Sardon smiled.
'It was one of my early experiments,' he repeated. 'I was then merely trying to improve on the work of Ludwig and Ries of Berne, who were breeding giant insects almost comparable with that one, many years ago, with the aid of red light. Subsequently I discovered another principle of growth which they had overlooked, and I also found that an artificial selective cross-breeding between different species not only improved the potential size but also increased the intelligence. For instance, here is one of my later results--a combination of Oecophylla smaragdina and Prenolepsis imparis.'
He went to one of the longer and larger boxes at the end of the room. At first Simon could see nothing but a great mound of twigs and leaves piled high in one corner. There were two or three bones, stripped bare and white, lying on the sandy floor of the box. . . . Then Sardon tapped on the glass, and Simon saw with a sudden thrill of horror that what had been a dark hole in the mound of leaves was no longer black and empty. There was a head peering out of the shadow-- dark bronze-green, iridescent, covered with short sparse bristly hairs. . . .
'Oecophylla is, of course, one of the more advanced species,' Sardon was saying, in his calm precise manner. 'It is the only known creature other than man to use a tool. The larvae secrete a substance similar to silk, with which the ants weave leaves together to make their nests, holding the larvae in their jaws and using them as shuttles. I don't yet know whether my hybrid has inherited that instinct.'
'It looks as if it would make a charming pet, anyway,' murmured the Saint thoughtfully. 'Sort of improved lap dog, isn't it?'
The faint sly smile stayed fixed on Sardon's thin lips. He took two steps further, to a wide sliding door that took up most of the wall at the end of the laboratory, and looked back at them sidelong.
'Perhaps you would like to see the future ruler of the world,' he said, so very softly that it seemed as if everyone else stopped breathing while he spoke.
Simon heard the girl beside him catch her breath, and Nordsten said quickly: 'Surely we've troubled you enough already----'
'I should like to see it,' said the Saint quietly.
Sardon's tongue slid once over his lips. He put his hand up and moved a couple of levers on the glittering panels of dials and switches beside the door. It was to the Saint that his gaze returned, with that rapt express sion of strangely cunning and yet childish happiness.
'You will see it from where you stand. I will ask you to keep perfectly still, so as not to draw attention to yourselves--there is a strain of Dorylina in this one. Dorylina is one of the most intelligent and highly disciplined species, but it is also the most savage. I do not wish it to become angry----'
His arm stretched out to the handle of the door. He slid it aside in one movement, standing with his back ||
to it, facing them.
The girl's cold hand touched the Saint's wrist. Her fingers slipped down over his hand and locked in with his own, clutching them in a sudden convulsive grip. He heard Ivar Nordsten's suppressed gasp as it caught in his throat, and an icy tingle ran up his spine and broke out in a clammy dew on his forehead.
The rich red light from the chamber beyond the door spilled out like liquid fire, so fierce and vivid that it seemed as if it could only be accompanied by the scorching heat of an open furnace; but it held only a slight appreciable warmth. It beat down from huge crimson arcs ranged along the cornices of the inner room among a maze of shining tubes and twisted wires; there was a great glass ball opposite in which a pale- yellow streak of lightning forked and flickered with a faint humming sound. The light struck scarlet highlights from the-gleaming bars of a great metal cage like a gigantic chicken coop which filled the centre of the room to within a yard of the walls. And within the cage something monstrous and incredible stood motionless, staring at them.
Simon would see it sometimes, years afterwards, in uneasy dreams. Something immense and frightful, glistening like burnished copper, balanced on angled legs like bars of plated metal. Only for a few seconds he saw it then, and for most of that time he was held fascinated by its eyes, understanding something that he would never have believed before. . . .
And then suddenly the thing moved, swiftly and horribly and without sound; and Sardon slammed the door shut, blotting out the eye-aching sea of red light and leaving only the austere cold whiteness of the laboratory.
'They are not all like lap dogs,' Sardon said in a kind of whisper.
Simon took out a handkerchief and passed it across his brow. The last thing about that weird scene that fixed itself consciously in his memory was the girl's fingers relaxing their tense grip on his hand, and Sar-don's eyes, bland and efficient and businesslike again, pinned steadily on them both in a sort of secret sneer. . . .
'What do you think of our friend?' Ivar Nordsten asked, as they drove home two hours later.
Simon stretched out a long arm for the lighter at the side of the car.
'He is a lunatic--but of course you knew that. I'm only wondering whether he is quite harmless.'
'You ought to sympathize with his contempt for the human race.'
The red glow of the Saint's cigarette end brightened so that for an instant the interior of the car was filled with something like a pale reflection of the unearthly crimson luminance which they had seen in Dr Sardon's forcing room.
'Did you sympathize with his affection for his pets?'
'Those great ants?' Nordsten shivered involuntarily. 'No. That last one--it was the most frightful thing I have ever seen. I suppose it was really alive?'
'It was alive,' said the Saint steadily. 'That's why I'm wondering whether Dr Sardon is harmless. I don't know what you were looking at, Ivar, but I'll tell you what made my blood run cold. It wasn't the mere size of the thing--though any common or garden ant would be terrifying enough if you enlarged it to those dimensions. It was worse than that. It was the proof that Sardon was right. That ant was looking at me. Not like any other insect or even animal that I've ever seen, but like an insect with a man's brain might look. That was the most frightening thing to me. It knew!'
Nordsten stared at him.
'You mean that you believe what he was saying about it being the future ruler of the world?'
'By itself, no,' answered Simon. 'But if it were not by itself----'
He did not finish the sentence; and they were silent for the rest of the drive. Before they went to bed he asked one more question.
'Who else knows about these experiments?'
''No one, I believe. He told me the other day that he was not prepared to say anything about them until lie could show complete success. As a matter of fact, I lent him some money to go on with his work, and that is the only reason he took me into his confidence. I was surprised when he showed us his laboratory tonight--even I had never seen it before.'
'So he is convinced now that he can show a complete success,' said the Saint quietly, and was still subdued and preoccupied the next morning.
In the afternoon he refused to swim or play tennis. He sat hunched up in a chair on the veranda, scowling into space and smoking innumerable cigarettes, except when he rose to pace restlessly up and down like a big nervous cat.
'What you are really worried about is the girl,' Nordsten teased him.
'She's pretty enough to worry about,' said the Saint shamelessly. 'I think I'll go over and ask her for a cocktail.'
Nordsten smiled.
'If it will make you a human being again, by all means do,' he said. 'If you don't come back to dinner I shall know that she is appreciating your anxiety. In any case, I shall probably be very late myself. I have to attend a committee meeting at the golf club and that always adjourns to the bar and goes on for hours.'
But the brief tropical twilight had already given way to the dark before Simon made good his threat. He took out Ivar Nordsten's spare Rolls-Royce and drove slowly over the highway until he found the turning that led through the deep cypress groves to the doctor's house. He was prepared to feel foolish; and yet as his headlights circled through the iron gates he touched his hip pocket to reassure himself that if the need arose he might still feel wise.
The trees arching over the drive formed a ghostly tunnel down which the Rolls chased its own forerush of light. The smooth hiss of the engine accentuated rather than broke the silence, so that the mind even of a hardened
