Lady Beltham remained constantly torn between her passion for the villain and her horror at his criminal schemes. On the eve of his execution, Gurn/Fantômas escaped from custody by being replaced by an actor who had modelled the appearance of his latest character after him and was guillotined in his place. Juve later arrested Gurn and, at his trial, brought forward a convincing argument that Gurn and Fantômas were one and the same, though the evidence was too circumstantial to make a real case. Juve knew that Charles was innocent and gave him a new identity: journalist Jerôme Fandor who is employed at the newspaper La Capitale. As Etienne, he convinced Charles to go into hiding, but the young man was soon found out by French police detective Juve, truly obsessed with the capture of Fantômas. Lord Beltham was about to shoot Maud when Gurn hit him with a hammer then strangled him.įantômas then impersonated Etienne Rambert and framed his son, Charles, for a murder he had committed. 1900), Gurn and Lady Beltham were surprised in their Paris love nest, Rue Levert, by her husband. Upon their return to Europe, soon before the first novel begins (c. He became aide-de-camp to Lord Edward Beltham of Scottwell Hill and fell in love with his younger wife, Lady Maud Beltham. He fought in the Transvaal as an artillery sergeant under the command of Lord Roberts. In 1899, he fought in the Second Boer War in South Africa under the name of Gurn. There, he ruined his then-business partner, Etienne Rambert. In 1897, Fantômas was in the United States of America and Mexico. There, an unidentified European woman gave birth to a baby girl, Hélène, whose father might be Fantômas, or an Indian Prince who was Fantômas’ acolyte. In circumstances unrevealed, he was arrested and sent to prison.Ĭ. There he fathered a child, Vladimir, with an unidentified noblewoman. 1892, the man who later became Fantômas called himself Archduke Juan North and operated in the German Principality of Hesse-Weimar. He might be of British and/or French ancestry. Fantômas makes use of bizarre and improbable techniques in his crimes, such as plague-infested rats, giant snakes, and rooms that fill with sand.įantômas’s background remains vague. He is a master of disguise, always appearing under an assumed identity, often that of a person whom he has murdered. He is totally ruthless, gives no mercy, and is loyal to none, not even his own children.

But whereas Lupin draws the line at murder, Fantômas has no such qualms and is shown as a sociopath who enjoys killing in a sadistic fashion. Jenkins.įantômas was introduced a few years after Arsène Lupin, another well-known thief.

LibriVox recording of The Exploits of Juve by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre.

Allain souvestre