They descended, and Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar, with a flourish, produced a great bronze key and unlocked the iron gate. "The Sidi Doctor," he said, "will doubtless be in his conservatory, making flowers." "A godlike pastime," said Colonel Glinka with heavy irony. "And where may this hotbed of new life be found?" "Over there," Abdul said, pointing toward a narrow, screened, quonsetlike annex which protruded from the rear of the villa. "Come with me and I will show you." "You will not," Colonel Glinka said, smiting him upon the thigh once again with the heavy cane. "You will remain here and keep silent." "Ouchdammit!" Abdul exclaimed. "You be careful with that thing, Joe, okay?" "_You_ be careful, my boy," Colonel Glinka said and marched swiftly around the corner of the house, opened the screen door of the conservatory, and entered. Here, amid long, terraced rows of tropical plants, a bearded dwarf in a green coat crouched before an earthen tray of lilies of the valley, tranquilly puffing up a massive, tobacco-stained meerschaum. He did not look up at the sound of the intruder, for he was engaged in a delicate business, the transfer of pollen from corolla to corolla with a toothpick. "So you are, after all, only a minor god," Colonel Glinka said. "I heard your plane and I watched you come up the path," the black bearded little man said. "Glinka, is it not?" "You remembered me!" Colonel Glinka, quite affectedly, removed his goggles and dabbed at his eye with a perfumed handkerchief. "A humble policeman, a fat little nobody, to be remembered by the great Dr. Stefanik who was once our greatest scientist--yes, our most brilliant geneticist--do not shake your head. Let me see, was it Ankara where last we met? Yes, eight years ago in Ankara. You got away from me in Ankara. I was so ashamed, Comrade, that I cried." "Nine years," the other corrected. "For one remembers a mad dog. And do not call me 'comrade,' Comrade. You know that I was never anything other than a simple Cossack." "And, as such, invariably troublesome to us," Colonel Glinka said. "Yet you were our white hope, Comrade Stefanik. We might have led the world, I am told, in organics as we now lead in physics. I have read all of your books upon the fascinating subject of chromosomic change and the morphology of rats. It was required reading for those of us who were assigned to you. Most interesting, though I confess I did not understand all of it." * * * * * Dr. Stefanik got slowly to his feet. His back was now revealed to be so cruelly deformed that his black beard curled against his smock, and he walked with a shuffling, crablike motion as he limped over to pick up a small rubber irrigation hose. "Why did you leave us, Comrade Stefanik?" asked Colonel Glinka. "Why shame us, discredit your government, by running away?" "I did not like it there," Dr. Stefanik said.