The Saint and the Happy Highwayman (25 page)

“Although, of course,” he said, “you would not call them that.”

It was strange to see the dark glow that came into Sardon’s eyes.

“As a popular term,” he said in his deep vibrant voice, “I suppose it is too well established for me to change it. But it would be much more reasonable for the insects to talk about human pests.”

He turned to Simon.

“I expect Mr Nordsten has already warned you about the—bee in my bonnet,” he said; but he used the phrase without smiling. “Do you by any chance know anything about the subject?”

“I had a flea once,” said the Saint reminiscently. “I called him Goebbels. But he left me.”

“Then you wrould be surprised to know how many of the most sensational achievements of man were surpassed by the insects hundreds of years ago without any artificial aids.” The finger tips of his strong nervous hands played a tattoo against each other, “You talk about the Age of Speed and Man’s Conquest of the Air; and yet the fly Cephenomia, the swiftest living creature, can outpace the fastest of your boasted aeroplanes. What is the greatest scientific marvel of the century? Probably you would say radio. But Count Arco, the German radio expert, has proved the existence of a kind of wireless telegraphy, or telepathy, between certain species of beetle, which makes nothing of a separation of miles. Lakhovsky claims to have demonstrated that this is common to several other insects. When the Redemanni termites build their twenty-five-foot conical towers topped with ten-foot chimneys they are performing much greater marvels of engineering than building an Empire State Building. To match them, in proportion to our size, we should have to put up skyscrapers four thousand feet high— and do it without tools.”

“I knew the ants would come into it,” said Nordsten sotto voce.

Sardon turned on him with his hot piercing gaze.

“Termites are not true ants—the term ‘white ants’ is a misnomer. Actually they are related to the cockroach. I merely mentioned them as one of the most remarkable of the lower insects. They have a superb social organization, and they may even be superior strategists to the true ants, but they were never destined to conquer the globe. The reason is that they cannot stand light and they cannot tolerate temperatures below twenty degrees centigrade. Therefore, their fields of expansion are for ever limited. They are one of Nature’s false beginnings. They are a much older species than man, and they have evolved as far as they are likely to evolve… . It is not the same with the true ants.”

He leaned forward over the table, with his face white and transfigured as if in a kind of trance.

“The true ant is the destined ruler of the earth. Can you imagine a state of society in which there was no idleness, no poverty, no unemployment, no unrest? We humans would say that it was an unattainable Utopia; and yet it was in existence among the ants when man was a hairy savage scarcely distinguishable from an ape. You may say that it is incompatible with progress— that it could only be achieved in the same way that it is achieved by domestic cattle. But the ant has the same instincts which have made man the tyrant of creation in his time. Lasius fuliginosus keeps and milks its own domestic cattle, in the form of plant lice. Polyergus rufescens and Formica sanguined capture slaves and put them to work. Messor barbarus, the harvesting ant, collects and stores grain. The Attiini cultivate mushrooms in underground forcing houses. And all these things are done, not for private gain, but for the good of the whole community. Could man in any of his advances ever boast of that?”

“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 Nord-sten, “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 motion less, 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 dragged 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 dropped 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.”

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.