A Taste for Honey by H. F. Heard Read Free Book Online

appreciates.”
    â€œYes, Mr. Mycroft, yes,” I said, a little mollified (for it was a queer fact of which I had never heard before and I like queer facts). “But what have these birds to do with the bees? Are they to charm away the pirates?”
    â€œYou are pretty close to the truth,” he replied, surprisingly.
    â€œHow on earth can a bird we can’t hear, sing away a bee which is probably deaf? I’ve heard of bee-catching birds but—”
    â€œWe don’t know of any bird as yet which can serve this purpose, but this inaudible songster was unknown to our grandparents. And we now know of a spellbinding singer which can do what you ask. More remarkable than a bird: it is actually a moth, a moth which sings a humanly inaudible note! I had to show you the birds because experimenting with them gave me a piece of apparatus which may be of no little use to both of us. They gave me my first records. When I had learned how to make these, and the hen bird had kindly shown me by her absorbed attention that I had indeed caught the note, I then went on to the harder task of recording a far more difficult voice and trying it out on a far more difficult and awkward audience.”
    We had gone back to the library. Mr. Mycroft, making me, I must confess, catch something of his interest—for I’m interested in gadgets—took out from an upper shelf what looked like a small homemade gramophone combined with a barograph. The drum had on it fuzzy lines like those I once saw on an earthquake chart. Beside the drum was a small hollow rod the use of which I couldn’t imagine. He started the machine and the fine pen began its rapid scrawling on the paper as the drum slowly revolved.
    â€œYou are now listening to one of the most magical voices in the world,” remarked Mr. Mycroft, complacently.
    â€œYou can say so,” I replied, somewhat tartly. “But as you like quotations as clues to opinions, I can give you one from Hans Andersen’s Magic Weavers: ‘The King hasn’t got any clothes on at all,’ cried the child.”
    â€œDickens will do as well,” he chuckled. “‘There ain’t no such person as Mrs. Harris.’ But there is a voice, even if, I regret to say, only a potted one, singing in this room so long as that needle pen trembles. Look.”
    He threw open a panel in the outside wall and revealed the back of a glass hive in which the bees could be seen thickly crawling over the layers of comb. Stepping back, he swung the horn of the gramophone until it was trained on the glass panel in the wall. In two strides he was back again. With a single movement, the sheet of glass was swung back, the comb exposed to the air. We heard the industrious hum rise to an angry buzz of protest. I was about to make for the door when the buzz was cut short even more swiftly than it had arisen. Not, though, to sink back into the contented working hum. What is more, complete stillness held the hive. It was a bee version of the Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Mr. Mycroft’s hand stretched back. The whirring stopped and, with the last scratch of the pen, the hive came again to life. For a second the bees hesitated, like an audience just before it breaks out of its spell into applause. I did not, however, wait for their ovation. Without asking leave, I clapped shut the glass wall. In a few moments they were as busy as ever on their obsessing honey.
    â€œYou could have waited a little longer,” Mr. Mycroft remarked. “They are so dazed that they generally go straight back to work—work, for all workers, is the best escape from unpleasant questions and baffling experiences. Well, that is how I routed the invaders. We have air detectors against planes, but we have yet to find a note which will make enemy pilots forget they came to bomb us. When Heregrove’s bees came back, I was ready with my bell-mouthed sound muskets turned to the sky. Down