"Who are you birds?" Henry Poulette demanded.
"You," Chiun declared, advancing on Poulette. "Chicken King."
Henry Cackleberry Poulette's neck extended from his highly starched collar like a jack-in-the-box. His head jerked spasmodically to one side, and his triangular lips squeezed into a pucker.
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded. Without waiting for a reply, he shouted at his secretary. "Breeder! Get away from that capon! And get some of my security roosters up here!"
Shaken from her distraction, the secretary darted away from Remo and into the outer office.
"MacLeavy, USDA," Remo said by way of introduction. He indicated the Master of Sinanju. "My associate. He's into ducks."
"Anseriformologist, huh? I don't see many of your kind."
"Your ducks are poisoned, King of Chickens!" Chiun accused. "You will explain this!"
"Ducks? We don't have ducks here." Poulette sat back down. "Poulette Farms produces the finest chickens in the world, but no ducks. They're waterfowl. I'm a poultry man. Strictly poultry."
Remo held out the bill of lading Chiun had acquired at the Hinomaru Japanese Supermarket. It bore, in fine print, the name "Poulette Farms." "Says duck here," he said in a bored tone.
Poulette shrugged his bony shoulders. "Must be a forgery. Not surprising. My name on a package of wings is good for a thirty-cent markup over my competitors' birds."
"Liar!" Chiun slammed a palm down on the desk top with such vehemence that the desk separated at every joint and dowel, falling into its component parts all around Henry Cackleberry Poulette.
Poulette scrambled to his feet, blubbering, "No lie! Truth! Truth! Poulette Farms is the single greatest distributor of plump and juicy chickens in the United States! If you promise to leave now, I'll give you one! Best on the lot! Hell, I'll even throw in one of my secretaries!"
In a flurry of movement visible only to Remo, Chiun was around the wrecked desk and hovering above Poulette, his hazel eyes ablaze.
"Do you deny a conspiracy between yourself and my avaricious son?"
Poulette seemed bewildered. "Son?" he asked, glancing to Remo for assistance.
"That'd be me," said Remo, touching his T-shirt front with a thumb.
"For the moment," Chiun said over his shoulder.
"Never met him before in my life!" Poulette said quickly. "We've got a couple of dozen USDA inspectors at the plant during normal shifts, but he isn't one of them."
Delicate long-nailed fingers floated before the Chicken King's mesmerized face. "I will wring the truth from your scrawny neck," warned the Master of Sinanju.
It took Chiun's hand one-thousandth of a second to grab the jumble of nerves on the side of Poulette's neck. It normally would have taken Henry Cackleberry Poulette one full second to respond, but his nervous system could not process the pain that quickly-though his spinal chord almost overloaded itself with the effort.
"Ducks! Flocks of them! In the secret wing!" he cried at last.
"Secret wing?" asked Remo.
"And the poison is hidden in this secret wing?" asked Chiun.
"I don't know! Could be! I'll take you there! Right now!"
Chiun released Poulette's neck with a final squeeze, leaving the Chicken King gasping in pain. "Lead us," he ordered.
Poulette rose shakily to his feet and followed the two men from his office. The tight-faced Master of Sinanju led the way.
"You people sure do take your ducks seriously," he said as he walked beside Remo. He twisted his distended Adam's apple back over his shirt collar into a more comfortable position.
"Good thing for you that you're not poisoning fish, too," said Remo, closing the door behind them.
Chapter 7
"You're lucky to be alive, Dr. Smith."
"It is probably just a minor allergic reaction, Dr. Drew."
"Hardly. You've been poisoned. And I understand there have been cases like this all up and down the East Coast."
"I am confident it is nothing serious," said Harold Smith, frowning at his green-and-white surroundings. A Folcroft hospital room.
"People are dying, Dr. Smith. I find that serious."
Harold W. Smith dragged himself unsteadily to his feet. He found his clothes, and pulled on his white shirt with pitiable difficulty. The doctor looked at him with concern. Smith tried to give a reassuring smile, but lost it somewhere in the effort. Not only was the CURE director unfamiliar with the expression, but his head had begun to swim uncertainly. The antiseptic room spun before his myopic gray eyes, and he was forced to steady himself against the wall. This from the strain of stepping into his trousers.
"You should rest for a few days," the doctor cautioned.
"I feel fine," Smith said curtly.
"Perhaps. But according to your records you have an enlarged heart and history of pulmonary trouble."
"You know full well the trouble has nothing to do with my heart," Harold W. Smith said brittlely. The trouble had begun earlier in the day, in fact.
He had ignored the styrofoam cup Mrs. Mikulka had placed on his desk while he attended to more urgent business. The woman was efficient, but she was a little too willing to accept a person's word. Smith had checked with the cafeteria personally in order to make certain Folcroft had not been billed for the missing yogurt.
He then went back to monitoring CURE's computer lines. He had begun picking up spotty wire service reports of apparently random food poisonings. There was no pattern emerging. People were succumbing in restaurants, in their homes, at picnics, and elsewhere. Smith, who looked for patterns in his raisin bran, became engrossed in finding one here.
It was a full two hours before he turned his attention to the styrofoam container on his desk.
A yellow film of grease had formed on the top where the soup had congealed. Smith broke through the surface with a metal spoon he kept in his desk drawer-disposable plastic was out of the question. Too expensive in the long run. Metal cost one lump sum, and was reusable forever.
The chicken soup below was cold. Smith spooned a bit of the broth from just below the surface to his thin lips and tasted it carefully. He licked the spoon clean, placed it neatly beside the cup, and turned back to his computer screen.
It was ten minutes before the irresistible urge to vomit overcame him. Smith grabbed the empty wastebasket from beside his desk and promptly filled it with the meager contents of his stomach.
When he thought the retching had finally abated, it began again until it seemed that nothing more could be released. Still, he could not stop.
Hastily secreting his computer terminal back inside the desk, Smith summoned Mrs. Mikulka by intercom. She found him slipping from his chair like a gray, melting snowman, and alerted the medical staff.
They immediately pumped Smith's stomach.