The Mistery of Belicena Villca hurriedly approached me and made me present " his deepest condolences ", as it was usual . And then he elaborated on the reasons that had decided him to attend the funeral , speaking in his particular style , simple and frank .
– Dr . Siegnagel , this case , as you can imagine , has moved the Province : we all wish to apprehend the insane murderers of your family . But this matter is outside my jurisdiction this time : I am now a Commissioner of the Investigations Department , but not the Head of the Division . With this clarification I want to assure you that I did not come here as a police officer but as a friend . Do you understand me , Dr .?
I nodded not understanding where I wanted to go . Uncle Kurt was next to me and looked curiously at Commissioner Maidana .
– Then I ' ll get to the point : are you in trouble ? Do you need some kind of help ? Whatever it is , don ' t hesitate to trust me . I have friendly people , brave and loyal , men proven in the anti-subversive struggle , who would be willing to act , say outside the regulations , to settle accounts with the Jews or whoever is chasing you .
Uncle Kurt frowned and for a moment I was afraid he would throw one of his uproarious laughs ; but he was too hurt for it and instead he smiled mercifully . I , for my part , was irritated and astounded ; irritated not for Maidana ' s offer , which I appreciated because , although absurd , it was sincere , but for having to live through all that amazing situation , including the funeral ; and astounded , because I did not imagine how the officer had come to the conclusion that I needed that kind of help .
– You do not respond to me ? – he said dismayed – Or is it that you don ' t trust me ? But I know that you are being persecuted , even if you deny it . It is my profession to discover these things . I have known since yesterday , when I received the report on what happened in Cerrillos . Then I remembered you and the case of the sick Belicena Villca . Making a parenthesis , I will confess now that you were right in stating that there was a dark point in this crime : that point was never cleared ; but it is also true that nobody was interested in clarifying it , and that the Police have more important emergencies to attend to with the money of the taxpayers . I know !: you don ' t care about that ; You want to see Justice triumph ; you are very interested in Belicena Villca because the case touched you closely . But we have to attend hundreds of cases and that was just one more , one that , I repeat , nobody was interested in . I am telling you this because in a certain way I agree with you Dr . Take it that way ! I really wanted to bury that case because it had no importance But now I know that it is not so ! – What do you mean ? --I asked reluctantly . – Well , closing the parenthesis that I opened to apologize to you , it happens that this morning I tried to locate you in the Neuropsychiatric Hospital where you worked and there they informed me that you resigned two months ago , during your vacation . I then called the University and found out that you requested your withdrawal from the subjects you were studying and dropped out of medical residency . All very stranger acts to proceed from someone so ... normal ?... as you . It was then , at mid-morning , that I decided to take the day off and dedicate myself to doing a little research on my own . So I found out that you sold your apartment of Cerro San Bernardo without informing anyone of your new address ; and that your friends got the news from your parents that you “ investigated on your own an archaeological site in Catamarca ”; all very vague , Dr . Siegnagel . Closed bank accounts , change of address , abandonment of work , studies , friendships : it would seem that they are the acts of one who wishes to erase his footsteps , of someone who flees . But you are not a criminal , you did not have motives or enemies that forced you to flee two months ago . Or is it that then the mysterious enemies arose ?
Yes , Dr . Siegnagel . I gave in a bit in my position and connected your strange conduct with the crime of the Neuropsychiatric Hospital . " It could be that there was something else , something that forced the Dr . to flee ”, I said to myself , and I gave myself to rereading the file on the murder of Belicena Villca . And what do I discover ? That we didn ' t pay the least attention to the Jewish medals that the deadly rope had on its ends . I wanted to know , as soon as possible , what the inscriptions said and , without respecting the siesta , I went to the University and investigated in a labyrinthine section , I think it was called the Department of Philology , until I came across an incredible character called " Professor Ramírez ". And what does Dr . Ramírez tell me ? Well , the poor man fled when he found out that I was a policeman and when he saw the photos of the medals . I had to persuade him for hours to speak . It turned out , he knew you very well . That you had consulted him three months ago on the same inscriptions , but without mentioning the crime ( you did well , because when he knew about it , his mouth was automatically closed ). And that behind all this there is an amazing story in which we have , as I said Dr . Siegnagel , the damn Jews .
Yes ; yes . I know what you think . That I do not know how to distinguish the Druids from the Jews , nor am I able to understand the universal structure of the Synarchy . You , like every German , thinks
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