"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.
"What's unbelievable?" Smith asked.
"I'll need the blood analyses to be sure," Barry said. "But if these papers are right, all the deaths around here are the result of a fly."
"A lot of flies," Remo said. "We've got a whole cellar full of them."
"No," Barry said, shaking his head. "A special kind of fly. A fly that can change the source of evolution."
"Imagine that," Remo said.
'If these notes are correct, Morley made the biggest discovery since the discovery of DNA," Barry said.
"Is that anything like PDQ?" Remo asked.
"Don't be belligerent, Remo," Smith said. "Come on, Barry. We're going back to Folcroft. I'll get you lab equipment there."
"And us?" Remo asked.
"Go back to the IHAEO labs," Smith said. "Until we find out if Perriweather is behind all this and until we have him under control."
"No sweat," Remo said. "We'll have him under control."
"How's that?" Smith said.
"We'll just wrap him up in Blankey," Remo said.
Chapter 18
Waldron Perriweather III sat in the middle of the sofa in his suite at the Hotel Plaza in New York City. The jeweled box containing the desiccated body of Mother Fly rested on the arm of the brocaded sofa.
Perriweather had moved aside the coffee table to make room for a small upright video camera mounted on a tripod. He leaned forward to adjust the focus, turned the sound level to medium, then sat back down. With his right hand, out of camera view, he tripped a level that began the camera running. He spoke earnestly, staring directly into the lens.
"Americans. Note that I do not say 'My fellow Americans' because I am not one of your fellows, nor are you mine. Nor do I count myself as of any other nationality. My name is Waldron Perriweather the Third and I do not count myself among any people from whom murder is a daily way of life, as it is with you. For, each day, you seek to decimate the oldest and most self-sufficient type of life which has ever existed.
"You are insect-haters all, from the housewife who carelessly, without thought, murders a struggling life on her kitchen windowsill, to the wealthy executives of the pesticide companies who deal out death in the billions and trillions each day.
"I am accusing you on behalf of the Species Liberation Alliance, in defense of the countless small lives you snuff out hourly without thought, and worse, without remorse. I accuse you."
He held out a bony finger, pointing it directly at the camera.
"Take, as an example, the small housefly. Maligned throughout history, the fly ensures the renewal of the planet in a way far greater than man can even attempt. Can you, do you, eat garbage? No. You only create garbage. With your food, your disposal containers, even your very bodies after your own horrendously long tenure on earth, you make garbage. The fly lives but a moment of a human's lifespan and yet he does so much more than any human.
"You regard yourselves as the ultimate creation of nature, but you are wrong, grossly wrong.
"The fly is the supreme conqueror of earth. He has existed longer, his numbers are greater and his adaptability is a thousand times greater than your own."
He lowered his head, then peered up intently toward the camera.
"And that is what I had arranged to talk to you about today. The adaptability of the fly. A particular fly, never before seen on earth, named by me Musca perriweatheralis. The fly that will restore nature to its original balance. The fly that will become lord of the earth."
He spoke for another fifteen minutes, then packed up the tape he had made. He placed it carefully in a box addressed to the Continental Broadcasting Company, the largest television network in America, went to the hotel lobby and dropped it into the mailbox.
Outside, the noise and clatter of New York City attacked his ears. People rushed by the hotel entrance, at least a hundred in two minutes.
There were so many human beings in the world: Far too many.
But that would end soon. Musca perriweatheralis would inherit the earth. And master it.