But the author team of Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain wrote twenty Fantmas novels, alternating chapters between them and taking one month for each. One month. Literally: the first appeared in February 1911, the second in March of that year, the third in April, and so on, until September 1913. Part police procedural, part gothic horror story, part courtroom drama, part Sherlockian mystery, part existential potboiler, Fantmas is, nonetheless, pulp.
Before long, Juve finds the body of the English bon vivant Sir Beltham in the traveling trunks of a certain Mr. Gurn. All modesty, Juve claims to have stumbled upon it, but we know better. Meanwhile, the "lovely" Princess Sonia Danidoff — related by marriage to the Emperor of Russia! — is reading "Muscovite" folk tales in her bath when she hears a voice, touched by malice, reading aloud in her ear. The bold intruder toys with her: he knows she will not ring the alarm, for how can she leave the tub? He wants a jewel; he produces a razor that will release the finger if the finger will not release the ring.
Of course it is Fantmas — and I turn the page ...
In the end, Gurn — if that is his name — is caught and tried. The marvelous Juve has determined that Gurn is the author of this whole series of horrid crimes, yet he lacks binding evidence. Still, Gurn is convicted of one murder and sentenced to die. It is the morning of his execution. The guillotine is constructed, it is tested (whoomph!), baskets of bran are readied to receive the head and body. Shall his head roll? Gurn is Fantmas — of course he'll survive, but how? I shall not spoil this book, nor the next 19, except to say that, in the words of Juve, "Nothing is impossible for Fantmas!"