He lay still on the bed, waiting for whoever it was to make a final decision and come through the door. He did not want to kill anybody tonight; that meant having to get up later and get rid of the body.

The door creaked open, then squealed shut. There were no lights in the room, but Remo did not need them. He knew where it was.

Joey Webb carefully extended one foot hi Remo's direction, set it down on the floor, and transferred her weight to it. The floorboard squeaked, and the night-walker pulled back, startled, causing the floor to squeak again.

She let out a little gasp at the noise she had made.

"Hello," Remo said casually.

"Hello," Joey replied.

There was a pause while Remo waited for her to talk.

"This is very awkward," she said.

Remo looked her up and down in the darkness. She was dressed in only a lumberjack shirt and brief silk panties. Remo noticed that her legs were remarkably long and beautiful. There was something appealing about the way she looked, nothing blatantly sexual, but a look that could make a man want to cuddle her for a long time, until she could be gently joined and then ridden like a bronco until a body-shaking explosion of passion. It was a shame, Remo thought, that sex held about as much appeal for him as did his breathing exercise. It had all become a matter of body control, mixed in equal parts with dedication to perfecting his skills.

"Then why'd you come?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "To talk to you, I guess. To ask what happened tonight."

Her fingers fiddled with her shirt.

"If you keep doing that, I'll never believe you," Remo said.

"Doing what?"

"Unbuttoning your shirt."

"Oh," she said. Her hand fell away from her shirt as if the garment was hot. Then she blushed, deeply and thoroughly. She rebuttoned her shirt, right up to the neck.

"Can I sit down?" she said.

"Go ahead," Remo said.

She sat on the end of the bed.

Remo waited a few seconds and when she didn't speak, he said, "Well?"

"I really botched this all up," she said.

"What all?"

"Finding out who you are and why you're here."

"You know who I am. I'm a tree inspector here to look at your trees."

"I don't think so," Joey said.

"Why not?"

"Because of that act you were putting on earlier. I don't think you're that much of a jackass."

"Just doing what comes naturally," Remo said.

"I don't think so," said Joey.

"Why not?"

"Because anyone who can leave Pierre hanging in a tree has been doing something besides hanging out in Jersey City ward clubs. I think..."

She stopped in mid-sentence because Remo suddenly sat upright in bed and put his hand over her mouth. For a moment, Joey's eyes filled with shock and surprise. She was certain that she had badly miscalculated this thin, dark stranger and that she was about to pay a price. Then he put his mouth next to her ear, and she felt a shiver of anticipation — one that she reluctantly admitted to herself was a pleasant shiver.

But Remo only whispered in her ear. "Be quiet," he said. "There's someone outside. Understand?"

He looked at her, and she nodded yes.

He took his hand away from her mouth and moved to the curtained window in a motion that would have made a cat look clumsy.

"I don't hear..."

The hand was back over her mouth.

"I told you to be quiet," he" whispered in her ear again.

Joey could feel the short hairs on the back of her neck prickle, and a shiver run down her spine. Then she surprised herself and felt a warmth between her legs. My god, she thought, it's impossible. I'm not one of those neurotic bitches who fantasize rape. Then she began to tingle and shiver all over again.

"Quiet," Remo said. "Understand this time?"

It took all her concentration to ignore the feeling of warmth in the lower part of her body and to nod yes. Then he released her and moved away again. The door closed behind him.

Remo was out in the now dark and quiet main room of the lodge. He stopped at the front door and listened again. This time there was no sound. Remo opened the door and slipped outside, waited again, heard the sound he had been listening for, and moved off to the right.

Alongside the A-frame he found Chiun.

The old man was sitting on the snow, in a lotus position. With his long-fingered hands, he was scooping up snow and throwing it at the wall of the cabin.

"I thought you were going to watch the machinery," Remo said, "not throw snowballs to try to wake everybody up."

"There are so many people up there, I do not need to watch the machinery. Everybody else is. So I tried to sleep. But could I sleep? First, there was you sloshing around with your big feet. Then guns going off. Then that big bulhnoose shouting with that funny accent. Then more people. Then that machinery going on and off. I could not sleep. And then I knew I was freezing to death. So I came down here so that, when I die, you can easily find my body before it is eaten by the jackals and bury me correctly."

Remo laughed.

"Go ahead and laugh. I know about you Americans, how brutal and unfeeling you are. Go ahead and laugh at this freezing-to-death old man."

"Little Father," said Remo, "in a furnace you would not sweat, and buried in a glacier you would not shiver. Tell the truth. You missed me."

"Once I had a sore inside my mouth," Chiun said. "I had it for many months. Then one day, it healed and was gone. I tried to touch it with my tongue, but it was not there. So, if I could be said to have missed that sore in my mouth, yes, I suppose I miss you."

"Come on inside," Remo said.

"You are not much, but you are all I have," Chiun said in Korean.

"The apple rots in the shade of its own tree," Remo responded in Korean.

"Aaaaaa-choooao!"

The sound came like an explosion from behind them. Remo turned to see Joey Webb standing in her bare feet, legs uncovered, in the doorway to the lodge. Remo could see the tiny white flecks already starting to form on her toes and the goosebumps rising on her inner thighs. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if it would be possible to find pleasure there, but the image of the girl's guardian — dour, sour-looking Harold W. Smith, standing over the girl — loomed in his mind like an impassable chastity belt, and the spell of her cold, smooth skin melted away.

"You'll catch cold if you keep standing there half-naked," Remo said. "Go back inside."

"I heard you talking to that man," Joey said.

"So?"

"You weren't speaking English."

"You're very perceptive," Remo said.

Chiun was on his feet and moving past the young woman into the lodge.

She said to Remo, "What language was that?"

"Chinese," Remo said.

"Korean," Chiun said from inside the lodge. "Chinese is a barbaric tongue, fit only for politicians and pig traders. It has no beauty, no style. No poet has ever been able to write anything worthwhile in it. They write thirteen-syllable poems. This is because thirteen syllables is the absolute most anyone can stand without throwing up."

The three of them were now in the main room of the lodge. Remo closed the door. Joey seemed suddenly aware of the amount of flesh she was showing, because she sat down in a chair and pulled her shirt forward, like a tent, to cover her legs. She looked from Chiun to Remo, then back again.

"You speak Korean?" she asked Remo.

Remo did not answer.

Chiun said, "No. I speak Korean. Remo grunts replies, usually wrong."

"Let's get some sleep," Remo said.

"Not until you tell me just who you are," Joey said. "You owe it to me."

"Sure. I owe it to you."

Remo turned toward Chiun, who was warming his hands in front of the fireplace.

Chiun began to unroll his fiber sleeping mat and spread it in front of the fireplace. Remo was walking toward his bedroom door. He heard the outside door swing open, then bang shut. Dear god, what now? He turned to confront six-foot-six of cold, wet, and angry-to-the-marrow lumberjack standing inside the main room.