It acts on Edwige’s brain and captures her brain waves, deduced Teddy Verano. Then, it creates an illusionary aura around the robot, coming from Edwige herself, that fools the people who see it by showing her as she is at the moment of transmission… like Lemoulin and Daniel… like Tragny and me that night… like Gerard and Patrick Florent… How nice, how crazy! That’s why we found no trace of clothing. There’s nothing but a bunch of animated wax and an extraordinary film in color, in 3-D, without a screen… that casts a spell on those who view it…
But Verrier was getting upset. The screen was flashing through the different rooms in Tragny’s house. They saw only two people: Isabelle and Joseph finishing their dinner.
“Hold on… So, she’s not there. Well, I assure you, my machine is perfect. I’ll find her.”
It took some time. Verrier looked lost as Teddy Verano watched confused images roll by and heard muffled, indistinguishable sounds. And then, finally, Edwige’s face appeared. Very hazy. In the dark.
There were two people at her side and all three looked squeezed together. The view tracked out, showing two more faces, a little farther apart.
Teddy Verano gasped. He was seeing a car. Baron Tragny’s Caravelle that the diabolical inventor had just spotted. Edwige was sitting in the back between Eva Mellion and Patrick Florent. Baron Tragny was in front, driving, with Gerard next to him.
Teddy Verano understood right away. Verrier, too, because he laughed and shouted:
“I was looking for her and she’s coming here! She’s coming here! With her entourage, her defenders…”
He turned a knob and Teddy saw some lights blink.
“I’ll get the hypnotizer working. In three minutes, Edwige Hossegor will pass out. In three minutes, her soul will be here, imprisoned in the wax figure. And once again, it will be time for Mephista to walk the Earth!”
CHAPTER XVII
React… Act… Fight… Do something…
Everything flew by insanely fast in Teddy Verano’s mind. Now he knew. A fiendish inventor. An extraordinary genius. An occultist to boot. Very clever. Very crafty. And totally insane.
Teddy Verano knew enough about the scheme. He knew not only the basics of the system that only experienced physicists could have explained and pieced together, but also the particular process used by the gifted but evil beekeeper.
Mephista, his Mephista, was only the material support of the demon he had unleashed against the poor men who were only guilty of falling in love with Edwige Hossegor.
Edwige, whom he chose for her acting, for her roles in which he found an inherent personality, infernal and evil, that seduced him by was is the exact opposite of natural feminine seduction.
At the same time, he had built the artificial likeness of Edwige/Mephista with photos and films. He collected posters, pictures and films, stole what he had to and succeeding in getting the image of the O.R.T.F. star in thousands of copies in every pose. He worked in the shadows, slowly and patiently, to build up this perfect likeness of the woman. But even projected onto the wax robot that he brought to life with some unknown, unimaginable, terrifying process, it still was not enough.
So, he cast a spell upon Edwige. Mechanically. Certainly by using the grimoirs of the ancient sorcerers who, over the centuries, had already performed this remote control over human beings, long before the discoveries of Hertz, Branly, Marconi and Ferrié. Because these ancient wizards knew how to use brain waves, which they could not see nor understand, but they could feel and bend to their will and whim.
A machine to cast spells.
A special “television” that showed Edwige and her friends in the Caravelle speeding toward Cerisiers in search of Teddy Verano, in pursuit of the monstrous Mephista. Because Yvonne had alerted Gerard who had told Tragny and Edwige. Edwige who always wanted to know the truth about her situation. They were coming.
To know how far away they were was impossible. Teddy Verano only saw the potential danger. The monster was going to capture Edwige’s soul, perhaps permanently, animate Mephista, arm her and take hellish pleasure in murdering all her friends, whom he thought would soon be at his mercy.
Teddy Verano’s arms were tied, tightly, flat against his body, but he was wound up, ready to pounce.
“Watch this!” Jules Verrier says. “And watch out!”
All of a sudden, just when the detective was about to jump and use his head as a battering ram, he saw a shower of sparks flash in front of him. It crackled for a second before disappearing, leaving behind a strong, awful smell.
Verrier choked on his laughter.
“You don’t know everything yet. I can also strike from a distance. I can destroy. Once before, you tried to capture Mephista and I destroyed her like this. I can unleash the same fires against you…”
Teddy Verano became frozen stiff. He was stunned by what he has just learned. Verrier’s science went farther than he thought. On seeing Gerard, Patrick Florent and Teddy Verano corner the animated monster in the apartment on the Boulevard Voltaire, the mad genius had used this process to hit her with his bolt of sparks. He did not destroy her, only melted the wax so it became nothing but a shapeless mass.
Teddy Verano felt lost for a moment. He was still sitting there, tensed up, trying to figure out what to do next. Verrier was fiddling with his metal box. On the screen, the detective could still see inside the Caravelle.
The inventor let out a cry of triumph.
Edwige collapsed in the car. Eva and Patrick were in a panic. Tragny and Gerard turned around and the baron stopped the car.
“Now, we won’t be disturbed for a while,” Verrier said.
Teddy Verano, whose heart was pounding, pulled himself together but he felt the other watching him closely.
“Don’t move now… you haven’t seen everything yet. Here’s my masterpiece... Mephista... Mephista alive... Mephista with the spirit of the woman whom all men love to love…”
Other spotlights were suddenly turned on. It was not just the miraculous face, but Edwige Hossegor’s entire body that now appeared.
Edwige in a tailored dress. Edwige exactly as she was right now in the Caravelle.
Edwige, whose soul this infernal machine had just captured in order to infuse it into the wax robot. And it was radiating life, as if this wretched puppet with its halo of visible waves, was really Edwige. It was fake, as fake as could be, but Teddy could have sworn that it was really her.
Mephista looked at him.
Mephista, coming out of the surrounding darkness, the only thing lit up in the darkened room, like a dazzling ghost. Mephista, who gave him a seductive, frightening smile that belonged to the actress of The Vampires of Paris.
Jules Verrier came up from behind her, holding something out to the robot, which grabbed it.
A knife.
The blade sparkled in the spotlight.
Mephista started to walk.
Teddy Verano was horrified to hear her speak to him:
“Dear friend, what a joy to see you again.”
It was all here—even her voice. Totally real.
Mephista, falsely alive, but maybe alive nonetheless, even though she was just a pile of wax energized by a physical process, carried Edwige’s soul in her, or rather the artificial soul of the actress who had made up all the diabolical roles she had played so well.
Although Teddy Verano had his hands tied, and serious cramps in his shoulders from the tightened suit, his lower body was still free. He made his move, and threw the powerful kick he had been keeping in store for Jules Verrier straight at Mephista.
Verrier cried out in anger as the she-demon was thrown off balance, fell over and broke apart. The mad inventor went berserk, seeing his masterpiece damaged. He lost his head, rushed forward and got kicked in turn. Right in the shin, which threw him to the ground howling in pain.
Teddy Verano, his arms still tied up, jumped over the body and headed for the machines. He kicked them all over, trying to cause a short circuit and br
eak the dreadful installation. Sparks flew. Then a flame leaped up.
The detective had time to step back. And right at that moment, he looked at the television screen. He still saw Edwige with Eva trying to wake her up. But the three men were not in the car. Had they already arrived?
That was when Verrier got up, groaning, and stumbled to the back door that led to the hive room and disappeared. What was he doing? Teddy Verano heard him, figured it out and rushed over…
In a mad rage, Verrier was knocking over his beehives and, in the half-light of the basement coming from the setting sun through the slits, the detective saw the whirling swarms, the spinning bees, the panicking, confused insects in living clouds.
Verrier had sensed the threat of intruders already nearby, who were about to invade his property, and was playing his final card.
Gerard, young Patrick and the baron… If they came in… If they ran into the angry bees…
Verrier in his beekeeper outfit was safe. Teddy Verano, too, was protected by his gear. But he knew that he had to stop his friends from coming in, not only because of the bees but also the catastrophe in progress.
The fire in the machines!
He kicked over the wreckage of the wax robot to duplicate what had happened in Patrick Florent’s apartment. The fire began to consume the pile of wax, which melted and started smoking.
Verrier returned and ran at Teddy Verano. With one last effort, the detective barrel headed first into his stomach and threw him back into the hive room.
Verrier tripped over one of the hives.
The fall broke the grill on his helmet.
There was a loud cry, an inhuman cry, which echoed through all the rooms. An angry swarm attacked Verrier, flew into his clothes, devoured his face, penetrated everywhere, now that his suit was no longer protecting him.
Meanwhile, Tragny, Gerard and Patrick had entered Verrier’s property. They had begun to search all over, running around like madmen.
Suddenly, a smoke cloud appeared and they saw an armless monster running toward them. A weird, clumsy thing with a big head that looked swollen, yelling at them, “Run away! Run away! The bees! The bees!”
Edwige woke up slowly. Once again, she had fainted. She had been Mephista. Now she could remember terrible, confused, frightening things.
They surrounded her. Friendly voices saying soothing things.
Baron Tragny hugged her and covered her face with kisses.
A little later, they would tell her the whole story, since she wanted to know everything. What Jules Verrier did. What he built. The danger that an actress might face when playing wicked characters.
The mad inventor was in sorry shape. He would pull through, undoubtedly, but the bees had wreaked havoc on his body. The doctors wondered whether his reason would survive.
The smoke had spread everywhere and got the better of the bees. Specialists came to pick them up and save what they can.
Verrier’s fantastic machines, however, had been destroyed, short-circuited, burned to rubble. No one would get much out of them. None of the mechanical spell casting survived the destruction of the laboratory. Teddy Verano thought it was better that way for everyone.
He looked looks at Edwige Hossegor’s beautiful face. What might lie, sometimes, deep inside a woman’s spirit? For, in the end, the mysterious Mephista, as different as she was, was still born from within the secret depths of the actress’ soul…
MEPHISTA VS MEPHISTA
CHAPTER I
Martine woke up with a start. She shuddered right away. It was past 6 a.m. She must have gone to sleep an hour earlier after staying awake most of the night.
Olga was not back. Her twin bed was still made.
The sad, dingy morning light struck the tiles so that the room, in spite of the two girls’ efforts, looked gloomy. They had never been able to do a thing about it since they’d come to Paris, since the two childhood friends had pooled their hopes together. Bad luck had been hounding the girls from Lille for a year now.
Martine, the more prudent, more reserved, of the two, was trying to make a career as a secretary, with the secret hope of getting into public relations with a big firm someday. Her degrees, she believed, were perfect for it. And she believed her job ideal. Unfortunately, after six months, her boss, a dynamic young man and a bachelor, who had begun to look upon her as more than just an employee, had been killed in a stupid car accident. His replacement was more ambitious and he had let her go.
Two or three jobs later. All failures…
Olga was also struggling. The tall dark-haired girl with deep, dark eyes and a rather severe beauty, had a strange, troubling effect on the male sex. A few days after their arrival in Paris, she had unveiled her secrets, which she had never revealed to Martine before. She wanted to act on the stage, or in movies, or television.
Martine was not the kind to believe in such things and laughed at first. But Olga was serious, and, right away, enrolled in one of those famous acting classes where the professors, usually failed actors and not always honorable, would exploit the true or supposed gifts of an unbelievable number of young men and women seduced by the mirage of the spotlights.
However, Olga appeared to have some talent. Moreover, her physique seemed to interest some directors. Alas… after a few months, not much had come out of all this. She had been an extra in one or two films, but then came the union fees to pay, the waiting in producers’ offices, the beginning of disillusionment.
Martine was bravely looking for work in more reasonable, less fanciful occupations. With her noble character, she swore she would never abandon Olga, all the while lecturing her and criticizing her for wasting her time on such nonsense. Olga shot back that, even though Martine was involved in nothing artistic, she was having no better success.
In fact, the two girls, face to face, had to admit that their bad luck, at least in part, had a common source: their strict honesty.
Neither of them had ever been willing to give in to the self-serving propositions of certain men. Proud Olga and pure Martine had been able to keep their independence, only looking at boys whom they could trust. No compromise of any kind.
Sometimes, in spite of their sad days, they could still take each other by the hand and comfort each other.
“No, it’d be too stupid, too pathetic. We’re not hussies. A boy, yes, with all our heart, when we can open our arms to him for the simple joy of being with him, with pleasure. But to accept this…”
Offers of thinly disguised prostitution disgusted them and, in their mutual respect, they forged a stronger bond that joined them together and helped them live, and survive the bad days.
But the bad days went on and on. Neither of them earned any more money. Rent went unpaid and, the night before, a glum-looking, ashamed employee had come to seal off the electric meter.
November was gray and the cold rain did not help matters. The refrigerator, now useless since there was no more electricity, was empty. Martine was shivering as she remembered that there was still some coffee left…
She was worried, very worried. Olga had still not come home. This never happened, at least not without her friend telling her. She was deeply, sincerely attached to Olga, and she thought the feeling was mutual.
Crazy ideas flashed through Martine’s mind. An accident? Paris was a fertile land for traps, for all kinds of incidents... And for a young woman alone…
Of course, Olga, although slender, was not a weak woman; she looked older than 24, which only made her more attractive. Martine was scared for her.
Over the last few days, she had not seemed herself. She went out a lot, claiming to be doing the rounds of the studios and agents for bit parts, a nice euphemism for being an extra. She had dropped off countless photos, snapshots that had bankrupted her. One of the photos was framed on a small table.
Martine, the blonde, the sweet Martine, looked at Olga’s beautiful face. With its tinge of femme fatale, it should certainly have caught the attention of mov
ie producers.
It was now 6:30 a.m.
Blinking her eyes a little wildly Martine got up, shivering in her pajamas. Just to be sure, she glanced outside. The sun was struggling to break through. The surrounding fog added another gloomy aspect to the season.
Martine was starting to miss her home in the north. She had come to Paris. Why, she now asked herself? Return to her family? That would be to admit failure and face the ironic smiles, the phony courtesies and the hostile climate that would grow around her.
Olga had told her: “I’ll never go back.”
And now… after she had been gone for the night…
A romantic adventure? Possible. That would be the least bad.
Martine began preparing her coffee.
All of a sudden her heart froze. She could not even do this simple thing. There was no electricity. The electric bill had not been paid and the power had been cut off.
Martine was dazed for a minute. Then the situation appeared to her in all its horror. She was almost willing to drink a little cold coffee, but it made her sick to her stomach and she refused.
She went back to her room and flopped onto her bed, feeling all the misery weighing down on her, thinking that maybe she would never see Olga again.
She gave up. Tears rolled down her cheeks and sobs convulsed her frail shoulders. Her hair veiled her haggard face that her weeping only ravaged more.
Images popped up that she could not chase away. Olga falling in the metro. Olga kidnapped by some human traffickers. Olga as a corpse, floating in the dirty water of the Seine.
A knock at the door made her jump.
She sniffled, looked around for a handkerchief, and tried to straighten out her hair.
Someone was knocking. But why not ring the doorbell? Then, she realized: no more electricity. They could not ring.
She got up but the door had ready opened.
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