"It's true, sir. With a cup of tea. The Countess was playing the piano."
"What countess?" the man asked, interrupting me. "The countess. The woman who was poisoned."
"The woman in question was no countess."
"Come off it. You too are one of those determined to hide the facts in this case."
"This was no countess or duchess, but simply the woman who did my laundry for me, the wife of the pointsman at Madrid North station."
"A laundress, eh?" I said roguishly. "You won't make me swallow that one."
The man and his wife looked at me quizzically and muttered some words to each other. From a gesture that I saw the woman make I understood that she had formed the deep conviction I was drunk. I opted not to argue and said nothing, content to despise such an irreverent supposition in silence as befits great souls. My anxiety knew no bounds. The Countess was not absent for a moment from my thoughts and she had started to interest me by reason of her sinister end as if all that had not been a morbid expression of my own impulse to fantasize, forged by successive visions and conversations. Finally, to understand to what extreme my madness carried me, I am going to relate the ultimate occurrence on this journey of mine. I shall say with what extravagance I put an end to the painful combat of my understanding caught in a battle with an army of shadows.
The tram was entering the calle de Serrano when I chanced to look through the window opposite where I was sitting into the street, weakly lit by street lights, and I saw a man go by. I shouted with surprise and foolishly exclaimed the following:
"There he goes. It's him, Mudarra, the principal author of so many crimes."
I ordered the tram to stop and alighted or rather jumped through the door, colliding with the feet and legs of the passengers. I descended to the street and ran after that man, shouting: