"I saw you that night flee from the Claudandus gang over the roofs and disappear at Felicity's. When your pursuers finally gave up the chase and went their own ways, I eavesdropped on you and your witness at the open skylight. However, you were not yet ready for the information Felicity wanted to give you, and so, after you had left with Bluebeard, I had to deal with her. As I said, you were supposed to unravel the mystery little by little; otherwise you would have had quite a bout of intellectual indigestion."
"And what about Joker? Didn't you make a very big mistake when you liquidated your head propagandist?"
"What else could I do? Under pressure he would have revealed everything, not only to you but to all the bird-brained nerds in the district. Joker was a splendid factotum, but at the same time a terrible windbag. Sometimes I had the feeling that he actually did believe in this Claudandus crap, which the two of us had produced out of thin air. Faith and hope: that was his métier. Poor fool. He would have cut a much better figure as Claudandus than I. Besides, it was his own wish to be killed. I proposed to him that he disappear from the district and settle down somewhere else in the city. But he thought that no human would ever take in an old fossil like him. And it's true, too, that human beings like us best as sweet and playful kittens. Joker said he had neither the strength nor the desire to wander around as a stray with his days numbered. I should make it short and painless, he said. I didn't kill him. It was practically suicide, just that I was the one to carry it out."
A deep disgust now overcame me, and this was someone I had once looked up to! Everything was so logical for him, so clear, even so harmless. The murders weren't personal at all, no real harm had been meant. They were meant to serve a good end, ergo they had been carried out as a step-by-step solution to a mathematical problem. Feeling and reverence for life played no part. Only the goal existed, and that was to be approached murder by murder, drop by drop of blood. Everything was so simple and at the same time so brilliant. How dangerous the genius of a living creature could be if misused for the nasty and wicked things of the world. That's the way it had always been and that's the way it would always be. Preterius, Mendel, Claudandus—they were truly one and the same person.
"Now I really do know everything," I said bitterly. "But I wish I never had!"
He got up slowly from his seat, sauntered over to his desk, and looked up to me with a dreamy expression on his face. He seemed to be reading my thoughts. After a while, he smiled painfully, as if he had suddenly realized the punch line of a malicious joke.
"Oh no, Francis, no. You only think you really know everything. That is a great difference, my dear fellow."
He shook his head in resignation.
"In spirit we are old friends, Francis. More than that, we are like twins. You certainly must have thought so yourself more than once. You think you know a thing or two, don't you? You think you're the clever one who knows what's what, don't you? There's so much you don't know. So much. What do you really know? You are only an ordinary little animal living in an ordinary little city. You wake up every morning of your life and you know very well that nothing in the world is going to worry you. You live through your ordinary little day, and in the night you sleep your untroubled, ordinary little sleep full of peaceful, dumb dreams. And I'm the one who's brought you your nightmares. Or am I? You're living in a dream; you're a sleepwalker; you're blind! How do you know what the world is really like? Don't you know that the world is really a stinking pigpen? Don't you know that if you tore down the facades of these houses you'd find pigs inside? The world is a hell! What does it matter what happens in it? The world was so created that one sorrow follows another. There has been a chain reaction of suffering and cruelty on this earth since its creation. Yet perhaps it is no better elsewhere, on distant planets, stars, and galaxies … Who knows? The crown of all that is loathsome in this universe and unknown universes is, very probably, the human race. The human race is so ... so evil, mean, cunning, egoistic, greedy, cruel, insane, sadistic, opportunistic, bloodthirsty, malicious, treacherous, hypocritical, envious, and—yes, this above all—just plain dumb! Such is the human race. Oh Francis, don't you know that the humans of this world have surrounded themselves with an armor of egotism, are intoxicated with their vain self-contemplation, thirst for flattery, are deaf to what is said to them, unmoved by the misfortunes that befall their most intimate friends, and in constant fear of all requests for help that could interrupt their endless dialogue with their own desires? Truly, dear Francis, of such a kind are the children of Adam from China to Peru.
"Yet what about the others? What about us? I say to you, my friend, we are no different. We, who in our satiety and boredom snap listlessly at gnats, lazily squat on garden walls, purr behind electric stoves, belch, fart, and doze, dream away our lives with ridiculous dreams of ridiculous hunts for such ridiculous prey as mice, we, who trust in the goodness of the God-given order, we, who cultivate our preferences for various brands of canned food, we, who now are
