"The developments that came afterward were basically due to a desire for knowledge. What I did to your colleague, or to be more accurate, to his chest, was only the natural reaction of a simple person in a situation of self-defense."
The chairman cut me off, "But you stated immediately that he had not attacked you or tried to harm you."
"That's true," I said, "but he carried a revolver. Therefore, from the beginning there was an implied threat of violence. It is certain that if I had not done away with him quickly, he would never have left me in peace. I don't want to defend my position. What I do desire is that you take into consideration the state of my nerves and mind and the fact that I didn't sleep at all while he was with me, not to mention how he dogged my every step."
Staring at me with his merciless light-colored eyes, the Blond leaned toward me and said, "So you want us to buy this picture of a well-intentioned, innocent man you're trying to sell us?"
As I had noticed, he always used-intentionallythe distinctive idioms of the Committee's language. These were expressions which I admired.
I said, "I'm not selling anything, although today anything can be bought and sold, as the study I undertook on the Doctor proved to me. I am simply stating the truth."
He laughed derisively, "Perhaps you think us naive. You must know that from the first moment you stood before us, we realized that you say one thing and think another. Your answers to the questions we posed were pat and precise, which aroused our suspicions.
"If there was one of us who still wavered, he came to a decision when you used the assigned study as a pretext for prying into the Doctor's past and for collecting information on him. You insisted on continuing this study in spite of the various warnings sent your way."
He now directed himself to the Committee members, "All the evidence confirms that we are facing a great conspiracy. For some time its threads have been woven very skillfully and maliciously. The attack on the deceased's life is nothing but another thread in the tapestry."
I got very upset at what the Blond said. Matters were moving in a surprising direction that had not occurred to me, and the result could only be extremely damaging to my position.
Laughing and making every attempt to appear innocent and congenial, not to mention ingenuous, I quickly said, "Your honor possesses an active imagination. Surely you don't take what you say seriously?"
He shot back angrily, "Deviousness won't do you any good. "
"I assure you I'm innocent."
"Do you also retract your confession?" he asked in reproof.
I replied, "I'm not trying to exonerate myself… I'm trying to say there is no plot, or if there is, then I don't know about it."
He said triumphantly, "Aha, so you do acknowledge the existence of a plot."
Frightened, I said, "Never. I only wanted to affirm once again. "
The Blond signaled to one of the members seated at the end of the table, who then took out a tape recorder and placed it on top of the table.
The Blond addressed the Committee members, "I will now show you, your honors, how, with his own tongue, he admitted the existence of his accomplices."
The member turned on the tape recorder. I heard a strange noise which I soon identified as water falling onto a hard surface. Then a man spoke, expressing his surprise at the black color of the water. I recognized Stubby's voice and began to tremble.
I heard my voice say, "You must use a water filter."
Stubby's voice followed, surprised, "Yes, how did you know?"
And finally my voice, "I have learned many things recently."
The Blond signaled the operator, who turned the recorder off and addressed me scornfully, "Isn't this your voice?"
"Certainly… But that doesn't mean…"
He didn't let me continue, but shouted, "How did you come to know this bit of information about our companion that we ourselves didn't know unless you had accomplices who supplied you with information?"
The old maid entered the conversation, "This plot didn't necessarily exist from the beginning. Maybe it was hatched later. His statement that he had learned many things recently indicates this."
She went on to address me, "It would be better for you, because it would mean that your intentions were innocent in the beginning, but that you fell under the influence of deviants, destructive elements. If you tell us their names, it might go a long way toward mitigating the consequences for you."
I wrung my hands hopelessly and said in a voice I tried to make sincere, "Please believe me. Everything happened entirely by chance."
One of the members asked, "Didn't someone provide the knife you used?"
"Absolutely not," I answered, "It was just there-as I stated before-in the kitchen."
Another member asked me, "How did you get to know the things you hinted at?"
"From the newspapers."
The member laughed and looked at his companions as though he did not believe the papers could be a source of information.
I explained, "My research on the Doctor forced me to consult the issues from a twenty-five-year period. This enabled me to examine facts and events in context and arrive at valuable conclusions which made it easy for me to explain many contemporary phenomena."
Ore of the officers suddenly leaned forward and said, "Are you going to tell us about these `phenomena' as you call them?"
Exlausted, I replied, "In view of the sophisticated devices at your disposal, I believe that my answer to this question, which was previously posed by the deceased, is contained in the papers before you."
He leafed through several papers in front of himself and said, "Of course, of course. Here we have um… mental illness and the Egyptian cigarette… tap water… foreign medicines and Coca-Cola. But you haven't explained why you consider these phenomena and these alone worthy of attention."
"I never said that. I cited them as supporting evidence. The phenomena are infinite."
"You also avoided discussing what you discovered about them, as when you hinted at the relationship between them without explaining what you meant by that."
I thought quickly until I reached a decision. Finally recognizing that complete honesty and frankness were the safest means of defense, I said, "I will speak to you openly in order to demonstrate my true intentions and inner feelings. Actually, on one hand, I am the victim of my own ambition, and, on the other, of a passion for knowledge. If it had not been for this latter trait, I would not be in this plight now."
The officer interrupted me, "It would be better to get right to the point."
I said, "I only wanted to explain how I was led to think about these phenomena and to search for an explanation for them. However, as I gathered information, I soon noticed that treating one in isolation would not lead me anywhere. The same result awaited me if, without having a sound method of research, I took them as a unit, because of the mutual relations between them.
"Thus I arrived at a starting point-how to determine a method suitable to explain all the phenomena separately and in relationship to each other."
They pricked up their ears. I understood I had fully aroused their curiosity, so I continued, "I devoted myself to trying out all the familiar approaches without getting anywhere. That very day I was thinking about this when I said to myself, `The problem with these phenomena and mysteries is that they are not related to just one facet of life, but extend through diverse facets. This means that multiplicity is the common denominator.'
"Here I remembered one of the important conclu- sions I had arrived at in my research on the Doctor, that is, his participation in the development of the Arabic language by coining new meanings from common words, among them the unique term `diversification.' In this I found my goal."