L'Orgue du Diable

Book Series infobox
Series = Yoko Tsuno
Name = L'Orgue du Diable
Type = Comics
Author = Roger Leloup


Background = Orange
Released = 1973
Genre = Bande dessinée
Pages =
Publisher = Dupuis
Last Book = "Le Trio de l'étrange"
(1972)
This Book = "L'Orgue du Diable"
(1973)
Next Book = "La Forge de Vulcain"
(1973)

"L'Orgue du Diable" ("The Devil's Organ") is the second book from Yoko Tsuno comic book series written by Roger Leloup and published in 1973. (ISBN 2-8001-0667-0)

tory

The story begins in the dark of night, atop a cliff overlooking the Rhine Valley at Burg Katz. Two men clad in strange helmets struggle, and one of them falls but lands on a ledge, losing his helmet. His opponent does not give up, and shoots him from a tower of a nearby castle with a carbine fitted with an infrared scope. He then takes the body away.

While traveling the length of the Rhine river for a documentary they are producing, Yoko and her friends come upon a sad girl who becomes the victim of attempted murder when a mysterious man throws her into the river. Yoko and Pol rescue the girl, who turns out to be a famous organist called Ingrid Hallberg. From her they learn that her father, a restoration expert for organs, had apparently committed suicide by throwing himself before a train. His last message to her was the envelope of an audio tape; she is travelling to his house in St. Goar to retrieve it. Yoko, her suspicions aroused, decides to come along.

While Vic is to find the man and get their equipment, Yoko, Ingrid and Pol make for Mr. Hallberg's house. But on Ingrid's suitcase they notice a listening device, and upon arrival Yoko surprises a masked stranger who is holding the looked-for tape. She chases him into the nearby workshop, where he almost kills her by pinning her neck to a support beam with a screw clamp and tightening it. She throws him off by switching on the machines in the shop; thereby part of the tape is snagged and torn off the spool. Ingrid and Pol arrive in time to help Yoko, but the intruder gets away.

The three find and retrieve the tape fragment and run into the house to play it off; on their way they notice a huge copper pipe in the backyard. The last message of Ingrid's father mentions a legendary instrument, the Devil's Organ, which he intended to repair. The Organ, a truly massive specimen, head been built by one Enno Seipold; upon its first playing the organ had destroyed the church and driven several members of the audience into madness by high-intensity infrasonics. Then Yoko has the idea that the copper pipe outside may be part of that organ. By finding the pipe stop, which lies buried nearby, they rejoin the pieces and blow air through it; the tone shatters a breach into the nearest wall and gives Yoko a major headache.

Just as Ingrid recalls the effects of the organ as detailed in the saga, a letter wrapped around a stone is thrown at them. Yoko chases after the deliverer but loses him as Vic inadvertently gets into her way. The paper bears a message in which Ingrid is asked to come to a railway tunnel, for the truth to be told. Yoko and Pol decide to go in her stead, equipped with radio and camera.

At the tunnel mouth they apprehend an Italian carpenter named Alberto Razzi, who had worked with Mr. Hallberg before. He had been a witness of the events which had led to Hallberg's death, but he identifies the murderer as Il Diavolo (the Devil) and knows nothing about the Devil's Organ. Yoko decides to climb the cliff face to find out more, thereby discovering a strange padded helmet. But they have been watched, and upon their return across the Rhine Yoko and Pol's boat is rammed and sunk by a speeding motorboat. Both are fished out by the crew of a passing cargo ship and brought back to St. Goar, arriving just in time to learn that Ingrid had just received a call with the information that her father's last assignment was with Richard Moebius, the propietor of Burg Katz. Since the castle is close to the murder site, Yoko and the others decide to pay a visit there.

At Katz they meet elderly Richard Moebius and his nephew Karl, who roughly tries to drive them away. Also, the elder Moebius seems reluctant to talk about what Mr. Hallberg has actually done for him, arousing Yoko's suspicions all the more. The only thing she learns is that a cistern behind the castle seems to be very important in the plot. Since a storm is brewing, Moebius invites Ingrid, Yoko, Vic and Pol to stay at the castle.

However, while they are sitting at dinner, a large bat (a flying fox) flutters into the room. Moebius takes out a carbine fitted with an infrared scope and tries to shot it, but ends up clipping Vic on the head (fortunately with no serious results). Losing her patience, Yoko grabs the rifle and lets slip that she knows about the Devil's Organ. Shocked, Moebius promises to tell everything the next morning and withdraws for the night; in the meantime Pol orders some drinks, which Moebius' butler later delivers.

In their room, Yoko and Ingrid discover a jacket of Mr. Hallberg with a dog whistle in it. Yoko, realizing that the flying fox must have been used as a guinea pig for the effects of the Organ, uses the whistle to summon it and gives it some of the delivered juice to drink. But suddenly the bat falls asleep - the drinks have been spiked with a drug. Yoko races off to warn Vic and Pol but arrives too late - and then Ingrid is kidnapped and Yoko locked into her room. As Yoko is preparing to follow by climbing out of the window, the villain - now clad in armor and a helmet similar to the one she had found - pushes her off the castle walls; only a bush saves her from death.

Yoko recovers from the shock of the encounter and the fall, but as she prepares to go back inside, she sees first Richard Moebius and then the masked man, carrying an unconscious Ingrid, going to the castle catacombs. Barred from entry, Yoko manages to find another way in through the cistern. Wandering through dungeons holding the moldering remains of dead prisoners, she comes into a large crypt hall - and beholds the Devil's Organ.

To her shock, Yoko finds Ingrid in a cage hanging from the ceiling before the organ and old Moebius sitting at the keyboard as if in trance - and the villain, Karl Moebius, aiming the carbine at her, who reveals the full story to her:

Some time ago Richard Moebius had found hints that the organ had been rebuilt at Burg Katz, after Enno Seipold had been forced to flee from the Inquisition following the disaster with the first organ. The castle's lord, a crazed madman, had used the organ on his prisoners - including Seipold - to torture them to death, until he himself died from its insidious effects as well.Moebius had hired Mr. Hallberg to restore the organ and endow it to the state following completion; the materials were brought in through the cistern. After discovering the organ's delilibating effects, they decided to experiment with it first (the helmets protecting them from the tones). But one night Karl found his sleepwalking uncle sitting before the keyboard, and deciding to use the instrument to drive his uncle mad and seize his fortune, Karl exposed him to the infrasonics every night without protection. Hallberg, however, had discovered the plot and foolishly confronted Karl with his knowledge, signing his own death warrant.

Following his explanations, Karl knocks Yoko out and stuffs her into the cage with Ingrid, to kill them both with the organ's sonic effects, accelerating his uncle's descent into madness and framing him for their and Hallberg's deaths. As he activates the Organ, however, Yoko makes a desperate plan and begins to swing the cage, while Ingrid blows the dog whistle, countering the Organ's infrasonic with ultrasonics. Karl jams the pedal for the main pipe with the carbine and tries to increase the intensity of the Organ's tones, and just then the chain holding the cage breaks under the strain, depositing the girls at the keyboard. Yoko dislodges the rifle, ending the sounds, but then the crypt, weakened by the sonic waves, begins to collapse. Karl flees the scene, but Yoko manages to jemmy the cage lock with the rifle barrel, and she and Ingrid, along with Moebius, escape the collapsing crypt just in time.

As they prepare to exit the cistern, however, Yoko spots Karl watching out for them. She chases him down the hill to the railway lines, but he manages to throw her off and prepares to strangle her on the tracks. But just then an engine comes in, and Karl, taken by surprise, is hit by it and killed; Yoko survives because she was lying in the space between the rails.

Shaken, Yoko returns to the castle to find Vic and Pol, who have recovered, trying to get into the cistern. Together they get Ingrid and Moebius out, and after all the details have been told, Yoko suggests that the whole matter should be kept quiet after fate had so fittingly intervened; Hallberg's death remains a suicide to the public, and Karl is declared to have gone mad. And one week later, Yoko, Ingrid, Vic and Pol once again travel along the Rhine, this time in more cheerful spirits and as new friends.

Trivia

*This volume features the "Köln-Düsseldorfer" (full name: "Köln-Düsseldorfer Deutsche Rheinschiffahrt AG (KD)"), a company which offers river-ship tours between Mannheim to Cologne, along the Rhine Valley, and the Mosel river.