Page Content (OCR)
out of bed. THE SECOND POLICE 130 REVELATIONS the cabbage field, unaware that a whole week had elapsed. The car was no longer there. He rushed to the apartment in panic and got Salomon This time the gendarmes took no chances. They were exasperated by this lingering mystery which put them in the spotlight, yet they were still convinced that the whole affair must be some kind of prank. It certainly could not be murder, since the corpse had suddenly come back! So they took everybody downtown, including Prevost's girlfriend Corinne, although she was under doctor's orders to rest after a serious surgical operation. INVESTIGATION From 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. that Monday, the gendarmes interrogated Franck, trying hard to extract from him the confession that the whole thing was a hoax. Adjutant Maniela and Commandant Courcoux kept asking him questions about where he had been and what he had done for seven days. Franck kept repeating that he had no recollection at all of the missing time. At 11:00 A.M. Franck was driven back to the site amidst a great display of gadgetry. A compass was produced by the constabulary in a ludicrous attempt "to see if his brain was magnetized," and a Geiger counter was used to detect any radioactivity in the cabbage field. There was none. They all trooped back to the gendarmerie office. Only then did it occur to the investigators that it might be a good idea to take blood and urine samples from Franck. His family physician, Dr. Vivien Hassoun, was called and the samples were collected at 3:00 P.M. A psychiatrist also came and stated that he found Franck normal. While the abductee was undergoing this long ordeal, Prevost and the other members of the group were subjected to a harsh, intense and degrading series of interrogations designed to extract their confession. Franck's girlfriend, Mamina, who had given birth to a boy two months earlier, was told by the officers that Franck might be insane and that her baby might consequently have been born retarded, or worse: she