"If you had eaten more than a spoonful, Dr. Smith, you might not be here right now," Dr. Lance Drew said, concern on his grim features.
"I am glad I did not eat more," Smith said, without a hint of irony. He labored to tug on his gray jacket.
"A man your age shouldn't push himself so hard," Dr. Drew said solicitously. "Take a few days off. Relax."
"Thank you for your concern, doctor," Smith said thinly, closing the door-along with the doctor's protests-behind him. He then began the long trek back to the administrative wing of Folcroft.
He had to stop and lean against the wall a half dozen times for support. When he arrived at his office, Mrs. Mikulka bustled out from behind her reception desk.
"Dr. Smith, you should be lying down!"
"No!" Smith snapped, firmly. He inhaled once, the pain in his throat making the effort difficult. His voice regained its usual calm tone. "I am all right. Really. Would you please call my wife and tell her that I will be working late tonight?"
It went against her better judgment, but Mrs. Mikulka knew better than to contradict her bloodless employer. "Of course, Dr. Smith," she said, reaching for the phone.
As he sank painfully behind his desk, Harold Smith immediately called up his computer screen. A new wave of news digests had come in during his absence. All had been flagged "Top Priority." It was an epidemic now. Thousands had died in nearly sixteen states.
And it all seemed somehow tied to . . . chicken?
A distant memory tweaked at the back of Smith's consciousness. He prodded it, but nothing came to mind. He was still woozy.
He would have to trace the poison back to its source. Better put Remo on standby, he thought, reaching for the blue contact phone.
He allowed the phone to ring a total of forty-three times before he took the receiver away from his ear. There was no answer at the Edgewater condominium tower. Remo and Chiun were gone. He had no way to reach them. He calmly replaced the receiver in its cradle.
Smith returned to the incoming news digests. The epidemic seemed to be confined to the eastern seaboard and a few midwestern states.
He ran several analysis programs. None suggested an explanation, but all offered the same high-probability conclusion.
"My God!" Harold Smith muttered. "This is product tampering on a scale never before seen!"
And the two men most able to stop the menace were nowhere to be found.
Smith glanced down. On his blotter, the container of cold chicken soup and the metal spoon still sat. Allowing himself a rare "damn," Smith picked up both objects and dropped them into his wastebasket.
The loss of the spoon brought fret marks to his tired ashen face.
Chapter 8
"Look," Henry Cackleberry Poulette began reasonably, "if there's a problem with my birds-and I'm not saying there is-it didn't necessarily start here. I ship my babies out to restaurants, supermarkets-even to the Asian market."
"We got ours in a Japanese supermarket in New Jersey," Remo said.
Poulette snorted. "Those crazy Japs. I gotta ship my ducks to Tokyo just so they can claim they're Japanese exports. Their customers won't eat homegrown."
"Maybe the problem started in Tokyo," Remo said to Chiun.
"Had to!" Poulette assented instantly. "My birds are number one USDA approved!"
"It is certain that the ducks were poisoned," Chiun said stiffly, eyeing Remo suspiciously. "We are here to learn at what point."
Remo only rolled his eyes heavenward. They continued their purposeful walk along the corridors of Poulette Farms Poultry orporated toward the abattoir.
"So am I to understand you eat a lot of duck?" Poulette asked Remo.
"Between Chiun and me," Remo said sincerely, "we probably keep your duck wing flying."
"But you don't eat chicken?"
"No."
"May I ask why not?"
Remo hesitated. His brow bunched up, casting a puzzled shadow over his dark eyes. "Little Father, why can't we eat chicken?" Remo asked.
"Because chickens do not urinate," Chiun replied.
"A foul lie!" Poulette interjected.
Chiun stopped. Slowly he turned, his eyes going cold. "You would dispute me, Chicken King?" he demanded slowly.
Poulette cringed at the term. "Well, technically it is true," he explained. Vindicated, Chiun began marching along the corridor once more, Poulette hurrying to keep pace. "Chickens don't urinate, per se," he confided to Remo. "They have no bladders, so their urine enters their bowels and is released with their manure. But they're just as clean as any other bird."
"We can't eat chicken 'cause they piss out their butt?" Remo whispered to Chiun.
"Remo, do not be gross," Chiun sniffed.
"Did you know that chicken has supplanted beef as the meat of preference in the United States?" Poulette began to rattle off statistics with growing pride. "Americans now eat roughly seventy-eighty pounds of poultry per year. That's thirty-four percent of the American diet right there, my friends. They only eat seventy-three pounds of beef, and that percentage is shrinking every year."
"Doesn't it go in cycles?" Remo asked. "Chicken this year, pork next year? People will be back to beef by the end of the decade."
"Oh, no!" said Poulette, assuming an injured tone, like that of a priest whose faith has been called into question. "The era of beef is over. Cattle are filthy creatures. Stomping around in their own feces. And pigs? I think the name says it all, don't you? Rooters in their own filth."
"What do chickens do out in your barnyard-float?"
Poulette allowed himself a condescending smirk. "Barnyard? Really, Mr. MacLeavy, you must be new with the Department of Agriculture if you think Poulette Farms is a barnyard operation."
They had come to a door marked OBSERVATION DECK 1.
"Let me show you how a modern poultry farm operates," Poulette said, an odd gleam coming into his gimlet eyes.
The door opened onto another, longer corridor. One entire wall was made of Plexiglas, broken up only by large steel doors placed every twenty-five feet along its length.
Poulette's step became more lively. "As you can see, this walkway takes us through every phase of poultry-processing." He pointed to a large door below. "The conveyor belt brings the chickens into the plant from our fattening and feeding rooms." Remo and Chiun watched as the belt slid a steady stream of live chickens, hung upside down by their feet, into the Processing Wing.
"They are then moved through the electrically charged solution that you can see below, which"-Poulette suppressed a sigh-"stuns them senseless." He swallowed convulsively, and his turkey-wattle skin danced over his jittery Adam's apple. "It is remarkably humane."