“You can be sure that I mean no harm to your charming tenants. It’s not for them that I let myself in here… while you were gone.”
“So you’re not a thief? Well…”
Teddy Verano thought twice about saying he was a salesman, but rejected the notion. Instead, he blurted out:
“I’m here… for her.”
He waved his hand around the posters, the hundreds of Edwiges and, in the middle of the room, the weird wax figure sitting there like a phantom of a naked woman, impersonal and a little scary.
Verrier was really a strange man. He started talking, apparently accepting the unusual intrusion.
“For her,” he did not sound surprised. “So, you too…”
Teddy Verano tried to play along. He lowered his head and tried to look devastated.
“Yes, me too.”
He made a quick examination of Verrier’s costume. Just the overalls, the helmet and the gloves, the armor of a man working with beehives to protect himself against the stings, which had made him look so weird in the backlight.
Behind the helmet’s grill, Verrier’s beady eyes scrutinized the detective.
“If I understand correctly, you’re in love with her?”
Teddy Verano figured it was best to play the ashamed older man who had fallen into the love trap of a younger woman.
The beekeeper/film buff grinned.
“And you thought… that I was also in love with her? The kids in Cerisiers told you that, didn’t they? That’s a good one!”
Teddy Verano was astonished by his attitude and was already convinced that he was dealing with a madman. But he lied straight off:
“Yes, the kids. The fans of your film club. All of them, deep down, have a crush on Edwige Hossegor. All of them come here… to work a little, to be with you, but especially for her…”
“In love? At my age!” Verrier snorted a laugh. “That’s fine for the poor little morons. Oh, I’m not criticizing… Without them and the volunteer work I get them to do, I couldn’t have created what I did. And my inventions wouldn’t be finished. One man alone could never have installed my antennas or developed my 3D cinemascope. My invention… Yes, my little lover of Edwige Hossegor, it is my invention… that no one, get it, no one has seen working yet...”
He laughed again but this one rang out like a bell.
“Except the idiots who… OK, that’s enough. They won’t be talking.”
Teddy Verano made a quick association of ideas and his heart froze. Verrier stepped forward. The detective stayed on guard. But the weird man in his costume passed by without making the slightest move and he did something very simple. He opened the second door of the room covered with pictures of Edwige. The door going to the beehives.
Teddy Verano shuddered but all he said was:
“My Lord, Monsieur, please be kind enough to close that door. Your tenants are lovely, I’m sure, but we must be careful around beehives. I saw a couple of swarms buzzing around and if one of them came in here…”
“You’re right,” Jules Verrier said. “But I need the bees. Without them, she wouldn’t exist.”
He pointed to the wax woman, the woman whose form resembled a naked Edwige Hossegor but without a face, which intrigued Teddy Verano.
“Thanks to my bees, I was able to… sculpt in the purity of their impeccable wax.”
“I can appreciate that. But if you closed the door…”
“You’re scared? I understand. But no, I won’t close it. Though I feel your anxiety. Come and follow me.”
He walked into the film club and Teddy Verano followed him rather nervously. This man worried him a little, but he had often fought, even with bare hands, against criminals and madmen. And Verrier certainly belonged to the latter category.
But what could a man do, as strong and determined and clever as he might be, against a swarm of deadly bees?
He would have sworn to it that Verrier was capable of all kinds of treachery and the most dangerous actions. However, the man seemed to have lost interest in him. He was going to one of the drapes and lifting it to uncover a closet door. He opened it and Teddy saw several overalls of different sizes, helmets with thick veils making a grill of the face and pairs of gloves.
He held out some gloves and a helmet.
“Start by putting these on. You won’t be in any danger in a minute. Wait and I’ll look for your size.”
Teddy Verano breathed more easily. After all, things were not turning out so badly. But he was wary nonetheless.
“Ah! That’s the one I was looking for. This should fit. Pretty much at least.”
“I’m sure it will do fine,” Teddy Verano said in a hurry to put on the protection as he could hear the faint but characteristic buzzing coming from the poster room. The bees, slowly but surely, were filling it up.
He put on the helmet. Verrier had to tell him:
“Not like that.”
He adjusted it and gave him the gloves. Then he held out the overalls.
“I’ll help you.”
Very quickly, Teddy Verano experienced the feeling that he should not let Verrier do it. When a man goes behind you, even to help put on a special suit that you are not used to, all kinds of dirty tricks are possible.
But he pretended to stay calm, in spite of the general fear looming over him from the strange personality of this man and from the vibrations of the light, graceful, harmonious wings that smelled sweetly of honey but were as dangerous as dozens, hundreds of little poisonous darts. A painful poison that at high dose could cause serious, if not lethal, reactions.
Everything happened in a flash. Verrier adjusted the overalls.
“There, that’ll do.”
“I can’t find the arms. Oh…”
He could not avoid the impact; he staggered under the blow that he had felt coming, but could not avoid. Everything started spinning. Verrier, although not a big man, had taken the man he had just subdued, pushed and shoved him, taken advantage of his semi-consciousness to get him back into the poster room and throw him into a metal chair.
Teddy Verano gasped inside the helmet. His hands were still protected by the gloves. Doubly protected, because he was also closed up inside the loose fitting and undoubtedly tampered with suit that worked like a straightjacket, binding his chest and arms and putting him at the mercy of his captor.
There was light coming from both the lamps and the open door of the beehive. The bees flew in, one after another, and they swarmed together, their constant buzzing getting louder and louder.
Teddy Verano, who had been hit at the base of his neck, rattling his spine, was aware of his blunder. He wanted to see how far the other would go and he had let himself be outmaneuvered. With his head in a fog, he thought vaguely: Gerard wouldn’t have been so stupid… Less stupid for sure.
Verrier was watching him now, rubbing his gloved hands. He started laughing again. Then he stopped and screeched:
“Idiot! You’re an idiot if you take me for one! I know you don’t give a damn about the bees. Or the film club. And you’re no more a salesman than I am. Yes, yes, I saw my little friends from Cerisiers. They told me. I knew you were here… and then the bees were acting funny… You’d disturbed them… I know… I talk to them. So, tell me, is this what you’re looking for? My machine? You, too, want to recreate, wherever and whenever you want, the woman you desire? The marvelous, wonderful creature…”
He pointed to the wax woman, the faceless woman standing there, looking graceful, lascivious and disturbing all at the same time.
“But you don’t know… you don’t understand… nobody knows or understands… except me, alone… how to animate her. You have to take her soul!”
Teddy Verano had dealt with these kinds of monsters and geniuses before, these mad scientists, fiendish inventors halfway between scientific realism and the depravity that comes from excessive occult practices. He was seeing one more of them here, he was sure. But what kind? And what was Verrier trying to say wit
h all his talking.
The bees were still entering. Verrier decided to close the door.
“No… Go away... It’d be better for me to give you a little demonstration...”
Teddy Verano did not move. Should he jump up and ram into his belly? Or better yet, kick out at him? He could have done it. Verrier was not young and probably not very strong, even if he had a wicked chop, as he had proved. But he had heard the word “demonstration.” Now he had to know.
This kind of madman loved to show off his knowledge. Or his perversion. And Teddy Verano had already paid to find out that Jules Verrier’s secret was not a fantasy, but that he really had invented something fantastic.
He waited. He knew that he was about to see the true secret of Mephista.
CHAPTER XVI
Jules Verrier’s beady little eyes sparkled in a weird way behind his protective grill.
A show-off? Teddy Verano thought. Engineer? Or what? Obviously an extraordinary man, but also a megalomaniac… who can’t resist the sadistic pleasure of showing what he can do.
Verrier was watching him. He must have feared some kind of trick and was on his guard. But he was talking, talking, talking as he moved the drapes to reveal other photos, sketches, drawings, all of them representing the beautiful star of the O.R.T.F. and also some projectors, spotlights and cameras, obviously “rigged.”
And the monologue went on.
“In love? Me, in love? That’s for others, Monsieur. Idiots get a crush on a woman, dream of her all the more passionately as she seems both close to them and very far away. Never, I’m sure, since the invention of the television has such madness in a man’s brain been as strong…”
He arranged his projectors with precision derived from long practice. Teddy Verano noticed that everything seemed centered on the wax figure, gloomy and cold, faceless and soulless, the pale, sad specter, the opposite of his fiery speech.
“Edwige Hossegor is both the intimate friend and the distant princess. She visits our houses… and you know that such artists are pretty much inaccessible. But there are still crazy men who create a whole romance around her. Me, I knew the real Edwige. Not the one everyone thinks… Not the one those close to her, her family and friends, know or think they know…”
He laughed sneeringly.
“Even her lovers. That idiot Tragny. You can sleep with a woman and not know anything about her soul… and it’s her soul that interests me. A soul that I wanted, that I want, that I succeeded in pouring into the wax, the pure wax, the fine, malleable and living wax from my dear little bees...”
He was still keeping busy. Four projectors were now pointing at the wax doll. And countless spots that he was adjusting one by one. Teddy Verano, now determined not to react before learning everything, could not figure out what all this would be able to do.
Verrier hooked up some wires.
“A woman! Ha! Call her an actress to tell the truth… Edwige Hossegor… Always the roles that reveal her… She hurts, tortures, kills… That’s her, the real her… The killer, the she-demon...” With a theatrical wave of his hand, glorified, he shouted, “Mephista!”
Here we go, Teddy thought, who had not missed a word though he was pretending to be groggy, in pain, still not recovered from the blow to the neck.
“The heart of the problem is the soul of that woman. Mephista reveals it… But it’s all a show, on T.V., not reality… So, I wanted it to be reality…” He waved some more. “Some men have seen the real Mephista. She came. She killed. They won’t tell…”
His hands were shaking, clenching at empty air.
“In love with her… Stupid boys… One guy named Lemoulin… A projectionist, a boy too… But this other one…”
Teddy really wanted to try to focus his speech by asking questions, but he chose to stay quiet after the reference to Patrick Florent.
Jules Verrier looked calmer. For a few seconds, he checked all his machines. Then he announced:
“You’re going to see the true Mephista.”
Fascinating, Teddy thought, but did not say. He saw a vicious enough smile on the face of the beekeeper, who had not bothered to take off his suit, or Teddy’s for that matter.
Verrier continued:
“You understand that you won’t be able to tell anyone about this. You will see Mephista, and then… it’s over… She is death... She kills.”
Teddy Verano trembled on hearing this. A monster, yes. And what had this monster invented?
Verrier had also closed the door to the film club.
“We’re almost ready. You’re about to see.”
He looked jubilant. He turned off the lights and everything disappeared. Teddy Verano sat in the dark. He could not see the posters, nor the machines, nor the wax figure, nor Jules Verrier. But he heard the latter moving around in the shadows. And he also heard the buzzing of a few bees who could not return to the hives. One of them hit his grill, that luckily protected his face in the dark.
He broke out in a cold sweat. He waited.
And, all of a sudden, he could not hold back a cry of surprise, almost of awe. Edwige Hossegor was standing in front of him, emerging from the darkness.
At least, her face and her head. Just a head, motionless, floating in the dark, at the same height as a human. And Teddy Verano guessed that she was exactly the same height as Edwige.
Jules Verrier seemed satisfied.
“You see, what did I tell you? It’s really her, isn’t it?”
Teddy Verano could barely see him, standing in the shadows by his machines.
The detective understood right away. It was a very meticulous and, no doubt, very sophisticated focusing system of a projector in color and in relief. Three-dimensional rays, apparently, casting on the neuter, impersonal wax head a series of photos, of superimposed images, expertly arranged to create the relief, the color, the exact features of Edwige Hossegor with such accuracy that covered every pore of her skin. It was her, unquestionably her. To die for.
“There you go,” Verrier said. “Nice work, isn’t it? Except, in the end, nothing extraordinary. Henri Chrétien’s process,7 cinemascope, synchronized with I don’t know how many techniques… See, Monsieur, it’s others who invented it. Not me. I took their ideas. I made my little idiots work, my little fans as you say. All the kids from the village who are crazy about movies and radio. And we arranged all this. To create Mephista.”
Teddy Verano saw his hand—he had taken a glove off to adjust the machines—come out of the shadows and caress the face of the apparition.
“Pretty Mephista. But only a wax doll, a mannequin. Not much. Anyone can do the same.” He groaned suddenly. “Except, what the others don’t know how to do is how to animate the statue. To put into this lifeless puppet the soul of Edwige Hossegor—the soul of the true Mephista. Do you know what a spell is?”
Teddy Verano figured it best to give him a toneless, muffled “Yes.”
“My invention, my real invention… is this machine.”
In the dark, he tapped on a metal box that the detective could barely see.
“A machine to cast a spell. It’s tuned, permanently, on Edwige Hossegor. A hyper-hypnotizer, you might say.”
The craziest ideas were dancing through Teddy Verano’s brain, but were now starting to line up.
“Edwige. Mephista. My rays activate the doll. And my hypnotizer works on her, on the woman whose spirit has to be transmuted into the robot. Are you following me?”
Teddy Verano was listening, but remained still, fascinated by the immaculate face that was still emerging, like a phantom, a seductive phantom, and frighteningly real.
The grotesque hands of the madman were twirling around the waxen head on which the projectors were building the mask that looked so much like the actress.
“You see... she’s lifeless. Suppose I got my robot working. Oh, don’t even try, it’s my secret. A subtle molecular action on the atoms of the wax. And it moves, it walks, it seems alive… I have made the perfect
television that transmits not just the image but the soul itself!”
A mocking laugh.
“My kids built a wonderful antenna for me. I promised them I would use it to receive broadcasts from all over the world. What they don’t know is that, in truth, it’s not just a receiver, but a transmitter as well, that they built according to my directions. They’re not smart enough to understand. Apprentices. Very nice, very devoted, but…”
He walked around the wax figure whose nudity was draped in darkness under the glaringly bright head.
“A robot that walks, that has Edwige’s face, that can kill, if and when I want… It’s not enough. It has to be her who strikes, who kisses, who kills like she seduces. And that’s where I have reached the sublime.”
Teddy Verano heard him panting hoarsely in the dark.
“It wouldn’t be complete if it was just a mechanical toy. No, I wanted to go farther. That it really be Mephista who kills, one after another, all those ridiculous admirers. A wonderful adventure, isn’t it? The monstrous spider, the praying mantis devouring its lovers.”
He walked around the wax figure.
“An ordinary body… nothing but a mannequin… but by infusing Edwige’s soul in it, everything becomes real. And whoever sees her coming, walking, approaching, will die under her spell. Because they see Edwige, they expect Edwige, they feel like they’re embracing Edwige… when it’s really Mephista.”
All of a sudden, he flipped some switches and Teddy Verano was surprised to see a small screen appear. Verrier fiddled with the television machine that Verano guessed was tuned to very specific transmissions. The images were blurry at first, but quickly cleared up. The detective was not surprised to see Rue du Ranelagh, the Tragny home, then the salon and Edwige’s bedroom.
“I stay in communication,” the engineer explained smugly, in the throes of ecstasy. “That’s why I recognized you, Monsieur. So let’s see… you found my trail. That’s very good. And now, I’m going to give you to Mephista. Mephista will kill you.” In almost a whisper he muttered, “I mean, really, Edwige Hossegor. Your friend.”
For a minute, he stopped talking. Teddy Verano heard a machine humming. Probably the metal box he had called the mechanical super-hypnotizer.
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