His fingers stroked her cheek. With a shudder, she turned her head aside, the only movement she was capable of.
He smiled. “I am not going to tell you where you are, nor what I intend to do with you.”
“Who are you?”
“Now then.” He wagged his finger playfully at her. “You had promised to ask intelligent questions. That is not an intelligent question.”
“You killed Gerhard Morart.”
“I killed him?” The stranger raised his brows in mock amazement. “I can remember having given him a push. Is it my fault he had made the scaffolding so narrow?”
“And you killed that girl, the girl in Berlich,” she said. “Why do you do things like that?”
“She was in the way when I took aim.”
“Who will be the next one in your way?” she whispered.
“That’s enough questions, Richmodis.” He spread his hands wide. “I can’t know everything. Life’s little surprises come all unexpected. As far as I’m concerned, you can live to be a hundred.”
She couldn’t repress a cough. A stab of pain went through her lungs. “And what do I have to do to earn that?”
“Nothing.” He winked at her, as if they were old friends, and brought out the gag again. “You must excuse me if I can’t continue our little conversation. I have to go. I have important business to see to and need a little rest. A holy work”—he laughed—“as someone might put it who was foolish enough to believe in God.”
It was strange, but for all that she hated and loathed him, for all the fear she had of him, the idea that he might leave her alone in this cold, terrible place seemed even worse.
“Who says God does not exist?” she asked hastily.
He paused and gave her a thoughtful look. “An intelligent question. Prove He exists.”
“No. You prove He doesn’t exist.”
She had listened to enough of this kind of discussion between Goddert and Jaspar. Suddenly a disputation seemed the one possible bridge to the stranger.
He came closer. So close she could feel his breath on her face.
“Prove to me that God doesn’t exist,” Richmodis repeated, her voice quavering.
“I could do that,” he said quietly, “but you wouldn’t like it.”
“Just because I’m a woman?” she hissed. “Gerhard’s murderer is not usually so softhearted.”
A frown appeared on his forehead. “There’s nothing personal about this,” he said. Oddly enough, it sounded as if he meant it.
“There isn’t? That’s all right, then, I suppose.”
“What I am doing, I am doing for a purpose. I don’t take pleasure in killing people, but it doesn’t bother me either. I have accepted a commission in the course of which the deaths of several people became necessary, that’s all.”
“That’s not everything by a long shot, from what I hear.”
“Remember what killed the cat, Richmodis. I’m going now.”
“Why do you make people suffer so much?”
He shook his head. “It is not my fault if people suffer. I bear no responsibility for their deaths. How many people die in whatever manner doesn’t concern me. It doesn’t make any difference. The world is pointless and it will stay that way, with or without humans.”
Fury welled up inside her. “How can you be so cynical? Every human life is sacred; every human being was created by God for a purpose.”
“God does not exist.”
“Then prove it.”
“No.”
“Because you can’t.”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Prove it!”
“Why?” The look he gave her was almost pitying. “I know He doesn’t exist, but you have no right to demand I prove He doesn’t. If you insist on thinking I won’t because I can’t, I can live with that. You can believe what you like as far as I’m concerned.”
He lifted up the gag.
I’m losing him, thought Richmodis. I must learn as much as I can about him. There must be a spark of feeling somewhere inside him. “What did they do to you to make you like this?” she asked, surprised at her own question.
The expression froze on his face.
For a brief moment Richmodis thought she had managed to get through to him. Then suddenly he smiled again. “Nice try,” he said with a mixture of mockery and admiration, then quickly stuffed the gag between her teeth, turned, and headed for the door, his cloak swirling. “Unfortunately not quite good enough. Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I might even let you go. You’re safe here. Now neither the Fox nor your uncle will dare go around spreading stories about a supposed murder.”
The hinges creaked as he opened the door. Richmodis had a brief view of a courtyard with a wall beyond.
“Behave yourself, like a well-brought-up girl should.” In the fading light of the late afternoon he was just a shadow, a figment of the imagination, a bad dream. “And if you need proof of the complete absence of Divine Providence and the pointlessness of human existence, just think of me. One of millions.”
The door slammed shut behind him. She was alone with the rats.
Urquhart slumped back against the wall of the abandoned warehouse and closed his eyes. The images were threatening to return. He felt himself being dragged down into the red whirlpool of memories from which waves of sound rose up toward him, those strangely shrill tones he would never have thought a human being capable of producing.
No! That is not me, he told himself. They are someone else’s memories. I have no history.
His muscles relaxed.
The servant who had described the way to the old warehouse had also given him a message that told him that Jaspar and the Fox had es-caped from Little St. Martin’s. Urquhart had expected it. He congratulated himself on the success of his visit to Severinstraße. It didn’t matter that they had got away. Not in the least. They could call off the search for them.
He considered briefly whether it would not be better to kill the woman now. He was going to kill her anyway, when it was all over, so why not now? No, it made better sense to keep her alive for the moment. He would need her to entice Jaspar and the Fox into his trap. And anyone else who had heard their story. He would arrange to hand over the hostage tomorrow evening. Once he had them all there, he could kill them one by one and set the building on fire. A few charred skeletons would be found. An accident, that would be all.
Assuming it would be of any importance after what was due to happen on the morrow.
He observed the long shadows of the battlements in the courtyard. They were creeping toward the building as if they were about to grasp it. The black fingers of fate, quite poetic! Perhaps he should write poems. By now he had accumulated so much wealth that he could devote the rest of his life to the only worthwhile occupation—enjoyment. Without regret or remorse, without limits, without purpose or plan, without feelings of guilt, without a single thought for the past or future. His pleasures would be boundless, his indulgence endless, and the images would fade for good and never return. Perhaps he would set himself up as a scholar and build a palace of wisdom with a court that could become the Santiago de Compostella of philosophical inquiry, to which the greatest intellects of Christendom would make pilgrimage. He would encourage bold speculation and then amuse himself royally at the expense of the fools who sought the meaning of life. He would encourage them and then drop them at the decisive moment. He would prove that God did not exist, nor anything similar to Him, that the world was just a black abyss in which nothing was worth aiming for apart from the enjoyment of the moment, with no regard for morality, obligation, or virtue. He would even demonstrate the meaninglessness of this ridiculous nominalism since there was no reality at all behind general concepts, no good, no evil, nothing.