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witness. 197 THE MYSTERY LINGERS At the appointed time, my correspondent arrived at the hotel with a friend. Two well-dressed men, one of whom introduced himself as Grapinet, did greet him. They announced that the actual meeting place had been moved to a private dining room in a Paris restaurant, where they would meet the other candidates. Furthermore, the Frenchman must go there by himself, without the friend he had brought as a The two representatives from Theard & Co. drove him to the restau- rant, where he met, as best as he can recollect, the following remarkable group. First, there were two other candidates, who turned out to be Francois Raulin, a distinguished chemist from Paris University, who has done research on the nature and origin of life, and Claude Vorilhon, a notorious sect leader who has claimed contact with extraterrestrial beings and has gone on to organize a worldwide movement. While I have published the background of this Raelian group in Messengers of Deception, it might be useful to recall that Vorilhon's logo, a swastika inside a Star of David, was allegedly given to him by space aliens. He has repeatedly met and traveled with them, and was once given a delightful bath by a group of attractive female robots. The most remarkable facts about Rael-Vorilhon are that he has acquired a large number of disciples—including thousands of followers in French Canada—and that the cult seems to have sources of income beyond the donations from his flock, leading some to speculate that the Raelian movement, like Prevost's group after Pontoise, like UMMO in Spain, and like Jim Jones's Peoples' Temple, may have attracted the attention of social engineers motivated by the observation and the management of such belief systems. In the restaurant, which was located on rue du Cloitre Notre-Dame, a table in the shape of a horseshoe had been prepared. Around the table, in addition to the three candidates, were the following twelve people: Mr. M. Bates from Theard & Co. Mr. XI, an associate of Mr. Bates Miss X2, an associate of Mr. Bates Miss X3, secretary with Theard & Co.