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Unlike the bat, which flutters like a mere rag in the wind."
Smith looked up from his thoughts.
"It's absurd," he said, "but it could get us through the weekend. Until the
stock market opens again."
"No," Remo said firmly.
"Remo, listen to me," Smith said fervently. "We have only the weekend in which
to work. It may be all over by then if the stock market tumbles once more.
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I've a three-pronged attack in mind. I will conduct an investigation of this
Crown Acquisitions, Limited by computer. Chiun will manage Nostrum, which I
believe may be the target of a hostile takeover because it owns significant
Global stock, without which Global cannot be merged or absorbed."
"Have no fear, Smith," Chiun said sternly. "There is no threat that I cannot
fight."
"This one may be different. You've never gone up against a hostile takeover."
"I spit upon those who dare try."
"The third line of attack is to investigate those who bought up large blocks
of Global stock. Remo is the perfect person to do this."
"Not me. I don't know anything about stock."
"But you do know about persuasion."
"So does Chiun. He can persuade paint off a fence."
"I must be at my desk to fend off those who would assault my office building,"
Chiun inserted.
"And I am bound to my desk as well," Smith said. " I would go into the field
myself, but as I am now in a wheelchair, I'm afraid my effectiveness is
limited. And I am still subject to weak spells. I really shouldn't be under
this strain."
Chiun turned on Remo.
"Remo!" he shouted loudly. "How dare you imperil your emperor's health by your
stubbornness."
"He's not my emperor," Remo said flatly. "Never was."
"Yet he needs you," Chiun said.
"Your country needs you," Smith added. "And the world. For that is what lies
in the balance."
Remo's unhappy expression wavered. He looked from Chiun to the bear suit to
Smith and back to the suit again. Chiun held the suit higher so that its
dangling-bear-tooth emblem rattled like an Indian talisman.
"All right " Remo said at last. "I'll pitch in. For the world. Not for Smith
or the organization."
"Excellent," Smith said.
"But I'm not wearing that cockamamie suit," Remo added firmly. "And that's
final."
Chapter 8
Douglas Lippincott was in banking. His father had been in banking, and before
that his father had been a banker.
The difference between Douglas Lippincott and his ancestors was, as Douglas
Lippincott saw it, that he never foreclosed on widows and orphans.
Douglas Lippincott, president of the Lippincott Mercantile Bank, foreclosed on
corporations. Douglas Lippincott was an investment banker. When he lowered the
boom, individual families weren't put out on the street. Instead, entire towns
went on welfare.
As a result of foreclosures, Douglas Lippincott presided over a multinational
corporation that cut timber in Alaska, raised minks in California, processed
shale in Kentucky, and made money everywhere else.
He was seated in his plush office sixty floors above lower Manhattan,
contemplating his moral superiority over his widow-abusing forebears, when
there came a crashing noise outside his office. Lippincott, of the Providence
Lippincotts, was old-money. He loved old things. Although the Lippincott
Building was barely a decade old, he eschewed the glass and steel of its
ultramodern exterior for maple paneling and a solid oak door which shielded
him from the eyes of his underlings. Thus he could not see what had caused the
commotion, any more than his employees could see into the sanctity of his
well-appointed office.
Lippincott ignored the crashing sound. If it was important, he knew, one of
his assistants would bring it to his attention. He went back to picking his
nose with a personalized silver tool handed down through generations of
Lippincotts so they needn't sully their hands pursuing everyday personal
hygiene.
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The crash sound was repeated, causing Lippincott to cut his septum with the
scraping edge.
"Blast it!" he said, reaching for a silk handkerchief to stem the blood.
He forgot all about the handkerchief and his nose when an office worker opened
the door with his skull. The door banged open and seemed to catapult the man
into a bookcase. The books came out of the shelves like quarters from a slot
machine. They struck the man on the head. Lippincott winced. Not for the man,
but for the books, which had been in the Lippincott family since before the
Revolution. Many were first editions.
Lippincott reached for his intercom and then forgot about that too.
His widening eyes went to the towering hairy apparition that lumbered into the
room. It stood upright on two hind legs and had a bear's head mounted on its
forehead. The face under the bear's head was enveloped in a bearskin helmet
with two ragged holes excavated to expose the eyes.
The eyes were mean.
"Who . . .what are you?" Douglas Lippincott demanded uncertainly. Miss Manners
had never, to his knowledge, written on the subject of conversing with bears.
"You've heard of the bear market?" the apparition rumbled.
"Of course."
"I'm the bear."
"Is this a joke?"
"I wish."
"Come again?"
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