"I'm afraid, Professor, that you're even more insane than you think, for apparently you've lost all control over your imagination. You can hardly expect me to buy this Phantom-of-the-Opera nonsense. Look, it's child's play to expose your lies. It's silly, not to mention illogical, to assume that after you went off your rocker you actually began living a phantom existence in order to mess around with the necks of brothers and sisters. Where have you been hiding all this time? Where have you been getting your food? At least twelve years have gone by. Weren't you ever ill? You aren't some small animal that nobody would notice when, presumably on all fours, you went out on your nocturnal hunts for unsuspecting Felidae. Moreover, to all appearances you've lost your marbles, which rules out your even being capable of carrying out hunting maneuvers, which are complicated and require stamina.
I have another theory. You were performing experiments in your Frankenstein laboratory that the veterinary authorities refused to issue permits for. I have seen the evidence of these prohibited experiments running around loose in the district. A dear friend of mine named Felicity, who was also murdered, told me, if only in the form of an unclear dream description, that in the last phase of your nutty research as a recluse there got to be a mutiny in your laboratory that led to the liberation of your guinea pigs. The fact is that the victims of those inhum..., no, inanimal experiments are still alive and among us. But the PHARMAROX big shots were ready to go to any length to prevent an animal-cruelty scandal, which was originally your idea, from becoming public and being associated with them. So, although at first they wanted to replace you with your archenemy Knorr, research in this area was completely stopped. When the people at the top woke up, if a little late, they finally realized what a mess you had made in those months when nobody was keeping an eye on you, and the laboratory was shut down on short notice, the sign outside hurriedly taken down, and the 'Tissue Cement Project' abandoned to sink slowly into oblivion. But some traces of your work remained, and they were causing these gentlemen a great deal of worry, particularly because they saw no way of covering them up without attracting attention, because the real objects of their cover-up activity were free and at large, were wandering through the district gardens, were perhaps even in hiding. What would happen if other people were to discover these freaks? Would they become suspicious and link these miserable, mutilated beasts with the mysterious laboratory in their neighborhood? Sure they would! Consequently, every animal that had broken out of the laboratory had to be eliminated, too. This explanation certainly sounds more plausible to me."
"Hahaaa! Your wild imagination exceeds even my own disturbed mind, my dear Francis. So you really believe that not me, but certain animal assassins commissioned by PHARMAROX are running around killing off your friends? Presumably on all fours? Very amusing. Really, very amusing. You just walked right into your own trap. Allow me to demonstrate how untenable your flimsy hypothesis is. First, there is again the time factor, which defies your logic. After twelve years, have these ominous hit men still not been successful in liquidating all the crippled, experimental animals? Do you seriously believe that a firm like PHARMAROX would even need twelve years to finish off those pinheads? Second, if the killers had really been planning to wipe out the flesh-and-blood evidence of an illegal experiment, then why is the whole neighborhood littered with their corpses in plain sight of anyone out for a stroll? And third, Sherlock, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: were the murdered, except for Felicity, mutilated in some way? No? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Think before thou speakest, says the educated humanist! Hahaaa! Hahaaa! Hahaaa! …"
This was the dialogue in my mind after I had finished reading Professor Julius Preterius's journal and was desperately trying to connect it with the murders. Was that such a strange thing to do? When you considered it objectively, no links seemed to exist between the present murders and that gruesome laboratory in 1980. But I felt deep down that somehow the events had something to do with each other. For one thing, the horrors described in the journal were of such unimaginable dimensions that, as in a satanic chain reaction, they must have had further influence in the present. Evil is like a cell endlessly dividing itself; once it comes into being, it will beget even more evil. It's the relentless quantum mechanics of the universe. For another, you would have to have had the sensitivity of an amoeba not to notice that the mysterious series of murders involved only my kind. Since both murderers and murdered belonged to my species, it was fair to say that logically no elephants had had a role
