ven amongst small children you can find sentiments of camaraderie, fierce loyalty, arch enemies and any kind of social interaction you would expect from adults. And then there is Julius. Julius, who's full name is Julius Struthers, is a small kid with large ambitions. He rallies the urchins around him, organizes them in small armies and in general treats them as his personal arsenal of mayhem. The boy is good, he knows how to lead even though he's only 10 years old. True, he operates his improvised army on rations of candy and promises of anything an urchin's little mind can conceive. And more. Fame and fortune means nothing to these scrawny dirty roaches. Food they need, alcohol they prefer and in between they like to cause trouble from one end of Fleet Street to the other. Julius is their trouble master and they trust him to organize the most splendid mischief this side of London has ever seen. And he does. His plans are elaborate. Some of the stunts pulled would make professor Moriarty blush and leave Holmes in total despair at home sucking his pipe. Julius understands the power of a pack of urchins behaving as urchins do. If you were to spot a man leaning against a lamppost head ducked deep in the collar of his coat, staring at a shop window, you would draw the conclusion that this man is up to no good. Seeing an urchin do the same thing you would perhaps draw the same conclusion that the little tike is up to no good, and you would be right. But that's expected from them and that's where Julius came in.

ave you ever stood on the edge of your doorstep looking back at your home and wondered if you could leave it all behind in a flash? Have you ever? Perhaps there will never be such a situation, perhaps you are blessed. Or perhaps you want this desperately to happen but the occasion hasn’t presented itself. There is finality to this possibility, a chance things might turn out much better. There is a chance, a chance you will never be the same again. Maybe you have done this very thing countless times and you wonder what could possibly be extraordinary about this thought. However. Have you ever entered your home and thought: everything is gone, nothing is the same anymore, this is not mine, and there is nothing here anymore that belongs to me. Today was such a day. One could say: I left; I left all that I knew behind. One could say poppycock and argue nothing changed. Everything is still there. The store, the clocks, the watches, the endless ticking and chiming. The small library crammed full of books, most of which I will never read. Nothing perceivably different can be observed, not even with the most powerful magnifying glass. And yet, and yet everything is different. I look around and can’t connect with a single item I can see, touch, hear and smell. The delicate tools I’ve used for more than a year now are meaningless. They exist in a world that is physical yes, but could have not been further away from my reality. Why these vague and utterly diabolical hints at the grotesque, the unimaginable? Have I been robbed of all my senses? Are the walls now talking to me and do I hear voices around me telling me the world has ended? No, nothing of the sort. I will, with great difficulty recall and retell the events that have passed ever since my old mentor Mr. Hubbard opened the trap door leading down to the phantasmagorical Bibliotheca Echidna. Having only been there once, and only briefly, I was not much impressed other than wonder who and why had created such an elaborate underground palace of private entertainment. For that is what I thought it was then, a manifestation of minds too curious to be satisfied with trivial mechanisms. Perhaps the richly decorated underground lobby was nothing more than an even more exclusive replica of one of the numerous gentlemen’s clubs that were ever so popular these days. Granted, I was curious then, but I did not expect the inhabitants of this underground labyrinth were serious, deadly serious.

Forgive me, dear reader; it has not been long since I emerged, physically unscathed yes, but mentally in shambles. You will permit me to rest a while before I commit to paper all that I have seen. Currently I would not be able to describe by any means those things and people I encountered. Those endlessly moving paintings of Dr. Halter, whose understanding of light and dark can not be put into words alone. How will I convey the depths one plunges into after just one brief glance? Light, yes, light, that is the same at least. Down there, light takes on a different form. It is alive and has its own mind and agenda, it wants to reign and attach itself to everything. It fights the dark but can not win. That is what Dr. Halter understood. His paintings only work there, they must be observed in a room with light made for just one painting, for one purpose. Perhaps this is true for all that I saw and lived through down there: it can only exist there. But what does that leave me? I have the light of above, of the real natural sky. The light that is still mine, that thing that has remained the same since I left. Perhaps the inspector can help. Unlike myself, a person who is now allowed below beyond the lobby, the inspector can not go into Echidna beyond the doors. This is most fortunate; perhaps he can help understand why things are different down there. He has not been infected; he has never been that deep. But what am I saying, how can you, dear reader, follow all this. I speak in riddles and riddles not even clear to myself. We will meet again, yes we shall indeed and maybe then I can elaborate. Eternally tired. Must sleep until this mental fever is no longer raging in my brain. For now I bid you a good day.