Sardon edged closer to him.
"You hoped you were wrong? You fool! But I would expect it of you. You are the egotistical human being who believes in his ridiculous conceit that the whole history of the world from its own birth, all the species and races that have come into being and been discarded, everything — everything has existed only to lead up to his own magnificent presence on the earth. Bah! Do you imagine that your miserable little life can stand in the way of the march of evolution? Your day is over! Finished! In there" — his arm stiffened and pointed—"in there you can find the matriarch of the new ruling race of the earth. At any moment she will begin to lay her eggs, thousands upon thousands of them, from which her sons and daughters will breed — as big as she is, with her power and her brains." His voice Dr.opped. "To me it is only wonderful that I should have been Nature's chosen instrument to give them their rightful place a million years before Time would have opened the door to them."
The flame in his eyes sank down as his voice sank and his features seemed to relax so that his square clean-cut efficient face became soft and beguiling like the face of an idiot child.
"I know what it feels like to be God," he breathed.
Simon held both his arms.
"Dr. Sardon," he said, "you must not go on with this experiment."
The other's face twisted.
"The experiment is finished," he snarled. "Are you still blind? Look — I will show you."
He was broad-shouldered and powerfully built, and his strength was that of a maniac. He threw off the Saint's hands with a convulsive wrench of his body and ran to the sliding door at the end of the room. He turned with his back to it, grasping the handle, as the Saint started after him.
"You shall meet them yourself," he said hoarsely. "They are not in their cage any more. I will let them out here, and you shall see whether you can stand against them. Stay where you are!"
A revolver flashed in his hand; and the Saint stopped four paces from him.
"For your own sake, Dr. Sardon," he said, "stand away from that door."
The doctor leered at him crookedly.
"You would like to burn my ants," he whispered.
He turned and fumbled with the spring catch, his revolver swinging carelessly wide from its aim; and the door had started to move when Simon shot him twice through the heart.
Simon was stretched out on the veranda, sipping a highball and sniping mosquitoes with a cigarette end, when Nordsten came up the steps from his car. The Saint looked up with a smile.
"My dear fellow," said Nordsten, "I thought you would be at the fire."
"Is there a fire?" Simon asked innocently.
"Didn't you know? Sardon's whole laboratory has gone up in flames. I heard about it at the club, and when I left I Dr.ove back that way thinking I should meet you. Sardon and his niece were not there, either. It will be a terrible shock for him when he hears of it. The place was absolutely gutted — I've never seen such a blaze. It might have been soaked in gasoline. It was still too hot to go near, but I suppose all his work has been destroyed. Did you miss Carmen?"
The Saint pointed over his shoulder.
"At the present moment she's sleeping in your best guest room," he said. "I gave her enough of your sleeping tablets to keep her like that till breakfast time."
Nordsten looked at him.
"And where is Sardon?" he asked at length.
"He is in his laboratory."
Nordsten poured himself out a Dr.ink and sat down.
"Tell me," he said.
Simon told him the story. When he had finished, Nordsten was silent for a while. Then he said: "It's all right, of course. A fire like that must have destroyed all the evidence. It could all have been an accident. But what about the girl?"
"I told her that her uncle had locked the door and refused to let me in. Her evidence will be enough to show that Sardon was not in his right mind."
"Would you have done it anyhow, Simon?"
The Saint nodded.
"I think so. That's what I was worried about, ever since last night. It came to me at once that if any of these brutes could breed—" He shrugged a little wearily. "And when I saw that great queen ant, I knew that it had gone too far. I don't know quite how rapidly ants can breed, but I should imagine that they do it by thousands. If the thousands were all the same size as Sardon's specimens, with the same intelligence, who knows what might have been the end of it?"
"But I thought you disliked the human race," said Nordsten.
Simon got up and strolled across the veranda.
"Taken in the mass," he said soberly, "it will probably go on nauseating me. But it isn't my job to alter it. If Sardon was right, Nature will find her own remedy. But the world has millions of years left, and I think evolution can afford to wait."
His cigarette spun over the rail and vanished into the dark like a firefly as the butler came out to announce dinner; and they went into the dining room together.