"I just wanted to go with you."
"Quite impossible. Now will you give me that information or not? It will save me a few minutes' work."
"All right," Barry whined. "I learned about Dr. Morley when I was in school because I studied entomology. Some believed that Morley had made a scientific breakthrough on the pheromones and left because he did not want to share credit with Dr. Ravits. Others thought that he had just had a breakdown and ran away."
"Well?" Smith said impatiently.
"Because the name came in in connection with Perriweather, I started to look at banks where Perriweather lives. And there's a Dexter Morley listed at the Beverly First Savings with a bank balance of two hundred and one thousand dollars."
Smith arched an eyebrow, and pleased by the man's reaction, Barry rushed along with his story.
"I'm sure it's him. I've cross indexed him a lot."
"So Morley might have been hired away from Ravits at a big salary increase?" Smith said.
"I couldn't find anything about an employer, though," Barry said. "All the deposits were made in cash."
"I presume because the employer didn't want anyone to know about it," Smith said.
"Morley must have lived with his employer too because there's no listing of him as homeowner, tenant or telephone user within a hundred-mile radius of Beverly."
"Interesting," Smith said.
"I could really be helpful," Barry wheedled. His brow creased.
"I don't know, Barry," Smith said.
"Just tell me what you need, Harold. I want to earn my way. You'll be glad you took me along. Really you will. I can install the device on your other computers to prevent break-in. I'm better at that than you are. And I can help with this Dexter Morley. I studied entomology for three years."
"Three years isn't very much study in a field like that, is it?" Smith asked.
Barry looked hurt. "In three years, I read every major work on the subject written in English. My reading in French and Japanese was extensive too. I had to read German and Chinese in translation."
"I see," Smith said.
"They were good translations though," Barry offered. "Give me a chance, Harold."
Barry rose from the table, biting his lip. The fingers clutching the piece of paper in his hand were white. Barry might be helpful, Smith thought, in translating Dexter Morley's notes, if those were what Remo had. But what would Smith do with him after that? After the project was over and done with, and there was no more use for Barry Schweid, what would Smith do with him? There was an answer in the back of his mind, but he did not want to think about it. Not now.
"After I'm done, I'll take care of myself," Schweid said.
"It's only a work project," Smith said.
"For you, it's only a project."
Smith sighed. "All right," he said finally. Barry's face broke into a large grin.
"But I won't be responsible for you before, during or after. Is that clear?"
"Like crystal," Barry Schweid said adoringly. Smith ground his teeth together in frustration as he closed the attache-case computer. Something told him he had just made a terrible mistake. Barry was too attached to him and now Smith was taking him into a real world, a world where people had the power to kill and were not reluctant to use that power. Would the slings and arrows of ordinary life destroy the fragile young man?
Smith closed his eyes for a moment to squeeze the thought away. There was nothing he could do about it. After all, he was not Barry Schweid's keeper.
But then, he thought, who was?
* * *
Remo and Chiun were still waiting when Smith arrived at the Perriweather mansion.
"I trust the police haven't been here yet," Smith said.
"Nobody alive to call them," Remo said. "Except us, and we don't like the police stomping around. Who's that?" He cocked his head toward the rotund little man who seemed to be trying to hide behind Smith.
Smith cleared his throat. "Errr, this is my associate, Barry Schweid."
"And Blankey," Barry said.
"And Blankey?" Remo said.
"And Blankey," Barry said, holding up the piece of blue material.
"Oh," Remo said. "Well, you and Blankey stay right there. We have to talk privately." He grabbed Smith's arm and pulled him to a far corner of the room.
"I think the time has come for me to talk to you," Remo said.
"Oh, yes? What about?"
"About Butterball and Blankey."
"Why does that bother you?" Smith said.
"Why does that bother me? All right, I'll tell you why that bothers me. For ten years I have heard nothing from you except secrecy, secrecy, secrecy. I have sent more people than I care to remember into the Great Void because they found out something they shouldn't have about CURE. Remember those? They were all assignments from you."
"Yes, I remember them. Every one of them," Smith said.
"So what are we doing here with this cretin?" he said, nodding toward Barry.
"Barry has been doing some work for me on the CURE computers, to make them tamper-proof. And he understands entomology. I thought he would be helpful here in deciphering those notes."
"Wonderful. And now he has seen Chiun and me."
"Yes, that's true, since we're all in the same room together," Smith said dryly.
"And you're not concerned?" Remo asked.
"No. Barry is, well, Barry is different. He can't relate things to reality. He could learn everything about our operation, and never once understand that it involves real people in the real world. He lives in a computer-generated fantasy world. But I appreciate your concern."
"Well, appreciate this. When you want him killed because he knows too much, you do it yourself," Remo said.
"That will never be necessary," Smith said.
"I think it will be. Consider yourself on notice," Remo said.
"Thank you for sharing this with me," Smith said in a tone so bland that Remo could not tell if he was joking or not. He decided Smith wasn't; Smith never joked.
"So let's not waste any more time," Smith said. "What have you found?"
"You mean the bodies? You're looking at one of them," Remo said, gesturing toward the red-streaked walls and then to a dried puddle at the end of the room in which a skull sat.
Smith gaped in amazement. "That's what's left?"
"That and some spots on the rug. But the rug's downstairs with the other bodies."
"The ones your asssassins are responsible for, Emperor," Chiun said proudly.
"What did they do to warrant death?" Smith asked.
"They attacked first," Remo said.
"I mean before that. What were the circumstances?"
"There weren't any circumstances. That Perriweather weirdo told us to come here, locked us up with the lunatics and took off. There were two of them, a man and a woman. They tried to have us for lunch and we wouldn't let them."
"And they said nothing?"
"Oh, they did," Remo said. "They said a lot."
"What did they say?"
"They said 'Grrrrr' and 'Naaaarrrgh' and I think they said 'Ssssssss.' Little Father, did they say 'Ssssssss'?"
"Yes," Chiun said. "They also said 'Urrrrr.' "
"I knew I forgot something," Remo told Smith. "They said 'Urrrrr' too."
"The woman also?" Smith asked.
"She was as nothing," Chiun said modestly.
"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."