Chiun eyed Smith and asked, "Have you a device for capturing sounds?"
"Yes." Smith dug out a pocket tape recorder with a suction mike attachment made for recording telephone calls.
Chiun nodded. "Affix this device."
Smith attached the cup to the glass and pressed the Record button.
"What the hell are you doing, Smitty?" Remo asked in exasperation.
"Perhaps its sound can be identified by an entomologist," Smith said defensively.
Remo rolled his eyes.
Lifting his arms like a conjurer invoking a genie, Chiun exhorted, "Speak again, O bee."
The tiny sound was repeated, and when it stopped, Smith hit the Stop switch, rewound and then pressed Playback.
He fingered the volume control to the highest setting and waited.
The tape hissed loudly. Then came a tiny, metallic voice. "Release me now, or my brethren will swarm down in deadly numbers."
"What!" Remo exploded.
Gray face slack with shock, Smith replayed that part again.
"That was you throwing your voice, wasn't it?" Remo accused Chiun.
"I deny this accusation," Chiun sniffed.
Smith hit the Record button and asked Chiun, "Inquire who it is."
"To whom do I have the privilege of speaking?"
"I am but a drone in the service of the King of Bees," replayed the tape recorder after Smith rewound it.
"Who is this ruler?" demanded Chiun. "Speak the fiend's name."
"I serve the Lord of All Bees."
"Is that anything like the Lord of the Flies?" grunted Remo, who couldn't quite believe what he was hearing but went along anyway.
Smith stared at the bee, open-mouthed and bugeyed.
"I have a question for it," said Remo.
Chiun gestured him to go ahead.
"Who told you to come here?" asked Remo.
"My master." This time, Remo heard the voice clearly. The tape playback verified what he had heard.
"How'd you find this address?" asked Remo.
The tape recorder replayed the tiny reply. "One of my brethren read the address off the package you mailed from Los Angeles."
Harold Smith groaned in a mixture of horror and disbelief. "Our cover is blown."
"To the freaking bee kingdom, Smith," Remo said in exasperation. "It's not like it's going to be spread over tomorrow's New York Times!"
Smith eyed the bee. "Your terms are rejected."
"Then my vengeance will be awesome to behold. Tremble, mankind. Tremble before the awesome might of the Bee-Master."
"Did he say Bee-Master?" asked Remo.
"He has been saying that all along," said Harold Smith.
Remo snapped his fingers. "That's where I read about bees talking by antennae. In old comic books."
"It served you right for believing it," said Smith.
"Give me a break. I was only a kid. What did I know?"
"Chiun, we must drown this vermin," Smith said grimly.
"The interrogation is over, O merciless one?"
"Find a way to drown it. I must have the remains for analysis."
Bowing, the Master of Sinanju lifted up the cake holder and bore it into Smith's private washroom.
The bee was racing around the inside of the Pyrex dome, with all the agitated impotence of a condemned prisoner when they last saw it.
As the sound of running water came, Remo looked at Harold Smith and Smith looked back. Smith's face ,was gray and haggard; Remo's was flat with a kind of shocked bewilderment.
"Bees don't talk," Remo said.
"That one did," Smith said tonelessly. He fumbled with his hunter green Dartmouth tie.
"Bees don't talk," Remo repeated.
"That one did," Smith insisted, his voice rising in anger.
When Chiun returned, he was holding an aquarium in the form of a cake holder. The bee floated in it, upside down like a defunct goldfish.
"It is done. The fiend will trouble you no more."
"Thank you, Master Chiun."
A worried silence hung around the room.
Remo broke it. "That bee said he served the Bee-Master."
Smith had his head in his hands as if he were experiencing a severe migraine headache.
"I only know of one Bee-Master," Remo added.
Smith looked up. The expression on Remo's face was approximately that of a man who had tried to scratch his nose only to find he'd grown a tentacle where his hand should be.
"Bee-Master was a comic-book superhero when I was a kid. He was a scientist who invented a radio that could translate the language bees spoke."
"Bees do not speak," Smith snapped. Then he caught himself.
Remo kept talking in a distant voice. "Bee-Master became a friend to the bee kingdom. When spies tried to steal his insecto-radio to sell to Russian agents, his bee friends stung them into submission. From that point, they were a team. Bee-Master became a crime fighter. He wore a black-and-yellow costume with a helmet that looked like a hightech bee's head. Everywhere he went, bees flew with him. They communicated through their antennae. Funny how I remember that story. I haven't laid eyes on an issue of The Bizarre Bee-Master in a zillion years."
"It is not possible to communicate with bees in the manner you describe. The person who created that story knows nothing about bees," Smith said firmly.
"Hey, I'm only telling you what this crazy stuff reminds me of."
"Nonsense."
"Sure. But you could check it out."
Smith did. Grimly, he input "Bee-Master" into his system and executed the search command.
Up popped a heroic figure dressed somewhat along the lines of a yellow jacket, with an aluminum helmet concealing his head. The helmet sported antennae and great crimson compound eyes in place of human ones.
The figure was labeled The Bizarre Bee-Master.
"That's him!" said Remo. "Where'd you find it?"
"This is the official Bee-Master web page, sponsored by Cosmic Comics," Smith said dryly.
Remo's face lit with surprise. "I didn't know they sere still making Bee-Master comics. Check it out. It has BeeMaster's complete history."
Remo read over Smith's gray shoulder. Chiun, after looking briefly, made a face and went back to examining the dead bee corpse floating in water.
"According to this," Remo said, "Bee-Master is really Peter Pym, biochemist. He controls his bee friends through electronic impulses from his cybernetic helmet." Remo grunted. "I always wondered what cybernetic meant. None of the nuns at the orphanage knew."
Smith tapped a key. The word cybernetic was highlighted. Another tap brought up a dictionary definition.
"Cybernetic," Smith explained, "means the science of control. And the concept described here is ridiculous. Insects do not communicate through electrical impulses, but via chemical scents only other insects comprehend."
Remo grinned "Maybe you should run a search on the name Peter Pym."
"Why? It is a fictitious name."
"Just a thought. It's the only lead we have."
"It is no lead at all," said Harold Smith, escaping from the official Bee-Master web page. His eyes went to the floating bumblebee under Chiun's silent scrutiny. The expression on his lemony face suggested he had already begun to doubt his memory of the bee communicating in tinny English sentences.
Briefly, he replayed the tape, and the bee's nervous little voice was so disturbing, he clicked it off again.
"Find that info I wanted, Smitty?" Remo asked after a moment.
Smith snapped-out of his daze. Attacking his keyboard once more, he brought up a phrase in Hangul, the modern Korean alphabet.
Remo read it.
"Dwe juhla," he said. Turning to Chiun, he asked, "Did I get the pronunciation right?"
Turning dull crimson, the Master of Sinanju lifted his kimono sleeve before his face out of shame over his pupil's severely coarse language.
Remo grinned. "I guess that's my answer."
Chapter 29
Helwig X. Wurmlinger drove his grasshopper green Volkswagen Beetle from the airport to his private residence outside Baltimore, Maryland.