"Nothing if you call a bulldozer nothing," Remo said. "They were both as strong as gorillas. What's he doing?" He gestured toward Barry, who was kneeling on the floor scraping at the walls with something that looked like a tongue depressor.
"Preparing slides," Barry said cheerfully. He deposited the wall scrapings into a white envelope and flung his blanket expertly around his neck. "Where are the others?"
"He know what he's doing?" Remo asked Smith skeptically.
Smith nodded. "We'll need blood samples of the dead to check to see if it's got anything to do with the Ravits experiments."
"Ravits? He worked on bugs," Remo said.
"There may be a connection," Smith said. "The other bodies?"
Remo pointed to a small round table placed strangely, upside down, in the center of the bare floor. "Under there," he said.
As Smith moved the table aside, a swarm of flies buzzed into the room. The CURE director swatted them away with an air of distaste and peered down into the darkness.
"How do we get down there?"
"Take my advice, Smitty. You don't want to see the cellar of this place. Send the boy explorer there. It's a job for him and Super-Blankey."
"What's down there?"
"Flies, mostly. A lot of rotten meat."
"Meat? What kind of meat?"
"Cows, dogs, that kind. And two humans, or semihumans, if the flies haven't picked them clean already," Remo said.
Smith shuddered.
"I'll be glad to go, Harold," Barry said agreeably. "If you'll just hold onto one end of Blankey."
"Harold, is it?" Remo said to Smith. "Sure, kid," he called out. "I'll give you a hand."
He lowered Schweid into the cellar using the blanket as a rope.
There was silence for a few minutes, then a soft exclamation.
"Barry," Smith called, covering his face as he peered down into the opening. "Are you all right?"
"It's fantastic," Schweid said.
There was some shuffling around, followed by a giggle.
"Okay. I can come up now," Barry called.
"I was hoping you'd decide to stay," Remo mumbled as he pulled Barry up.
Schweid came through the hole covered with flies and grinning like a loon. Smith made a halfhearted attempt to swat the flies away but Barry did not seem to notice their presence.
"It was amazing," he said breathlessly to Smith. "You really owe it to yourself to take a look."
"I don't think that will be necessary," Smith said, quickly moving the table back to cover the hole in the floor. "Did you take blood samples?"
"Yes, of course. But did you notice the flies?"
"Hard not to," Remo said.
"How many species did you count?" Schweid asked.
"We weren't counting," Remo said.
"More's the pity," Schweid said, grinning triumphantly. He pulled a white envelope from his back pocket. It was filled with squirming, dying flies, squashed together in a heap.
"Ugh," Chiun said.
"There must have been a hundred different species down there," Barry said. "There's at least fifteen in here and this is just a quick sample."
"Just goes to show you that a little rotten meat goes a long way," Remo said.
"Don't you see?" Barry said. "That's what's so unusual. Almost none of these species are indigenous to this area." He looked from Smith to Remo to Chiun. "Don't you all see? The flies were brought here. The meat in the basement was supplied to feed them."
"A fly hotel," Remo said. "Is that like a roach motel?"
"What are you getting at, Barry?" Smith asked.
"Somebody wanted those flies to be here, Harold."
"Perriweather," Remo said.
"He looked like a creature who would like flies," Chiun said. "Even if he did have a way with words. Egg-layer. Heh, heh, heh."
"What's he talking about?" Smith asked Remo.
"You had to be there," Remo said. "Never mind."
"What about the papers you found?" Smith asked.
Remo pulled a thick stack of papers out of his pocket and handed them to Smith, who looked at them and said, "They're some kind of notes."
"I knew that," Remo said.
Barry was peeking over Smith's shoulder. "Can I look at them, Harold?"
"Sure," Remo said. "Show them to Blankey too." Barry spread the papers out on the floor and hunched over in the center of them, unconsciously twisting the corner of his blanket into a point and sticking it in his ear.
"Unbelievable," he said.