"What about shutting it again?" Remo asked.
"It will not be necessary."
And the Master of Sinanju stationed himself at the side door where the bee was most active. Remo grabbed the door handle and set himself.
Chiun lifted the cake holder and its Pyrex bell in either hand like a musician about to clash together a pair of cymbals.
"Now!"
Remo yanked open the door.
The bee obligingly bumbled out. And was captured.
It was a near thing. The cake-holder sections came together with an unmusical crack. But when Chiun uprighted the cake holder, the bee was buzzing around the interior in angry, frustrated orbits.
Smith came running back down, and Chiun presented the cake holder to him. Smith took it gingerly in both hands.
"Thank you, Master Chiun. Now come inside."
They took the elevator to the administration floor, and Smith informed his secretary to inform the guard staff that all was well.
"The killer bee has been captured," he said, rather unnecessarily inasmuch as Mrs. Mikulka's wide eyes followed the Pyrex-protected bee until the point it disappeared into Smith's office.
Inside, behind closed doors, Smith set the cake holder on his desk.
The still-dripping bee orbited a few more moments, then settled down to stand tensely on its multiple legs.
"It looks like an ordinary bumblebee," Smith was saying as he took a red plastic object from his desk. He flipped it, and a red-ringed magnifying glass slipped out. Holding it by the combination lens protector and handle, Smith trained it on the quiescent bee.
As if equally curious, the bee obligingly stepped closer- giving Smith a better view. Its foamy feelers quivered and dripped.
"This is a bumblebee," Smith said.
"Wurmlinger said it was a drone," said Remo.
The bee turned around once and mooned Smith. The gesture of disrespect was entirely lost on Smith.
"I see a stinger," he breathed. "Drone bees do not possess stingers."
"That one does," Remo declared.
"Clearly," said Smith, returning the magnifying glass to his desk drawer and shutting it.
Dropping into his ancient, cracked leather executive's chair, Harold Smith addressed Remo and Chiun while not taking his eye off the bee, which had turned around to regard him with tiny blind-looking orbs.
"This is not an African killer bee or any genetic mutation of one. It is a common honey bee drone equipped with a stinger."
"And a brain," added Chiun.
"Not to mention a death's-head on its back," Remo said.
Smith frowned deeply. "Somehow, this bee was sent here to spy on me. The only way this could have happened is if it were able to communicate with the bee you killed in California."
"Get that body yet?"
"No. It has not been recovered from the crashed 727."
"I don't see how bees can talk across three thousand miles of country," Remo said.
"Somehow, there is a way they do."
"Don't bees talk to one another by touching antennae?"
"You are thinking of ants," said Smith.
"I thought bees operated the same way."
"No, they communicate by giving off chemical scents, as well as via aerial acrobatics such as the honey dance."
"Where did I get the idea they touched feelers?" Remo wondered aloud.
"I do not know. Nor can I imagine how we will discover the truth."
"Why not ask the bee?" suggested the Master of Sinanju.
They looked at him, their faces growing flat as plaster.
"You speak bee?" countered Remo.
"No, but if the bee was able to read the address of Fortress Folcroft in California and impart this intelligence to the bee we have captured, they must speak American."
"That's crazy!" exploded Remo.
"If you do not care to try, I will," sniffed Chiun.
Remo backed away with an inviting bow and flourish of one arm. "Be my guest."
The Master of Sinanju hiked up his golden kimono skirts and addressed the bee in the bell jar.
"Hearken, O foiled one. For I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju, royal assassin to the court of Harold the First, current Emperor of America, in whose merciless toils you have found yourself. Before you are consigned to the cruel fate you so richly deserve, I demand you divulge all you know of the plot against Smith the Wise. Failure to do so will result in a beheading by a dull, rusty headsman's ax. Cooperation will grant you the boon of a sharp blade and a swift, painless death."
Remo snorted. "You can't behead a bee."
"Shush," said Chiun with a double upward flourish of his expansive kimono sleeves. "Speak now, doomed insect, and spare yourself an ugly ending."
The bee hadn't moved through all of this. Not even its feelers.