A strong odor caught in everyone’s throat and the smoke made it too hard to see exactly what was going on. In the bitter haze, the spectators coughed like mad. Some started spitting; others backed away, still screaming “Fire!” calling for the firemen... But all of them, for an instant, thought that they had seen the shape of a woman at the heart of the blaze.
Gerard and Patrick had no doubt about it. It was over her that they were fighting; she who was burning up in this inferno that had come out of nowhere—Mephista!
CHAPTER XI
In no time at all, a plan of attack was formulated. Teddy Verano was not the type to accept adversity passively, either from natural stubbornness or speculative philosophy. Therefore, while bawling out the neighbors, who were busy panicking, he managed to find two or three reasonable men and one or two energetic women who, with no better alternative, formed a human chain to carry water in various receptacles to contain the weird fire before the firemen arrived. On seeing this, after being shouted at by his stepfather, Gerard ran into the bathroom and grabbed a bowl to use against the terrible blaze.
All this took several minutes. Meanwhile, Patrick Florent, completely stunned, was of no use at all. Huddled on the edge of the couch, gaping and wild-eyed, he stared at the disaster through the smoke that became thicker and more irritating than ever.
“The window! Gerard, open the window! We’re all going to suffocate!”
Gerard, who had not thought of this, quickly obeyed. A fresh breeze cleared some of the air in the apartment and the landing, where the improvised firemen were helping Teddy Verano. Without him, they would have given in to dumb panic and done nothing. At his urging, they had, in no time at all, saved their building. Because, in Patrick Florent’s apartment, it was a real disaster.
The walls, ceiling and door had been licked by the flames and were covered with ominous black streaks. The carpet was destroyed, as well as the drapes and upholstery. On the floor, just a few feet away from the entrance, lay some unspeakable thing that Teddy Verano was now examining with curiosity.
Water was dripping everywhere, ruining the furniture and knickknacks, damaging what the fire had not wrecked, or had barely touched.
Most importantly, in the middle of the room, lay the remains of the presence of Mephista. This was what Verano was examining, and what Patrick was staring at, dumbfounded.
Now that the smoke was clearing, after the flames had died down under the bucketfuls of water, Gerard was also looking at the thing with growing bewilderment.
Teddy Verano now walked around the huge, thick, dark puddle, almost choking on the smell that emanated from it. Of course, after fighting the fire, the neighbors were in no mood to leave the place, so everyone had gathered on the threshold, trying to see inside. Especially since the detective himself was already inside, trying to walk around (as best he could) the huge, shapeless, liquefied, still smoldering, fire-blackened thing on the floor.
The panicky concierge shouted that the firemen were on their say. Teddy Verano spoke calmly, thinking of something else:
“It’s a little too late.”
“I also called the police.”
“Excellent idea.”
Then he stared down at the remains of the evil seductress and murmured:
“I wonder how I’m going to explain this to my friend Farnese?” He laughed. “Explain what? As if I understood a thing myself…”
The gooey puddle was starting to harden. There were gallons of it. That was what had spontaneously combusted as often happens around a fire. Gerard said a little later that he had seen a kind of spark at the very beginning and heard a faint crackling. But he wanted to know the truth as well. Teddy was like his soothsayer, and so he went to him.
“What does all this mean? What does it really mean, Teddy?”
Teddy Verano looked at him for a minute without answering. Then, he took a deep breath and said:
“My poor boy, if only I knew.”
He opened his mouth to say something else but Gerard waited in vain. Teddy Verano’s hazel eyes had just sparkled.
“Did you see something, Teddy?”
Teddy Verano had left Gerard’s side, kneeled down and taken out his handkerchief. He picked up an object.
“A knife,” he stated. “It’s still hot… damn, with this blaze…”
“A knife, Teddy? Do you mean...?”
The detective’s face wrinkled a little.
“No doubt about it, my boy. This knife was meant to kill this young man. And it’s this same weapon that killed Jacques Lemoulin and Daniel the projectionist.”
“The fingerprints…”
Teddy held the knife in his handkerchief, stood up and faced his stepson.
“We’ll give it to Chief Farnese. He’ll do what’s necessary.”
“But what about the fingerprints… What if they belong to…”
“Hush!”
Teddy Verano slipped the wrapped weapon into his pocket, but Gerard was not done asking questions.
“While waiting for the firemen… and the police… tell me what might have happened here.”
“You know better than I. You were here.”
“Me? Yes, of course… but then… What does this mean? Where is she? I’m sure she didn’t go out through the door. Besides, you were on the other side. And she didn’t jump out the window…”
The other tenants, one by one, invaded the apartment, offering a thousand theories about the origin of the weird fire that left behind a huge puddle of black wax, now almost completely hard and even cold.
One lady whispered that it must be Martians. A serious gentleman blamed some fifth column of the far right.
Teddy and Gerard were conversing by the window. All of a sudden, Patrick snapped out of his stupor and started swearing at everyone for being in his home, a home that was, now, almost inhabitable. He yelled and screamed. Teddy and Gerard came over as a neighbor who seemed to know him spoke kindly, trying to calm him down. She might have succeeded had he not seen Gerard.
He became livid and jumped at his throat.
“You wretch! You’re the one who killed her! She was here… my beloved. You burned her. You…”
“Help me, quick!”
Patrick was on the verge of a breakdown. He howled and foamed at the mouth. Teddy, helped by Gerard and a strong neighbor, carried the poor boy into the bathroom. Quickly, with the help of his assistants, he pulled off Patrick’s shirt and bent his neck under the bathtub faucet. The ice-cold water poured over the young man, lashed him, stung him and cut off his mad ranting.
Two minutes later, they felt him droop in their hands. They sat him on a chair and Teddy Verano rubbed his face hard and fast with a towel. He let him breathe a minute, then what he was expecting happened: Patrick Florent broke down in tears.
Some of the men frowned on this, believing that “real men don’t cry.” The women, however, were more sympathetic.
“I want you all to leave us alone,” said Teddy Verano to the crowd. “I need to ask this young man some questions.”
The concierge squeezed through the crowd.
“Say, fella—what right do you have to give orders around here?”
In the distance, they could hear the wailing sirens of the fire engines.
“Look,” Teddy Verano said with his charming smile, “you go and explain everything to the officials. You called them so you can be the first to talk to them. The police will be here soon, so I advise you to do what’s necessary.”
He spoke with such authority that the concierge, concerned by the approaching sirens, let himself be pushed out of the room. Teddy Verano remained there, with Patrick still sobbing, Gerard, and the helpful neighbor.
“Stay with us, Monsieur,” he asked the man. “You can be a witness that I’m doing no harm… while waiting for the police chief who will certainly arrive soon. OK, now, it’s just us, Patrick.”
“Edwige… Edwige,” the young man mumbled, “She… she burned.”
“Of course not, my boy, not a scratch. Rest assured your idol, the beautiful Mademoiselle Hossegor, is at home right now, and I believe she’s fit as a fiddle. Well, at least she has no burns.”
Patrick looked up and shouted:
“But she was here… she burned. I saw her!”
“No. There really was a fire, but Edwige Hossegor was not in it.”
“But she was here, I tell you! I saw her. I was…”
He stopped short, sensing the indecency of what he was about to confess.
“Go on,” Teddy Verano said cheerfully. “You were holding her in your arms. You were kissing her, fondling her… and she responded. Even more remarkable, she was the one who seduced you. Don’t tell me it’s not true.”
“Yes. So, you knew…”
“I knew that this woman was coming here. Lucky for you, Gerard here arrived on time to save your life.”
“Save me? You mean to ay… Edwige Hossegor would have killed me?”
“That was not Edwige Hossegor.”
“It was another woman,” Gerard explained.
“You want in on this. Go right ahead. Explain to me and to Patrick and to this gentleman, our witness, where this woman went, since you think there was a woman here.”
Gerard was stunned. He swallowed hard.
“Come on, Teddy, I’m not a complete idiot…”
“You say there was a woman here? And she burned? OK then! I’m going to tell you, my boy, when you burn a body, whether Edwige Hossegor’s or any other, it leaves traces… and not traces of wax. Do you understand?”
“Yes… It looks like wax... I know.”
“Another thing. Her clothes. If they went up in flames, where are the remains? Because, as you know, even the synthetic tissue that women wear, nylon and stuff, leave traces. And I’m sure that we saw nothing but something that looks like wax in this apartment.”
“Teddy… I’m afraid of understanding… Do you think that, maybe, it was a wax doll?”
“Why not?”
“But I saw her. She walked, she talked, she… Go on, ask Patrick. When a guy holds a woman in her arms, he knows perfectly well if she’s a real woman or a doll.”
“Yes. Under certain conditions. I’ll explain later.”
“What are you thinking? A hallucination? An illusion? OK, Verano, I’m going to ask you if what you put in your pocket to give to Chief Farnese was an illusion or not.”
“Bravo! Gerard, you’re making progress in logic. So we agree. The knife, right? It’s real. And it would have killed off this young man on the spot… like the two other victims of Mephista.”
“So it was Mephista and not Edwige.”
“Have you ever doubted the duality of this person?”
“No, of course not.”
“At this moment, Edwige Hossegor is sleeping. Or rather, she’s in a cataleptic state at Baron Tragny’s house.”
“I understand less and less. Hold on… You mentioned a ghost, a kind of vision of Edwige…”
“Here we go.”
“Ghosts—characters like that, which seem to come out of a movie, right off the screen, should have trouble wielding a knife.”
“And yet, this knife exists.”
“Ah Teddy, what a pain! You don’t want to tell me what you know…” said Gerard, waving his hands in frustration.
“Only if I knew more.”
“I thought of something else. I saw her enter the building.”
“The woman or the ghost?”
“Look, have you ever seen a ghost turn on the light to go up the stairs?” asked Gerard, perking up. “Well, Mephista, since there is a Mephista, did exactly that.”
“A very real, even realistic action. Like she did, quite convincingly, to prove her femininity to Patrick Florent. And to kill him, in an equally realistic way. We’re becoming very rational folk now, don’t you think?”
“If I get anything in all this…” the neighbor, who was still present, started.
“Don’t worry yourself, Monsieur,” said Teddy Verano. “We’ve been tracking Mephista since her first manifestation and we still don’t understand the truth about her. At least, not yet. But it’ll come. Anyway, Gerard, I notice that Mephista is always acting like a real woman, even though she’s not. To fool anyone she meets. She didn’t come up the stairs in the dark, although I’m sure the light was completely useless for her.”
“Ah-ha!” Gerard shouted. “So she’s not a real woman?”
Their conversation was interrupted because there was suddenly a lot of noise in the apartment. The firemen had arrived. The police showed up soon afterward. Teddy Verano and Gerard had to make long reports on the strange events that had played out in Patrick Florent’s apartment.
The detective eventually managed to whisper to his stepson:
“Woman or not, here just like at Tragny’s house, like at the Champs-Elysées, like at Lemoulin’s, I’m absolutely sure that she didn’t come alone.”
CHAPTER XII
“We thought it’d be good,” Chief Farnese began, “to keep you up-to-date.”
“As it should be,” Edwige Hossegor said sharply.
She was very pale, still feeling the effects of her unconscious hours that were as inexplicable as the earlier ones. Dr. Sorbier had practically not left her side since Eva had telephoned him the day before.
Edwige had woken up in the middle of the night. She had described her nightmare in which there were a lot of flames, a sharp knife and—she had admitted rather reluctantly—a clearly erotic aspect.
The next day, around 5 p.m., at Baron Tragny’s house, Teddy Verano and Chief Farnese had talked together for a long time. The detective and his stepson had given Farnese a detailed account of their adventure in Patrick Florent’s apartment, which was, at least for the moment, inhabitable.
Patrick was also supposed to make a statement, but his good faith was doubted by no one, and the game he had been playing, sending the clumsy, tender notes with the red roses while staying anonymous, was explained perfectly well by his youth and sensitivity that pushed him to focus his budding amorous passion on Edwige, the unreachable actress.
What was not explained, however, was what had happened later. Farnese was still trying to figure out. He had called Tragny, who had talked with Edwige as well as the consulting physician, and given his approval for the meeting.
In the big salon, surrounding the star of the O.R.T.F., several people had gathered. There were, of course, the two hosts, Robert Tragny and Edwige Hossegor. Two other regulars to the house stood nearby. First, Eva Mellion, public relations, and Dr. Sorbier, who was working with Professor Gelor to find a way to prevent any future fainting fits that were so dangerous to the star. Farnese was there, obviously, as well as Teddy Verano. Gerard Parmier, officially introduced as his stepfather’s assistant, had also been asked to join them. Last but not least was the young man being confounded by one surprise after another, Patrick Florent.
The poor boy was staying in a furnished apartment near his ruined studio and looked very embarrassed to be present there with his idol. Because, this time, there was no mistake possible; the terrible imposture was over. This really was Edwige Hossegor, in flesh and blood, who had given him the sweetest welcome, putting him at ease with a smile and enough kindness and simplicity that he was no longer so unhappy.
Sometimes, he blushed when he looked at her. Could he forget that, only the night before, under pretty extraordinary circumstances, he had held her in his arms—or so he thought!—and she had spared no affection, which, according to the secrets dragged out of him by Farnese and Verano, bordered on indecency?
For the two detectives, it was one more piece of evidence. There had been the fake Edwige, a fake that left no trace but a pile of wax, according to the laboratory analysis by the police.
“Mesdames and messieurs,” Farnese began, “I brought you here so we can try, all together, to get to the truth. I’ll tell you right away that our methods as police officers are a little
different than those of my friend Verano. He believes in things… let’s say, things that could be qualified as impossible…”
“Or invisible,” the hazel-eyed detective corrected kindly.
“As you wish. But in my line of work, I can’t waste time on nonsense. My job is to catch criminals. To track them down and put them behind bars. That’s the case… well, it will be the case with this outlandish Mephista who recklessly pretends to impersonate Mademoiselle Hossegor.”
He paused, coughed.
“What I’ve just said will come as no surprise, but it’s serious. Very serious. Even more so because it’s inexplicable. No, Verano, don’t laugh. Inexplicable now doesn’t mean inexplicable forever. There is always a time in these mysterious investigations when a rational explanation clears up what at first looked completely baffling.”
“I never said, Chief, that the mysterious forces that influence the world are irrational. They just are, period.”
Farnese snapped his fingers in annoyance.
“Please. I respect the work you’ve done, very often outside our investigations, but sometimes it’s been quite nonsensical.”
“Thank you for the ‘sometimes’,” Verano mumbled under his breath.
Farnese inferred more than he heard.
“So, what was I saying? Ah, yes! The drama… From the pretty ludicrous drama last night, there are two pieces of evidence. First, the pounds of melted wax being analyzed, but whose initial examination appears to conclude it’s pure beeswax.”
“Interesting,” Teddy said.
“The second piece of evidence is more troubling. I’m referring to the knife.”
An “aaah” went around the room.
“My friend Verano picked up this knife… and like any good policeman, he did it without wiping off any fingerprints...”
There was silence, charged with the oppressive weight of expectation. Tragny took Edwige’s hand affectionately so as to reassure her, to protect her from what was coming.
Teddy Verano looked at the star with compassion; Gerard with interest; and Patrick with all the love that was churning him up at the idea of the strange martyrdom that this woman was suffering, this woman whom he had placed on such a high pedestal…
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