“If you do see her, be sure to tell me,” said Armbuster.
“Certainly.”
The bee man vanished.
Hervey Deyo again bent over his note-book; he added the words “dentist’s electric drill,” and was considering whether Miss Low would regard an imitation of it as unpleasant, when a faint sound caused him to turn his head. A large bumblebee was crawling up the window-pane grumbling to herself. Hervey Deyo watched, listened. His first thought was to capture her and return her to Armbuster, and he reached out his hand toward her. She bumbled noisily and eluded him. It came to him as a flash of inspiration that his problem was solved. He’d imitate a bee!
He knew it was not honorable to keep her, but he did. He spent the afternoon chasing her up and down the pane with a gloved hand; she muttered and grumbled and buzzed. “Bzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzz.”
He smiled a smile of grim triumph; what was a trained seal’s raucous bellow to this? Softly he imitated the sounds she made; patiently he practised; before dusk came he was satisfied with the perfection of his imitation, and yet not entirely satisfied. The thing lacked a dramatic quality; it came to no climax. He could buzz loudly and softly, angrily or soothingly; but there was no grand finale. He felt that one was needed; Mr. Mullett ended his seal imitation with a crescendo roar.
A thought, murderous and ruthless, shot into one of Hervey Deyo’s brain cells. Normally he was neither murderous nor ruthless; quite gentle, indeed. But love brings out the primal man; for the sake of Mina Low he would, for a second, be atavistic. He chased the protesting bee across the pane; he got her into a corner; his gloved hand closed on her; she buzzed frantically; he closed his thumb and forefinger smartly together; he cut her off in full buzz with a sharp incisive sound like a torch plunged into a pond. A perfect climax! Hurriedly, furtively, he fed her corpse to a live flamingo in a cage in the corner. On his way home he passed Armbuster in the hall; Armbuster was distractedly searching for his queen; he was peering under a rug. Hervey Deyo did not meet the bee man’s eye.
In his room that night he practised assiduously his new accomplishment.
“Bzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!”
He attained perfection in that final shrill, staccato “bzzzzzrf.” His mother, hearing the sounds, came to the door to ask if he was ill. He called her in.