"But if ants have so many advantages," said the Saint slowly, "and they've been civilized so much longer than man, why haven't they conquered the earth before this?"
"Because Nature cheated them. Having given them so much, she made them wait for the last essential — pure physical bulk."
"The brontosaurus had enough of that," said Nordsten, "and yet man took its place."
Sardon's thin lips curled.
"The difference in size between man and brontosaurus was nothing compared with the difference in size between man and ant. There are limits to the superiority of brain over brawn — even to the superiority of the brain of an ant, which in proportion to its size is twice as large as the brain of a man. But the time is coming…"
His voice sank almost to a whisper, and in the dim light of candles on the table the smouldering luminous-ness of his eyes seemed to leave the rest of his face in deep shadow.
"With the ant, Nature overreached herself. The ant was ready to take his place at the head of creation before creation was ready for him — before the solar system had progressed far enough to give him the conditions in which his body, and his brain with it, his brain which in all its intrinsic qualities is so much finer than the brain of man, could grow to the brute size at which all its potentialities could be developed. Nevertheless, when the solar system is older, and the sun is red because the white heat of its fire is exhausted, and the red light which will accelerate the growth of all living cells is stronger, the ant will be waiting for his turn. Unless Nature finds a swifter instrument than Time to put right her miscalculation…"
"Does it matter?" asked the Saint lightly, and Sardon's face seemed to flame at him.
"It matters. That is only another thing which we can learn from the ant — that individual profit and ambition should count for nothing beside more enduring good. Listen. When I was a boy I loved small creatures. Among them I kept a colony of ants. In a glass box. I watched them in their busy lives, I studied them as they built their nest, I saw how they divided their labour and how they lived and died so that their common life could go on. I loved them because they were so much better than everyone else I knew. But the other boys could not understand. They thought I was soft and stupid. They were always tormenting me. One day they found my glass box where the ants lived. I fought them, but there were so many of them. They were big and cruel. They made a fire and they put my box on it, while they held me. I saw the ants running, fighting, struggling insanely—" The hushed voice tightened as he spoke until it became thin and shrill like a suppressed scream. "I saw them curling up and shrivelling, writhing, tortured. I could hear the hiss of their seething agony in the flames. I saw them going mad, twisting — sprawling — blackening — burning alive before my eyes—"
"Uncle!"
The quiet voice of the girl Carmen cut softly across the muted shriek in which the last words were spoken, so quietly and normally that it was only in the contrast that Simon realized that Sardon had not really raised his voice.
The wild fire died slowly out of Sardon's eyes. For a moment his face remained set and frozen, and then, as if he had only been recalled from a fleeting lapse of attention, he seemed to come awake again with a slight start.
"Where was I?" he said calmly. "Oh yes. I was speaking about the intelligence of ants… It is even a mistake to assume, because they make no audible sounds, that they have not just as excellent means of communication as ourselves. Whether they share the telepathic gifts of other insects is a disputed point, but it is certain that in their antennae they possess an idiom which is adequate to all ordinary needs. By close study and observation it has even been possible for us to learn some of the elementary gestures. The work of Karl Escherich…"
He went into details, in the same detached incisive tone in which he had been speaking before his outburst.
Simon Templar's fingers stroked over the cloth, found a crumb of bread and massaged it gradually into a soft round pellet. He stole a casual glance at the girl. Her aloof oval face was pale, but that might have been its natural complexion; her composure was unaltered. Sardon's outburst might never have occurred, and she might never have had to interrupt it. Only the Saint thought that he saw a shadow of fear moving far down in her eyes.
Even after Carmen had left the table, and the room was richening with the comfortable aromas of coffee and liqueur, brandy and cigars, Sardon was still riding his hobbyhorse. It went on for nearly an hour, until at one of the rare lulls in the discussion Nordsten said: "All the same, Doctor, you are very mysterious about what this has to do with your own experiments."
Sardon's hands rested on the table, white and motionless, the fingers spread out.
"Because I was not ready. Even to my friends I should not like to show anything incomplete. But in the last few weeks I have disposed of my uncertainty. Tonight, if you like, I could show you a little."
"We should be honoured."
The flat pressure of Sardon's hands on the table increased as he pushed back his chair and stood up.
"My workshops are at the end of the garden," he said, and blew out the four candles.
As they rose and followed him from the room, Nordsten touched the Saint's arm and said in a low voice: "Are you sorry I Dr.agged you out?"
"I don't know yet," answered the Saint soberly.
The girl Carmen rejoined them as they left the house. Simon found her walking beside him as they strolled through the warm moonlight. He Dr.opped the remains of his cigar and offered his cigarette case; they stopped for a moment while he gave her a light. Neither of them spoke, but her arm slipped through his as they went on.
The blaze of lights which Sardon switched on in his laboratory wiped the dim silvery gloom out of their eyes in a crash of harsh glaring illumination. In contrast with the tasteful furnishings of the house, the cold white walls and bare tiled floor struck the Saint's sensitive vision with the hygienic and inhuman chill which such places always gave him. But Sardon's laboratory was not like any other place of that kind in which he had ever been.
Ranged along the walls were rows of big glass-fronted boxes, in which apparently formless heaps of litter and rubble could be dimly made out. His tye was caught by a movement in one of the boxes, and he stepped up to look at it more closely. Almost in the same moment he stopped, and nearly recoiled from it, as he realized that he was looking at the largest ant that he had ever seen. It was fully six inches long; and, magnified in that proportion, he could see every joint in its shiny armour-plated surface and the curious bifurcated claws at the ends of its legs. It stood there with its antennae waving gently, watching him with its bulging beady eyes…
"Tetramorium cespitum," said Dr. Sardon, standing beside him. "One of my early experiments. Its natural size is about three tenths of an inch, but it did not respond very well to treatment."
"I should say it had responded heroically," said the Saint. "You don't mean you can do better than that?"
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."