Salve Roma! A Felidae Novel Part 3

"How do you know that?" I heard a voice from behind my back.

"Statistics, hon", I said and shrugged without turning around.

This time there were no leftovers but a trip to the real luxury. Though I could have had guessed that again Antonio's c.o.c.ky promise had a snag to it. Sleepy, we wormed our way through the romantic and meanwhile deserted alleys. Familiar faces, which I knew from ill.u.s.trated books and Gustav's enthusiastic monologues while he studied maps of the Ancient Rome, crossed our path. The gigantic shadow of the Pantheon grew towards us as we walked the Via dei Cestari, and when we reached the Piazza della Rotonda, suddenly we saw it live and bodily.

Could there be any more simple building than the Pantheon? A barrel with a hemisphere on its top, technically that's it. So ingeniously simple and yet of gigantic dimension. Thick bronze doors let to the circular room, which had the diameter and the height of almost 165 feet. The walls are about 20 feet thick! 27 BC, the temple is said to have been dedicated to the seven holy planetary G.o.d Neptune, Ura.n.u.s, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus und Mars.

At his late hour I didn't dare to get more than a short glimpse. My eyes wandered along the coffered ceiling, which had once been an image of the firmament, decorated with gilded bronze. At daytime, an about 32 feet wide circular hole was the source of light, which evenly suffused the room. Now in the dark only a sallow light pillar could be seen. It was produced by the s.h.i.+ning of the stars and through the giant hole in the dome it descended down into the dark hall as if it were Heaven's salute to the great son of the Roman Renaissance, much-loved Raphael, whose grave was right here inside one of the alcoves.

Antonio reminded me to move on, and after a while we seemed to have reached our destination. We faced a spotlighted wonder hewn in stone, Rome's most well known landmark. A couple of ages ago, a not quite that cheap pope named Clemens had, much to the delight of the Romans, ordered to build a fountain in this spot. It was the Fontana di Trevi, the one where you're considered to throw a coin at over your left shoulder, if you want to see Rome ever again. To call this baroque jewel a "fountain" is as appropriate as to speak of Elvis as "quite a good singer".

At this time of night, just a couple of twosomes were sitting at the edge of the pool and whispered sweet nothings. My eyes reveled in the piece of art, which leaned right against the palace of the Dukes of Poli. Underneath the middle of a three-axle triumphal arch the G.o.d Poseidon sat enthroned on a cart that was pulled by two sea horses, surrounded by sea sh.e.l.ls, booming waves and fish-bodied sea G.o.ds. The water moved over artificial rocks and swirled around the figures until it was collected in a semicircular pool, just to begin the loop anew. The gorgeous illumination of the site and the quiet burble of the water provided the atmosphere with something so enraptured that I was temped to lie down and fall asleep on the spot.

"We're here", Antonio said. "Don't fall asleep yet!"

"Why not?" I replied. "Do we have to take a bath first?"

He pointed at one of the surrounding buildings and trotted off. One building among those that surrounded the plaza was notably eye-catching due to its particular splendor. The sand-yellow s.h.i.+ning palazzo seemed to be newly renovated, or had never been allowed to go to rack. The very neatly arranged windows with their window blinds were as big as doors. Protruding balconies harbored the supply of several flower shops; cascades of liana-like plants sounded the depths out of giant terracotta pots so that half of the facade was covered with a green curtain; and upstairs on the roof there was a terrace as big a sports ground. And no store for luxury fas.h.i.+on spoilt the lower level, as it seemed to be common around here. My astonishment just wouldn't come to an end when I noticed that there was just a single nameplate and a single bell on the door of the size of a portal. Both of course polished and bra.s.sy.

Antonio beckoned me with a nod and pointed at a little flap in the door, that was usually used for mail. So we pretended to be mail and squashed ourselves through the flap. Inside sheer Belle epoque! The entree offered finest marble and sconces in the shape of light pink petals. Then we reached a parlor, which dripped with Persian carpets, chosen antiques and sofas with leaf work flourishes. From the height of about 2 miles hung a chandelier of the size of a tractor wheel with at least thirty lamps. Through a studio window we could see a backyard that lay in darkness. From a scratched record, Verdi's resonated through the whole building like the singing of ghosts.

A square, wooden staircase led to the upper floors. But the jewel in the crown was an elevator in the rear spot of the room, covered by an artfully forged cage. It was one of those open elevators that in the beginning of the last century had been built into town houses and offered room for only a couple of people. The door was an accordion gate, and it had a delicate control console, which reminded more of a jewelry box than of a gadget to push b.u.t.tons.

"So when will it be at the butler's leisure to get us an audience with Lord Muck, Antonio", I said, still in astonishment. We stood in the mild light of Jugendstil chandeliers and let the eyes of the portrayed masteries in the paintings on the wall give us a stern look. The ladies and gentlemen were from different decades, and the variety of clothing, in which they were painted, ranged from velvet doublets to gold-embroidered tailcoats. Obviously, they were the host's ancestors. I risked a glimpse into the cage of the elevator shaft that was decorated with flower ornaments. Upstairs, it spanned three floors. Downstairs, it let straight to the cellar. I couldn't see it that accurately, as this part was completely dark.

"Prince Savoyen, not Lord Muck", Antonio said. He said down on the carpet and began to lick himself. First he devotedly licked his thin tail, which looked a little like a deft whip. "His house dates from the thirteen's century. The House of Savoy played a crucial role in the checkered history of the creation of the Italian state. The Prince is the last descendant in his line and is one of those, which nowadays are called impoverished n.o.bility. So far as this here and a dozen of equally comparable buildings in the town center can be counted as poverty."

"But it truly is some harsh climb-down if one loses the whole Toscana to this democratic riff-raff! Is there maybe also a Signora Savoyen?"

"Not really ..."

Antonio let go of his tail all of a sudden and yanked his head up.

"Aaah, there comes our hostess!"

Up the stairs a ghost of tremendous beauty appeared. She was a blue-point-burmese. With her creme-white body and the dark badges on her head, ears, tale and legs, her silky and angora-like fur and her sapphire-blue eyes she seemed to be arisen from a wonderful dream. The snow-white paws were in contrast with her smoky-gray legs like they had been drawn with a ruler.

"Samantha, tu regina della notte!" Antonio shouted with a light cheer in his voice.

"Antonio, tu bel uomo!" the pretty ghost replied and pattered down the stairs with bouncy moves. On the scarlet carpet, which was tightened with bra.s.sy hooks at each of its sides, she looked like a shot of whipped cream in tomato paste.

"Perfidious you, where have you been so long? I came to the conclusion that one of those fas.h.i.+on icons caught you, stuffed you and used you as draped jewelry on an avant-garde hat. And who is this gentleman with the wise eyes next to you?"

As soon as Samantha had reached the end of the stairs, the both of them greeted each other in the tried and tested way of the in-crowd with a cheek-to-cheek-kiss.

"This is my friend Francis", Antonio said. "Some kind of spiritual kins.h.i.+p implies that we must have gotten along really well in a former life."

With a sweet smile he turned towards me.

"And this is the legendary Samantha, Francis, the Signora of this house. She's the only one the Prince is living with."

I believed to see a hint of a smile in Samantha's beaming blue eyes when Antonio introduced me as his "new friend". Had the good Lord given me the ability to blush, in this moment I would have been redder than a volcano at its highest operating temperature. I lost my bearings so much that I would have loved to vanish into thin air.

"Nice to get to know you, Samantha", I said. "It's true, Antonio and me, we've become good friends in the last couple of hours. And with friends I mean, well, friends.h.i.+p as such, in other words, friends who share thoughts or hang out together, hanging out as friends, friends like in, lets say, having dinner maybe or sleeping, oh, uhm, well, you know sleeping as such, like in, how should I explain that, real resting, just lying down, I mean ..."

She burst out in broad laughter.

"Your friend seems to be pretty worried about the correct image of his s.e.xual orientation, Antonio."

"Yeah, that's one of his kinks. He says he's old-fas.h.i.+oned. Though I always believed us Romans to be old-fas.h.i.+oned with all this old bombast surrounding us. But no worries, actually he's a detective ..."

Antonio began to tell her about the sad circ.u.mstances of our encounter and exposed my a.s.sumptions and theories regarding the murders in every detail. Samantha was very fond of my observation skills. Even more so she was impressed by the odyssey, which had brought me to her wonderful metropolis. Although she seemed to be the blessed luxury pet of an old man, she was neither unworldly nor did she lack sympathy for her brothers and sisters outside her upper-cla.s.s home. She had already heard about the monstrosities. Therefore she encouraged me to solve this case as soon as possible and offered all she could do in order to help.

For now this help meant giving us a place to spend the night because Antonio and I just couldn't take any more. Samantha led us up the stairs to the second floor of the Palazzo, where we were told to be able to sleep without being bothered. On the way there we pa.s.sed another parlor, where we saw the man of the house. The old man with shoulder-length snow-white hair was sitting in an armchair, tossed a full wine gla.s.s in his hand and smoked a big cigar. He was surrounded by quite a couple of candelabra with burning candles, which shone on his ancestors on the wall. Savingly, he sipped his red wine and smiled to himself. An old phonograph on an ancient dresser supplied him with La Traviata, quite the appropriate music according to his mood, which fed on the glory of long gone days.

We went upstairs, wandered through dark halls, and eventually entered a room, which contained velvet cus.h.i.+ons, scratchers and loads of toys for our kind. In a nutsh.e.l.l, Samantha's can opener, rapt in the golden times of his ancestors, did more than is humanly possible in order to keep his pet happy.

I can't remember anymore how Antonio and I sank down on the cus.h.i.+ons and dozed off. No clue if it was due to pure imagination or real memory, but before I went off to dreamland, I believe to have seen Samantha's face above me. At first it radiated its familiar kindness, but before I closed my eyes, it suddenly took on a strange harshness.

In my dreamland it didn't get less strange. I found myself on another plane, again on my way to Rome. The funny thing was that, like a human, I was sitting upright on my b.u.t.t. I was even strapped! The machine was deserted, and the sunlight above the fluffy carpet of clouds shone through the plane windows with such intensity that my eyes hurt even though they were screwed up. From the speakers resounded La Traviata, rough and now and then interrupted by various scratches.

Suddenly Gustav showed up next to me. He was on his way to the bathroom, and trotted past me like a circus bear. When he noticed me, he smiled his witless smile.

"I got one of your kind at home!" he said, winked at me and moved on.

I turned my head to the right and noticed that there was another human inside the cabin except for Gustav. On the neighbor seat sat Antonio's former master. Although I had never seen him before, I recognized him instantly. He wore a pastel-colored disco suit from the Seventies with a wide lapel and flared pants. The half unb.u.t.toned s.h.i.+rt showed off his hairy chest, on which a silver cross dangled. Somewhere I had seen this before. The Rolex on his wrist, the golden cufflinks and big dark sungla.s.ses, which hid the eyes perfectly, completed the image of a Roman macho.

The flawlessly tanned man held a thick cigar in one hand, and nipped red wine from the gla.s.s in his other hand. Doing this, he smiled to himself, abstractedly, as if he wasn't above the clouds but above everything earthly. Gradually, certain uneasiness began to build up inside me. Soon enough, I found out why.

My eyes wandered past the guy next to me, sort of zoomed out of the plane's window and reached the outside. We were in the final descent; I was able to see a lot of details. In consternation, I noticed that we weren't heading towards Rome, or towards any other Italian city. For sure, here also everything was bathed in sunlight. But instead of Southern pastures, we dashed towards a skyline landscape that trended to the horizon. The sea of high-rises towered up the steal-blue sky like an artful composition of countless building blocks. Although the buildings stood side by side, every single one of them seemed to have their own distinctive face. My initial consternation turned into pure horror.

I found myself caught in a nightmare scenario which had been broadcasted around the globe billion fold, and which drew closer to me at breathtaking speed, choking me. The destination of our flight was New York, namely Manhattan. The front line of the high-rise-family, the twin towers, stared at me like long-decayed relatives that somehow came to life again. They became bigger and bigger, higher and higher, and we flew towards them relentlessly. The mirrored facades reflected the piercing light, causing a burning pain in my retina.

My pulse rate by now reminded of the rhythm of a drum solo. My whole body s.h.i.+vered and I tossed and turned in my seat. Of course I knew what was about to happen a few seconds from now.

Then I heard this sound ...

I averted my eyes from the towers and looked at the clear sky. Something black sheered up very fast. At first it was just a vibrating spot in the infinity of the blue firmament, but then I recognized Antonio, who was flying towards us like Superman or maybe Batman. While flying he also seemed to rotate in a couple of full turns. In doing so, he laughed triumphantly, as if he actually was a comic hero who was about to save the earth in the nick of time. He came closer and closer, and I saw that his wedge-shaped head had a.s.sumed the shape of missile head. With a loud crash he pierced through the plane window and landed, carefully targeted, in his master's lap.

Outside the scenario suddenly seemed like spirited away. The sun again was petting fluffy fields of clouds; harmony seemed restored. My neighbor's hair flapped wildly in the puff of air from the hole in the window. The fine gentleman hadn't let the incident interfere with his meditative mood. He still smiled mildly behind his dark sungla.s.ses, calmly nipped his red wine and now lovingly caressed his pet. I also calmed down a little due to the restored chime, although I just wasn't able to grasp the last minutes' absurdity. Yeah, when I looked at snuggled up, contentedly purring Antonio, I somewhat relaxed.

But then the lonely pa.s.senger ripped the gla.s.ses of his face, grabbed Antonio by his neck and violently, like it was a restive screw cap, turned his head towards me so I could see his profile. Instead of the ear there was a gigantic hole in the black fur. Through the open skullcap I could look right at the rosy s.h.i.+mmering brain. A flush of blood and some slimy material oozed out of it, ran down the Oriental's throat and wetted his master's pale pants. The grotesque of this sight was that Antonio's beaming green eyes still moved and that despite all this he still kept his foxy smile on his snout.

"We have too many of your kind at home, Francis!" the man said and raised his gla.s.s at me. At the same moment Antonio burst in thousand pieces in a deafening explosion.

It would hardly surprise anyone if I said that I woke up from this nightmare yelling and crying. But that wasn't the case. Instead totally reasonable sounds wakened me, though so subtle that they were audible only for the hypersensitive, hunting-tested ears of my species. Some rustling and crackling, almost unhearable and mysterious. The visions still in my mind, I looked around the dark room. Antonio had snuggled down in the cus.h.i.+on next to me and apparently s.h.i.+fted from one sleep phase to another. He neither snored nor farted like it appertained for an adonis in any situation, and of course he looked gorgeous even when he was fast asleep.

The room door stood ajar, and through it pale light shone on the floor in the shape of a fan. The strange sound also came from somewhere behind the door. I must have been sleeping for a couple of hours because forgotten were the strain of traveling and former tiredness. After a little stretching which equally lubed all of my muscles and strings, I sneaked towards the door and risked a glimpse outside.

In the matte light of an ancient carriage lamp I could see Samantha at the stair head. She stood right beside the elevator cage and nervously pattered back and forth on the marble floor. Doing this, her eyes never seemed to let go of the lower level underneath the winding staircase. Without a noise, as if I was hovering on air cus.h.i.+ons, I left the room and approached her from behind. Then I stopped at her back and reduced breathing to a minimum so that she couldn't hear me. I wanted to see what she saw, and so I also got the lower level in my sights.

The glimpse through the halfway open door to the Prince's room offered an insight, which was fairly strange, if not to say sensational. The old man had taken off his dressing gown and was changing clothes. This very fact was weird enough at so late an hour I guess it had been about three or four a clock in the morning. Even stranger though was this new clothing or should I say his costume. Of course the Prince was part of an aloof elite, and of course it wasn't that strange that a lonely old man did strange things now and then. Still, I found this whole masquerade to be as bizarre as it gets.

The Prince wore a Fin de siecle tailcoat with almost floor-length laps, white silk s.h.i.+rt and a giant bow tie. Now he only needed to put on a black cape, don a topper and ... While I imagined this, it be became reality! He grabbed a cape and a hat from a stand and completed his gothic outfit. Now he stood there like Count Dracula, apparently looking for the gla.s.s he put vampire teeth and some denture cleaner in, or for a cozy coffin with a heating blanket. However, his glazed eyes apparently seemed to be looking for something inside the room. Suddenly he rushed forward, found a vintage walking stick with a golden handle in the shape of a lion's head, slipped on some white velvet gloves and put on a black mask.

I reckoned that the Prince was heading to some costume party. From experience, parties like that usually come to an end at this late hour. I was about to slap nervous Samantha, who was still sitting in front of my nose, on her shoulder and ask her for the answer to this mystery, when suddenly there was another link added to this chain of weirdness.

The masked man left the room, entered the elevator and went downstairs. At first, I thought he was too weak to cope with the staircase to the lower level. But then I watched through the artfully forged cage how the elevator went past the ground level towards the cellar and finally disappeared in murky darkness. As if she had been waiting for this very moment, Samantha shot ahead and ran down the stairs. Startled for a moment, I quickly recovered myself, followed her and cut her off halfway.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on here, Samantha?"

"Francis, what are you doing here? Go back to sleep!"

The Blue-Point-Burmese was past all recognition. The elegance, which the light, smoky figure had just exuded a few hours ago, had given room to a churned up, terrified creature. By now, every single hair on her body stood on end like quills, and she s.h.i.+fted from one paw to another with excitement.

"You really want to tell me that, considering this hanky-panky, sleeping would be the best thing to do, Samantha?"

"You have no idea, Francis, and I don't have the time to explain the whole complex story to you here and now. You and Antonio, you're certainly not the only ones wanting to stop the cruel crimes towards our kind. But unlike you I'm a couple of steps ahead, and I'm not in the slightest mood to stand still and wait for you. So if you would excuse me now ..."

She tried to push past me and follow her Prince downstairs. But again I blocked her way.

"I won't excuse anything", I said. "You either explain to me how this whole Mardi Gras-thing is related to the murders, or I won't budge an inch. And by the way, I won't butch an inch either after you've explained everything to me!"

"I wish I hadn't let you stay the night!" she said, pushed me aside and ran down the stairs. Now that I was back in form, her white b.u.t.t with the bushy tail triggered certain emotions inside me. More than that. Suddenly the investigative jack in the box jumped out of my soul with such intensity that I was lost in rapture and so keen on the upcoming adventure that I would have loved to personally follow the Prince here and now. Just like in the good old days.

"Don't you dare come in my way", Samantha said while rus.h.i.+ng down the staircase. I had trouble keeping in step with her. By now we had reached the big salon.

"What is the princely penguin planning to do in the cellar, Samantha?"

We went around the elevator and headed further downstairs towards the bas.e.m.e.nt of the palazzo.

"Cellar? Savoyen isn't going to the cellar."

"But usually there is a cellar underneath the ground level of a house."

"Exactly, and usually there is simply nothing underneath the cellar of a house."

"I'm fed up with this! Could you maybe please give out information that I can understand without having to find the philosophers' stone first?"

Again, I forced her to stop. The twitches in her face showed me that she was to burst with excitement.

"Follow me", she said and didn't let me hold her from walking downstairs. "These houses were built at a time when Rome hadn't yet been dissected by legions of archeologists like coroners do to an Egyptian mummy. When raising theses buildings, the clients sometimes came across the mazed system of catacombs below ground that invisibly pervades this city. So they made a virtue out of necessity and had themselves built a secret door to the underground. Who knows when it might come handy, they thought."

We reached the cellar, which consisted of dark corridors and exposed brickwork, which again indicated junctions towards moldy rooms. My eyes, which according to my nature turn into low-light amplifiers in the dark, detected that the elevator shaft really let further down. Samantha crawled through the lattice and sprang down. Utterly fearlessly, like I just happen to be, I did the same. We landed on our four paws on the top of the elevator, whereat the free fall had felt like almost 10 feet to me. Through slots on the side, we squeezed ourselves inside the elevator cage and left it through the open door.

First of all I noticed the brightness. It wasn't quite the fireball, but at least it wasn't total darkness either. From somewhere, light was coming to the underground. We found ourselves in something like a vaulted cellar, in a cold facility, which was built in cyclopean structure, with stones of various shapes and sizes. Instantly the rheumatism-benefiting mold of several ages reached my nostrils, and spider webs tickled my nose. As far as I could see, several round arc-doors let from this place to the catacombs. And from there the light seemed to come.

"Some people rather live in the past, mainly those who are facing death", Samantha said and rushed towards the light. We pa.s.sed one of the round arcs and faced a corridor, which didn't seem to come to an end. Neither hide nor hair of the Prince. Burning torches rose from angular, iron baskets, which were attached to the walls at wide intervals. The guy in front of us must have lightened them.

"Does the word theosophy ring a bell, Francis?" Samantha said and set a brisk pace as usual. I panted for air in the corridor behind her.

"Well, Latin and Ancient Greek probably are the only fields I can s.h.i.+ne at." I replied. "Can't help it when you live with an archeologist who knows the languages of these sunken kingdoms like they were his own. Theo means G.o.d, Sophia means wisdom, Theosophy means the Wisdom of G.o.d or the Wisdom of G.o.ds."

"Exactly, known as the divine in man", Samantha explained, while we got lost deeper and deeper inside the tunnel. The flickering light of the torches didn't really help to keep the fear inside me within a limit. Quite the contrary, the patchwork of rough-hew pavers, that rocked back and forth in the warm s.h.i.+mmer, started to keep me from finding my bearings. Our claws, partially protruding from our toes, pawed the stony soil, so that our steps caused some eerie echoing. Afar I could see a junction, which actually raised the panic inside me. Samantha though stayed totally unaffected from the danger of our excursion and crossed the underworld like a fired bullet, which for sure wouldn't miss its target.

"Theosophy goes back to the last quarter of the 19th century. It's the attempt to create one united religion for mankind out of all existing religions. Arisen from spiritism, which back then had affected the whole world. This already had been characterized by the longing for the ability to test religious messages with scientific methods, for example the immortality of the soul and life after death. With the help of human psychics, the spiritists tried to get in contact with the netherworld and learn about its creatures. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, the German-Russian founder of Theosophy, was such a psychic. The common statements on the netherworld weren't enough for here, so she tried to bring light to the history of mankind and the cosmos. This is how they exceeded Spiritism and gave birth to Theosophy."

"Alright", I said. "But maybe we should go back and listen to La Traviata once again before we attend some resurrection of the dead?"

"I would love to laugh at it if it wasn't such a serious matter, Francis. This club is dangerous, even more than that, meanwhile they've become a mean cult. No surprise, as Theosophy is also the mother of all strange New-Age-movements and the pseudo-scientific foundation of racial ideologies. The n.a.z.is already referred to Theosophy, and Hitler was an ardent admirer of this theory. The members considered themselves to be knights of a new order. The meaning of life, according to them, is learning and reaching higher levels through incarnation, until they've become an angle-like being. Just that their believes are rather evil. It starts with seven so called root races which seem to exist in the theosophical view: the Polarians, the Hyperborean, the Lemurians, the Atlantiens, the Aryans and two that will come in future. Goes without saying that the theosophists belong to the Aryans, descending from the first kingdom which is said to have been built in the Atlantic Ocean, namely in legendary Atlantis. The rest of the humans though belong to the sub humans and aren't of great value. Considering the big refugee and foreigner issue in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, this is an explosive charge."

We now reached the first junction inside the maze. The arced ceiling divided our way into a dark side on the right and a bright side on the left, which was partially lightened by the torches. We kept on the Prince's tail and took a turn to the left.

"Yeah, it's a shame", I said. "The world becomes weirder and weirder. But hasn't it always been weird? I mean, there have always been weird cults with weird beliefs, Samantha. What's so special about this one? And what in the world is the connection to the rampant murders?"

Samantha smiled one of those askance smiles that indicated that I was too stupid to put one and one together.

"First of all, the explosive force is that this theosophy-plague has infected high-level conditions of this city by now. Politicians, members of the judiciary, leading businessmen, aristocrats, as you have noticed, mighty wealthy people and parts of the young priesthood within the Vatican. Torn between their church's strict dogmas and the temptations of an increasingly fast pulsating world, these young people have turned away from their true belief and joined up a hidden faction within the Catholic Church. They have actually become the driving force of Theosophy."

As early as after just a short while, I stopped counting the many ramifications and crossways, which, guess what, crossed our way. Also the path we had left behind us so far wasn't comprehensible to me anymore. The torches caused enough light to get some glimpses into the gaping dark holes long the sides of the corridor. Chambers, from which towering skulls with open jaws laughed at us, fluttering spider webs, behind which unspeakable things seemed to happen, and almost endless corridors full of rats, which choked off any hint of hunting instinct inside of me due to their mere majority. We also pa.s.sed burial niches with loose bones and flagstones, in which Latin or Aramaic inscriptions had been engraved. I almost feared that any minute Gustav might stagger towards us with a petrol lamp in his hand, wide eyed cackling, finally bananas from his exciting discovery.

Despite my ruffled up fur I tried to keep my composure as much as possible and hide that I was so anxious that I was close to enrich the underworld with an ecofriendly spurt.

"So can we now come to the murders, Samantha?" I said in a tone that was supposed to sound relaxed but somewhat sounded like pathetic cawing. "If these murders actually happened."

"I can't really tell you how many of these murders occurred, Francis", Samantha said. "No police in the world count dead cats. And did you ever come across a detective who wasted his working hours on what caused the death of pets? At least you don't find anything about it in the newspapers. I'm dependent on visitors like you and Antonio in order to get more information. According to what I found out recently, they seem to be ritual murders. The victims' ears have been deseeded every time, yes, I guess, this word sums up the facts of the case pretty well. And as my master lives rather hermitical and is pretty fond of occultism, I hit on the idea of nosing him a little. I started with the literature at his giant library, which he is busy reading every day. From there finding the connection was a cakewalk."

"What connection?"

"Theosophy is about incarnation, Francis. According to it, after death the soul just wanders next door; it's reborn in another body, most of the times as a perfectly new creature, an animal for example. That's when we get into the game. As our kind has been linked to witchcraft and supernatural ever since, and we are seen as the carrier of the netherworld's secrets, they share the belief that it's mostly us who carry the souls of the human ancestors. A superst.i.tion, which is pretty resistant. By sacrifice of our kind during their occult ceremonies, the theosophists therefore try to free the n.o.ble souls, get in contact with them and maybe even catch them."

The corridor descended steeply now. We were getting close to our destination, I could feel it very strongly. It got brighter and brighter, and we felt a fresh breeze. The further we went down, the better the air became. I asked myself how this underground necropolis was ventilated. But I didn't forget to ask the most important of the questions I wanted to ask Samantha.