"Well, I must say," said Franstein as they sipped their coffee, "yours is the first glum face I've seen around here since that test this afternoon. Here we are, within sight of our goal at last, and look at you! Weren't you satisfied?"
"Before I go into that," Snow replied, "there are a few things I want to ask you."
"About the test?"
"In a way, but principally about Richardson. Have you ever had any reason to suspect that there is anything unusual about him?"
"In what way?"
"In your line."
Franstein produced an enormous meerschaum pipe and proceeded to fill it from an untidy plastic pouch as he replied.
"Yes, there is. One very unusual thing."
"There is?"
"He's got a very rare type of mind. It's probably perfectly balanced." The little man lit his pipe and continued: "The vast majority of us have some sort of imbalance, mentally. He hasn't. When I say imbalance, I mean the sort of thing that makes for genius, a phenomenal memory, an outstanding, effortless talent, amnesia, any form of insanity, or even something like a violent temper. Anything, so to speak, overemphasized."
"Is it physical? I mean, does it have anything to do with the size or weight of the brain, or anything like that?"
"You can take the brain of a genius and that of an ordinary person of average intelligence, and find them exactly the same in measurements and tissue condition. The popular conception of the genius as a man with a bulging forehead is so much nonsense. Plenty of lunatics and retarded individuals have bulging foreheads."
"Then what does it have to do with?"
"Ah! That's the big question. Nobody knows. You can take two men, equal physically in every respect, equal in upbringing, education, health, and with the same sized brain. One of them might turn out to be a genius, the other an average individual, and nobody knows what makes the difference. Nobody knows what makes an infant prodigy, or what it is which enables a child of two to read easily, or a kid of five or six to play some instrument as if he'd been at it for years or compose symphonies, or master advanced mathematics. Same answer. Nobody knows. It's got nothing to do with heredity. So few geniuses have had genius offspring that they form exceptions to the rule. Again, why does an infant prodigy sometimes lose his gift or talent entirely as he grows older? We don't know. All we know is that the gift or talent is there, but where it comes from, or why it is in one brain and not in another, we don't know. But surely you don't have to have me to tell you all this, Phil? What's on your mind?"
"Listen to this," Snow said, and went to the tape recorder.

He rewound the tape to its beginning, depressed the switch marked Play, and presently they heard the two voices, Snow's and Richardson's.
"Now!" said Snow as the point on the tape approached.
There came the sudden stopping of Richardson's voice in the middle of an instrument reading, the short silence, then Richardson's voice chanting the strange sounds. Franstein took his pipe from between his teeth and his mouth fell open as he listened. The sounds ceased and Richardson's voice resumed the instrument reading at the point at which it had left off.
"That's all," said Snow, and switched off the machine.
Franstein put his pipe back into his mouth. "Is this the recording of this afternoon's test?"
"Yes. What d'you make of it?"
"Let's hear it again."
Snow played back the recording a second and a third time, and then said: "Well?"
Franstein went to the table and helped himself to more coffee before replying. "It's a new one on me," he said presently. "I've got about a thousand recordings of languages and dialects from all over the world, and not one of them is anything like that."
"You think it is a language, not just sounds?"
"That we've got to find out, but I'd say, offhand, it's a primitive form of a language of some sort."
"Then how the devil does it come out of a man............