A brother in one of the darker niches impressed me the most. I interrupted my walk just to have a good close look at him. Although a shadow covered his body, I clearly saw that he possessed all the physiognomic characteristics of the living and that even his shaggy coat was still whole. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be sleeping quietly. You would have been tempted to believe he was breathing if you didn't know for sure that he …
Suddenly his eyes flicked open! And almost at the same time I realized that he wasn't a member of the mystical army of the dead, but good old Waddler, who apparently had thought up a very special surprise for my execution. My heart stopped; fear made my teeth chatter. It would be short work for a beast of his adeptness to spring down on me and give my neck the usual treatment, by now a venerable tradition. But oddly the Waddler was trembling too, and his large, wildly rolling eyes blinked nervously.
"Do no harm to the Guardian of the Dead," he said with a worn-out, croaking voice. The shaking that rippled through his body gradually became a violent shuddering. At the same time, he rolled his eyes again, comically, which fitted his queer appearance. I had correctly identified him up in the garden. He was indeed a Persian, but down and out, mud spattered, his coat all knotted up. A closer examination showed that his coat was not gray, but blue, a blue, however, of a shade that only an expert could have recognized, for untrained eyes would have taken it for gray. His body odor, which wafted down to me periodically, almost made me faint. In a flight of gallows humor, it flashed through my mind that this might well be his way of anesthetizing his victims.
"Do no harm to the Guardian of the Dead," he repeated.
I noticed that he didn't heed me when he spoke, but stared stubbornly ahead.
"Verily, verily: the Guardian of the Dead has sinned, desecrated the Temple, and broken the Holy Rule. The latter may well be the worst sin. And he shall have to atone for it most bitterly. But if there shall no longer be a Guardian of the Dead, who then shall bring flowers to the dead, who then shall decorate the House with such splendor, who then shall remember those long past? Who shall pray for them, who shall receive them? I swear by the Prophet, by the Almighty Ruler of the Dead, that I shall never leave the Temple, and never desire to meddle in things which are alone knowledgeable to Yahweh. …"
And so forth and so on. Obviously, he had been poking his nose much too deeply into these timeworn monastery tomes, which had not been without lasting effect on his way of speaking. I asked myself when he would end his solemn speech and attack me.
"When are you going to get around to murder me, Brother?" I at last interrupted him, more out of curiosity than fear.
"Murder? Kill? Oh, of murder there is no end in this vale of suffering. Yahweh, Satan rides on his flaming steer through the land, and forces your sheep to war with one another. The sinners know not the path of peace; there is no justice in the ways of the sinners. They make their paths crooked, and whoever follows them knows nothing of peace. Thus is righteousness far from us, and justice reaches us not. We hope for light, and behold, it remains dark. We go astray at midday as at dusk, we live in darkness as do the dead …"
"Stop, stop, stop," I cried out, unnerved. "Do you always hold a morning mass like this before going after somebody's throat?"
Felicity had noticed that the murderer kept talking to his victims in momentous tones before striking. Whether this lecture also belonged to the category "momentous" I did not dare to doubt.
In any event, the Persian broke off his sermon, and looked down at me for the first time. Since he did not seem inclined to answer my question, which he probably had not understood anyway, I posed the next one right away.
"What's your name, friend?"
A suggestion of joy flitted across his ugly face.
"They call me Jesaja, the good Guardian of the Dead," he replied proudly.
"Ah, are you the one who's been up to all this mischief, I mean, all these skeletons? Did you kill them and lug them down here?"
The rolling of his eyes stopped abruptly, and he glared at me fanatically.
"Oh no, stranger, the dead come to me. They are sent by the Prophet."
I slowly relaxed while the fear drained out of me. Yes, if you took a close look at this character, he really didn't seem like a killer—more like a run-of-the-mill eccentric. Perhaps someone was using him as an expedient patsy, as a tool. I had to find out whether Jesaja knew this mysterious someone and how the whole crazy business had begun.
"You don't need to be afraid of me, Jesaja. My name is Francis. I'd just like you to tell me a few things. It would be nice if you could concentrate a little bit on remembering them. First question: where do you come from and how on earth did you ever end up in this terrible place?"
This last remark seemed to hurt him for his face showed he was offended. Yet he was willing to give information.
"The Guardian of the Dead has inhabited the Temple for endless ages; he is a child of the
