should turn up sick somehow."

Chiun was moving his hands in front of him, still holding the pencils, point to point. His hands made large circles in front of him and he was making small sounds under his breath, as if imitating an airplane engine.

"I see," said Remo. He was running out of subtle

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questions. "We're looking for a black woman. Have you see her?"

"A black woman? Here? No. Was she supposed to be here?" Elena Gladstone felt the hazel eyes of the old Korean burning into her face.

"Not really," Remo said. "She's kind of an associate of ours and she said she might be here to meet us."

"Sorry. I haven't seen her yet. Can I give her a message if she comes?"

"No, that's all right," Remo said. He rose. "Chiun," he said.

Chiun turned his right hand palm up and slowly moved his left hand around so that the two palms faced each other, the distance of two pencils apart. As Dr. Gladstone watched, he removed his left hand and the two pencils touching only at their points remained balanced in the air above Chiun's right hand. Then he flipped the index finger on which they rested and the two pencils popped up into the air. Each turned one slow revolution and landed in the small opening of her pencilholder cup.

She clapped her hands in appreciative glee.

"Stop fooling around, Chiun," Remo snarled. "We've got work to do."

Chiun rose slowly to his feet.

"On your way out, I'll show you the rest of our operation," Dr. Gladstone said, also rising. She led them out into the reception room. "My living quarters are upstairs," she said. She turned down the hallway toward the lab. "On the sides here are our examination rooms. Here we do physicals and EKGs and monitor heart rates, stress tests, blood tests and such."

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The doors to all the small offices were open and Ruby was not in any of them, Remo could see.

Remo again smelled the heady flowery scent of Elena Gladstone's perfume as she pushed through a door into a large, light laboratory, lined on both sides with cages of mice and rats and monkeys. The din was earsplitting.

"These are our laboratory animals," she said. "What do you use them for?" "We're trying to develop a new anti-stress drug," she said. "And of course you have to make animal tests. We're years away, I'm afraid."

Remo followed her along the line of cages. Chiun was walking behind him and he could hear Chiun thumping his feet. Remo wondered why.

"And that's it," Dr. Gladstone said. "The whole place."

"Thanks for your time, doctor," Remo said. He looked around the laboratory. His eyes rested on Chiun who had a faint smile on his face.

"What's down there?" Remo said, pointing down a short corridor.

"That's my lab office," Dr. Gladstone said. "Where I keep records of our experiments here. The office up front is for when I play administrator. This one is for when I'm playing researcher."

She smiled broadly at Remo who returned the smile.

"Sometime we'll have to get together to play doctor," he said.

"Yes," Elena Gladstone said, looking directly into his eyes. "Yes." Her body tingled.

She took Remo by the arm and led him back toward the front of the bunding. Chiun followed,

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stomping. Remo was ready to tell him to knock it off. The receptionist smiled at the two men as Dr. Gladstone led them to the front door.

"I hope to see you again," she said as Remo and Chiun stepped outside.

"I hope so," said Remo.

"You shall," said Chiun.

Dr. Gladstone closed the door behind them and when she saw through the peephole that they had walked down the steps of the building, she quietly locked the door.

"Call everyone scheduled today, Hazel, and cancel their appointments. I'm going to be very busy."

"I understand."

Outside, Remo and Chiun made a pretense of walking away from the house, but stopped hi front of the next building. . "What do you think, Little Father?" Remo asked.

"She is lying, of course."

"I know. I recognized that perfume of hers. It was the smell in Randall Lippincott's room at the hopsi-tal. She was the doctor who drugged him."

Chiun nodded. "The lady has a little vein visible in her neck. When you asked her about the black woman, the vein began to throb almost twice as fast as before. She was lying."

"Then Ruby's in there," Remo said.

"Correct."

"Where, I wonder?"

"In the basement," Chiun said.

"That's why you were^ stomping?" Remo said.

"Yes. There is a large room below the laboratory. I imagine that we will find Ruby there," Chiun said.

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"I think we better go back and collect Ruby," Remo said.

"She will like that," said Chiun.

Ruby Gonzalez had gotten her right hand around the scalpel when she heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

With the small amount of freedom allowed her feet and legs, she braced her feet against the counter and pushed as hard as she could. The hospital cot rolled back across the floor to a slow stop. She was three feet shy of where she had started and she hoped Dr. Gladstone wouldn't notice.

Carefully, being sure not to drop it, Ruby turned the scalpel around in her right hand, so that its blade pointed toward her shoulder and slowly she began to saw at the canvas band that pinned down her right arm.

Dr. Gladstone came back into the large bright room.

"Your two friends have just left," she said.

Ruby looked at her but said nothing.

"They said there was no message for you in case you should arrive after they left." She smiled.

"They turkeys," Ruby said.

"Probably true," Dr. Gladstone said. "And now we have to take care of you."

She walked to the counter. Ruby saw her take a disposable hypodermic from a cabinet and root around in the cabinet until she found a vial of clear liquid.

She had her back to Ruby and Ruby sawed furiously with the scalpel at the band on her right wrist. She could feel the canvas weakening, then she felt

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the warm ooze of liquid down her hand. She had cut her wrist with the scalpel. She kept sawing.

Dr. Gladstone spoke with her back to Ruby. "I'd really like for you to go out in style. I could have tried something new and unusual. Perhaps a pathological fear of automobiles. Then put you into the middle of Times Square."

"Ain't nothing wrong with being afraid of cars in this town," Ruby said.

Dr. Gladstone filled the hypodermic with the clear fluid, then replaced the vial in the cabinet.

"No, I guess that's true enough," she said. "But we won't have time for that. It'll have to be something simple and direct, like curare in the bloodstream."

Ruby gave one last furious jab at the canvas band and felt it separate. She began to raise her right hand to cut away the band on her left wrist, but Dr. Gladstone turned and Ruby dropped her right hand to her side.

Dr. Gladstone, holding the hypodermic in front of her eyes, examining it, walked back toward Ruby.

With her left hand, she felt for the vein on the inside of Ruby's left elbow. She found it and pressed down the surrounding skin with her fingertips to make the vein protrude. She lowered the syringe to it.

"I'm sorry, my dear," she said.

"You sure are," Ruby said. She swung her right hand up from her side, putting as much force into it as she could with her body anchored. The scalpel glinted as it flashed past her eyes and then it bit into the left side of Elena Gladstone's neck and Ruby snapped her wrist on the follow-through as if she were wristing a little pitch shot onto the green.

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The hypodermic fell to the highly-waxed white tile floor. Dr. Gladstone's eyes opened wide as she realized what had happened. A gusher of blood pumped from the side of her slashed throat.

She tried to scream, but all she could produce was a bubbling high-pitched shriek as she fell.

Outside, moving down the steps they had found behind the filing cabinet in Elena Gladstone's office, Remo and Chiun heard the sound.

Remo said, "Hurry, Chiun." He ran down the steps.

Chiun slowed up and smiled. "It is too late, Remo. Ruby does not need us."

Remo didn't hear him. He pushed his way through the heavy metal fire door into the large bright room.

Elena Gladstone lay on the floor, her dead body still pumping blood onto the tiles.

Ruby was using the bloodied scalpel to saw away the band on her left wrist.

She looked up as Remo came through the door. He stood there speechless.

"Remind me never to count on you for anything," Ruby screeched. Remo smiled and took the earplugs from his pocket and put them in his ears.

"Oh, shut up," he said with a smile.

Chiun came up behind him. He saw Ruby strapped to the cot and whispered to Remo:

"If you wish, I will leave and you can take advantage of her while she is a prisoner. But remember, the baby is mine."

"If you think I'm going near a black chick with a knife, you're crazy."

"Will you two stop jawing, and get me out of here? I'm tired of sawing," Ruby hollered.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dr. Jesse Beers took the telephone call from Hazel, the young receptionist at the Lifeline Laboratory, in his room, two doors away from the master bedroom of Elmer Lippincott Sr. and his young wife, Gloria.

His face turned white as he listened. Then he said, "All right, Hazel. Just close up the lab. Lock everything up. Leave everything where it is." He paused. "Yes, her too. Just you lock up and go home and I'll come up later and take care of everything. No, no, don't call the police. I'll explain it all to you when I come to your house." He forced a smile. "I haven't been to your house for a while, sweetmeat, and I'm about ready."

He waited for the expected words of invitation and when they had come, he said: "Think of me. I'll be with you soon."

He hung up the telephone and walked down to the master bedroom.

Gloria Lippincott was alone in the room. Her belly swelling gently, she sat in front of the makeup dresser, applying mascara to her eyes.

"Elena's dead," Beers said as he closed the door behind

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Gloria slowly put down the mascara tube and turned toward Mm.

"What happened?"

"I don't know. Our receptionist found her with her throat cut. She said she saw those two men your husband was with. The old Chink and the skinny dude."

"Goddamit, I guessed they were trouble when Elmer told me about them," Gloria said. "What about the receptionist? Will she talk?"

"No," Beers said. "I told her to lock up and go home and wait for me. She's got the hots for me. She'll wait."

"Doesn't everybody?" asked Gloria.

Jesse Beers grinned. "Present company included."

"Don't flatter yourself," Gloria said. "You're a tool with a tool and don't forget it."

"I know it," Beers said. He sounded deflated.

"And we're both hi this for one thing only. The money. Certainly not because I like ruining my figure and walking around carrying this baby of yours in my belly."

"Who knows?" he said. "You might like it."

Gloria did not answer. She was drumming her fingers on the dressing table.

"All right," she finally said. "We've got to get rid of Douglas. Then you can split."

"What about the old man?" asked Beers.

"He can wait. Maybe later when all this blows over. Hell, he's eighty years old. He might just conk any minute without any help from us."

"I don't like it," Beers said. "Maybe we ought to just call everything off."

"Lover getting cold feet?" Gloria taunted. "Listen,

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we've gone this far and we're not stopping now. I don't think anybody's going to connect Elena's death with Lem and Randall dying, but even suppose they did. You were here when both those twits died. You're just a doctor in residence making sure Elmer Lippincott's baby is born healthy and well."

Jesse Beers pursed his lips as he thought. Then he nodded.

"Where do I find Douglas?" he said.

"That's the beautiful part. He's here. The old man told him he wanted to see him."

"He's not going to tell what he did, is he?" asked Beers.

"No, you don't understand the Lippincotts, Jesse A little guilt goes a long way. So he was feeling guilty last night blaming himself for the two twerps' deaths. But it was all gone by morning. He just wants to talk to Douglas about handling more of the business, now that the brothers are dead."

"All right. How should I do it?"

She mulled a moment, sucking on the tip of her right index finger.

"I'll get Elmer to come up here and when I do you slip downstairs and get rid of the twerp."

Beers nodded.

"Can you make it look like his heart?"

"Sure," Beers said. "I've got medicines that can make anything look like anything."

"Good. Now get out of here and let me finish my eyes. I'll call Elmer up here in ten minutes. Then you can get Douglas in the study. But let me finish my eyes first." She smiled at Beers. "I want Elmer to stay up here with me for a while."

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"Who wouldn't stay at your invitation?" Beers asked.

"Flatterer. Even with this belly you gave me?"

"If it was twice as big."

"Get away now and let me do my thing. Ten minutes, I'll have him here."

Remo drove. Chiun sat in the back seat while Ruby explained to them what she had learned from Dr. Gladstone.

"She was the one that killed the two Lippincotts," she said. "And Zack Meadows before that."

"Who's Zack Meadows?" Remo asked.

"He the detective who wrote the letter to the President about the plot to kill the Lippincotts. She killed him and somebody who tipped Meadows on what she was doing. Then she killed the two brothers."

"And she's dead now," Remo said, "so why are we racing up to the Lippincott estate?"

"Because of something she said," Ruby said.

"What'd she say?" asked Remo.

"Did she tell you what I did with the pencils?" Chiun asked.

"No," said Ruby.

"She seemed very impressed," Chiun said.

"What'd she say?" Remo repeated. . "I asked her why the Lippincotts," Ruby said. "And she said 'we're going to get rid of all of

them'!"

"So what? She's dead," Remo said.

"She said 'we're.' Not her. She's got a partner in

it."

"Or partners," Chiun said. " 'We're' could mean more than one extra person with her."

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"That's right," Ruby said. "She say something else too."

"What's that?" Remo asked.

"She said the Lippincott money would be theirs. I said the heirs might have something to say about that. She said 'they will, they will.' "

"What does that mean?" Remo asked.

"Just that I think she's got a partner in the family."

"That old man," Remo said. "I didn't like that old man from the minute I met him."

"That's ageist," said Chiun. "That's the worst kind of ageist statement I've ever heard. Admit it, you didn't like him just because he was old."

"That's probably true," Remo said. "Old people are a pain in the ass. They kvetch and bicker and carp, day and night, night and day. If it's not elevators, it's notes under the door. There's always something for them to bitch about."

"Ageist. But what would you expect from somebody who's racist and sexist and imperialist?" Chiun said.

"Right on, Little Daddy," said Ruby.

Remo grunted and stepped harder on the gas pedal as the car thundered forward onto the New York Thruway, heading north toward the Lippincott estate.

Elmer Lippincott Sr. was feeling better. His young wife always knew the way to cheer him up. Last night, he had felt guilt-ridden at the death of two sons, but today, he was able to see it in perspective. First of all, they weren't his sons. He hadn't any sons. Dr. Gladstone at the Lifeline Laboratory had

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proved that conclusively, not only with blood tests conducted without the Lippincott sons' knowledge, but also by proving indisputably to the senior Lippincott that he had been sterile all his life. He had been unable to father children. Those three—Lem and Randall and Douglas—nothing but the offspring of a cheating wife, now blessedly dead, thank you.

So Gloria had explained to him, there really wasn't much to feel guilty about. But they were dead, and he hadn't really wanted them dead.

Gloria had held him in her arms and explained that away too.

"They were unavoidable accidents," she said. "You didn't plan it that way and you can't blame yourself for their deaths. Just accidents."

And he had thought about it and felt better and soon he would have a son of his own thanks to Dr. Gladstone's fertility drugs, which made him a man again and helped him to fill Gloria with his own son.

And what of Douglas, the surviving Lippincott son? Well, it wasn't his fault that his mother had been a cheat, cuckolding her husband. Elmer Lippincott would treat him just like a son for the rest of his

life.

He had decided that and he was in the middle of a good early-morning meeting with his son when the telephone rang.

"Yes, dear," he said. "Of course. I'll be right up. Shall I bring Douglas? Oh, I see." He hung up the phone and told his son: "Doug, wait for me, will you? Gloria has to talk to me about something. I'll be right down."

"Sure thing, Pop," said Douglas Lippincott. He was the youngest of the three sons and the most like

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the senior Lippincott. He moved with a muscular kind of energy that years of sitting in boardrooms and bankers' offices hadn't been able to destroy. Elmer Lippincott had often thought that of the three boys, Douglas was the only one he'd like to have on his side in a saloon fight.

As the old man left the office on the first floor of the mansion, Douglas Lippincott smiled. Young Gloria certainly had the old man's nose. When she said bark, he barked, and when she said come, he came. He wondered how she was taking the double tragedies that had hit the Lippincott family, but he suspected she'd be able to bear up under the anguish. He had watched her house-counting eyes too many times to be fooled into thinking that she loved the old man for the old man's sake. It was the Lippincott billions that she really loved.

Douglas walked to the corner of the room where there was a desk ashtray with a telescoping collapsible golf putter built into the side of it. He had given it to his father years before to try to convince him to relax. But the old man would have none of it. He had never used the putter.

There was a round rubber eraser on the old man's desk and Douglas put a paper cup on the floor, opened the putter to its full length, then from six feet away tried to roll the eraser into the cup. It bounced along the carpet unevenly and at the last moment, swung away and missed the cup completely.

Douglas fished it back with the putter and was lining up the shot again when the door opened behind him. He turned around expecting to see his father.

Instead, he saw Dr. Jesse Beers, who was walking hice Napoleon, both hands clasped behind him.

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Douglas Lippincott didn't like Jesse Beers either. The man always seemed to be scheming something. He turned back to his putt.

"Hello, Doctor," he said

"Good morning, Mister Lippincott."

As he lined up the putt, Douglas realized it was strange for Beers to walk into Elmer Lippincott's office without knocking. And now that he was here, what did he want? He turned to ask and as he turned he saw Beers moving toward him. The man had a hypodermic in his hand.

Douglas tried to swing at Beers with the putter but he was too close and Beers was able to grab it and yanked it from Douglas's hands.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he asked.

"Tidying up loose ends," Beers said. "Now take your medicine like a good little boy."

He advanced toward Douglas with the syringe in one hand, the golf club in the other.

"I promise it won't hurt," he said.

"Up yours," said Douglas. He reached his hand up to the bookcase behind him, grabbed an armful of books and tossed them at Beers. One hit the syringe and knocked it to the gold colored carpeting on the floor.

Beers dove for the needle and Lippincott came after him to grapple for it. But Beers grabbed the handle of the putter and swung it at Lippincott. It caught him on the side of the jaw, laying open his skin and knocking him to the floor.

He lay there groggily while Beers picked up the syringe and came toward him again.

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He reached down for Lippincott's arm. Then he heard a voice.

"You lose."

Lippincott looked up dazedly. In the doorway stood a lean, dark-haired man. Behind him was a black woman and an old Oriental in a yellow robe.

"Who the hell are you?" snarled Beers. "Get out of here."

"Game's over," Remo said.

Beers growled and waving the hypodermic over his head like a miniature spear, raced at Remo, his face contorted with rage and furey.

Lippincott shook his head to clear it. He wanted to shout to the thin man in the doorway that Beers was dangerous. He blinked. When he opened his eyes again, the thin man was inside the room, behind Beers. Beers was upon the old Oriental. The old man, without even seeming to move, spun Beers about until he was facing back into the room, then propelled him toward the thin man.

As Beers came within reach, Remo moved in, removed the syringe from his hand, and tapped him in the thick part of his left leg, halfway between knee and hip. The doctor's leg gave way and Beers fell to the carpeted floor.

Remo tossed the syringe on the desk, and turned his back on Beers. He asked Lippincott:

"You Douglas?"

Lippmcott nodded.

"You okay?"

"I'll live," Douglas said.

"You'll be the first one this week," Remo said. He turned back to Beers. As he did, Ruby moved in and stood by the desk.

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"All right, sweetheart," Remo said. "Hard or easy?"

"I want a lawyer," Beers said. "I'll have your ass."

"Hard," Remo said. "Have it your way." Remo's hand spun out and he grabbed the lobe of Beers's left ear. He twisted it. It felt to Beers as if it were coming off.

"Easy," he yelled. "Easy, easy."

Remo relaxed his grip and Jesse Beers talked. He told everything. The plot; how it worked; who was behind it; how the conspirators had conned Elmer Lippincott Sr. As he spoke, Douglas Lippincott raised himself to a sitting position. The blood flow down his cheek had slowed to a trickle and his eyes lit up with anger. He got slowly to his feet, and walked alongside Remo, glaring down at Beers.

"Let that bastard go," he told Remo.

"What for?" Remo asked.

"I want him," Douglas Lippincott said.

"All yours," Remo said. He released Beers's ear and stepped back. Lippincott reached back his fist to punch the taller, heavier doctor. But at the last second, Beers scrambled to his feet and ran to the desk. He reached around Ruby for the syringe, but she held it in her hand behind her back. Beers lifted his hand to hit Ruby. She swung the syringe around, buried it deep into Beers's side and depressed the

plunger.

"Ow," Beers yelled. Then he looked down at the syringe in her hand. He looked up at her face, questioning, panic and fear in his eyes. He turned to look around the room. At Remo. At Chiun, who was examining the paintings on the walls, at Douglas Lip-

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pincott. The faces he saw were hard and uncaring. He tried to speak but no words would come, and he felt his heart begin to pound, and his limbs grow leaden, and his eyes start to close, and then it was hard to breathe, and his brain told him to cry out for help, but before he could, the messages stopped coming from the brain and Jesse Beers fell to the floor dead.

Lippincott looked down in shock. He looked up at Ruby who was nonchalantly examining the syringe. Chiun continued to examine the paintings, shaking his head and clucking. Remo spied the putter on the floor and said to Lippincott "This yours?"

"No. My father's," Lippincott said. "Hey, this man is dead. Don't any of you care?"

"No business of mine," Ruby said. Chiun asked Lippincott how much the oil painting on the wall was worth. Remo said, "You're trying to putt this eraser into that cup?" ,

Lippincott nodded.

"It won't roll true," Remo said.

"I found that out," Lippincott said.

"You have to chip it in," Remo said. He dropped the putter head sharply onto the back edge of the eraser. It popped the lump of rubber up into the air and it plopped heavily into the paper cup six feet away.

"See? like that," Remo said. "Actually, I'm a pretty good putter."

Lippincott shook his head. "I don't know who you people are, but I guess I should thank you."

"About time too," Chiun said.

"Now I've got some business to transact," Douglas said.

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"Mind if we come along?" Remo said. "Just to close the books?"

"Be my guest," Lippincott said.

"Good," said Ruby still holding the syringe. "I love family arguments. When they ain't my family."

"If your family's like you," Remo said, stepping over Jesse Beers's corpse, "don't argue with them. They're all prone to violence."

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Are you feeling better now, dear?" Ehner Lippincott Sr. paced nervously alongside the bed, where his wife lay under a thin satin sheet.

"Yes, darling," Gloria said. "I'm sorry. Just for a moment there, I was depressed. I thought . . . well, I thought, what if something goes wrong with the baby?"

"Nothing will go wrong," Lippincott said. "That's why we've got Beers here. Where is he anyway?"

"No, Ehner, it's all right. I called him and he examined me and said there was nothing wrong. But, well, he's not you, sweetheart. I needed you. I'm all right now. You can go back to your meeting."

"If you're sure," Lippincott said.

"I'm sure. Go. I'm going to rest and get my strength so I can give you the nicest son."

Lippincott nodded. A voice behind him said, "A son, but why don't you tell Trim whose it is?"

Ehner lippincott wheeled, his face red with anger. Douglas stood in the doorway. Behind him Lippincott saw the man Remo and the old Oriental and a young black woman.

"What the hell do you mean by that, Douglas?"

Douglas Lippincott stepped into the room.

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"You fool," he snapped. "They say there's no fool like an old fool and I guess you prove that. That's not your soa she's carrying, you goddam simp."

"I'll remind you where you are and you're aren't welcome here any longer," Lippincott said. "It'd be better if you left."

"I'll leave when I'm goddam good and ready," Douglas said. "But first I'm going to tell you what happened and how you managed to be the partner in the murder of two of your sons."

"They weren't my sons, if you want to know. Neither are you. Three bastards," Lippincott said.

"You senile, doddering idiot. That was a line they fed you. Dr. Gladstone and Beers, they were working together. First they conned you with that story that you had been sterile all your life and we weren't your sons. Then they steamed you up to punish us and they killed Lern and Randall."

The old man looked confused. He looked past his son at Chiun who nodded. He looked at Remo who said, "What do you want from me? Listen to your kid for a change."

"Why?" asked Lippincott.

"You clown," Douglas said. "So they shoot you up with monkey hormones so you feel like a young goat again and you go sailing off with that cheap piece of trim." He pointed at Gloria who shouted "No, no, no," and sank down in the bed.

"But the joke is on you, dear father," Douglas said. " 'Cause you are sterile now and have been for years, and that baby that sweetie pie there is carrying isn't yours. In three months, you're going to be the proud doting parent of the son of Dr. Jesse Beers."

Lippincott wheeled. "Gloria. Tell him he's lying."

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"Yeah, Gloria, tell me I'm lying," Douglas said.

"I hate you," Gloria hissed at Douglas. The breath came out of her like a deflating innertube. "I hate you."

Lippincott saw. that she refused to deny the charge. He sank down onto the bed.

"But why?" he sobbed. "Why?"

"For your money," Douglas said. "Why else? She was going to give you a little bastard kid and kill us off and then when the kid was born, kill you off and she and Dr. Gladstone and Dr. Beers and all these nice beautiful people were going to live happily ever after. Isn't that right, Gloria?"

Remo turned to Ruby. "Kid's all right," he said.

"Not bad," Ruby agreed. "A little talky maybe, but basically pretty good."

"If you two are talking about an heir for me," Chiun said, "I wish you wouldn't whisper. I want to know about it."

"You'll be the first to know," Ruby said. "When and if."

Elmer Lippincott buried his face in his hands and wept.

Douglas spat the words at him. "And now, you old son of a bitch, I'm leaving this house. I'm going back to my businesses and I'm going to run you out of them. You may control more stock that I do, Daddy dear, but I know what makes them work and I'm going to shove them down your throat. By the time your sweet little son is born. . . ." He left the sentence unfinished.

"You'd destroy our empire?" his father said.

"No. I'm going to make it bigger and better than ever. But I'm going to do it without you. And when

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your concubine foals and then you go on to the great board meeting in the sky, she'll just have to get along on a piece of what she expected. And who knows? Maybe you'll live to be a hundred. You can watch your bastard grow up and watch Gloria turn to fat and wrinkles and worry every day that she's putting rat poison in your pablum. Good luck, Daddy."

Douglas walked back to the door. "Thanks," he said to Remo.

"You're welcome," Remo said.

"Don't thank me," Chiun said. "I did everything and you thank him. Ageist."

"Let's go," Remo said, after Douglas left.

"Just a minute," Ruby said.

"What?" asked Remo.

"This is how it ends? You let it end like this? He kills his two sons, four, five other people are dead, and you just walk off into the sunset?"

Remo said, "It's not our business to hand out punishment to him. It's our job to see that no more Lip-pincotts get killed and that the Lippincott businesses don't go under. We've done it, so we go home."

Chiun nodded toward Elmer Lippincott, who was

still weeping.

"He has suffered much already," Chiun said. "Whatever days are left to him will be lived with the knowledge that he killed his own sons." He glanced toward Remo. "And without extenuating circumstances."

Ruby shook her head.

"No," she said. "No way."

"What do you mean," Remo asked.

"Maybe you let it go like that but I don't," Ruby said. "Life ain't that cheap." She turned to a table

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behind them and fumbled with a glass. Remo looked at Chiun and shrugged.

Her right hand behind her, Ruby walked to the bed where Lippincott still sat.

He paid no attention as she unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and slowly pulled up his left sleeve. When she had exposed his bicep, she took a hypodermic syringe from behind her, jammed it into his muscle arid squeezed.

Lippincott jumped at the shock. He slapped at his arm but Ruby had already removed the syringe.

"What?" he sputtered.

Ruby stared down at him, her eyes flashing.

"You wanna know what?" she said. "Just a little magic medicine from Dr. Gladstone's house of horrors."

"But what?"

"I don't know. I didn't bother to ask," Ruby said. "But some of her experiment stuff. Maybe it makes you afraid of the dark and you'll die some night when the bulb hi your nightlight burns out. Maybe it makes you afraid of high places and someday you'll be up on one of your skyscrapers and you'll get afraid and figure out the best way down is to jump. I don't know, sucker. I hope it makes you afraid of money 'cause you'd deserve that one." She looked across at Gloria. "I'm just sorry, lady, that I didn't save enough for you, too. But I wouldn't wanna hurt the doctor's baby."

She walked back to Remo and Chiun.

"Now we're done," she said. "Let's go."

In the hallway, she dropped the hypodermic into her purse. They walked in silence down to their car, parked in front of the mansion.

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As they were getting into the car, Remo asked her:

"What was in the syringe?"

"Water," Ruby said. "But Lippincott there doesn't ever have to know that."

"Do you think there is any kind of drug that would make him want to buy a painting of me?" Chiun asked.

"There's no drug that strong," Remo said.