MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

Squattedman doesn't even have to knock at the door of the warehouse located in an unpopulated area on the outskirts of the Bronx. The door is wide open. Above there is a sign that reads "Edison Illuminating Company." Apart from the man with a lightbulb head and five or six more people, the gigantic warehouse is deserted and the many machines turned off. From the threshold, Squattedman watches with stupor the Bulb Man who is pacing up and down in a highly agitated state. He is talking alone: “That Tesla skunk! I will electrocute him again and again until there is nothing left of him but ashes! ”  When he recovers from the initial startled, Squattedman says aloud: "Excuse me!” The Bulb Man quickly turns around: "Who are you?" ”I'm looking for Mr. Thomas Edison." "What do you want from him?" "I just want to ask him a few questions.” "Related to the war of currents?" "Is there a war in Currents? I am not aware. I...

When Squattedman, in his character of François de La Rochefoucauld, showed up at the large warehouse on the outskirts of the Bronx where Thomas Edison tested his inventions, he ran into a strange phenomenon: Edison's head was lit as if it were a light bulb. It was the time of the so-called “Battle of the Currents” between Edison’s direct current system and the Nikola Tesla alternating current system. Lately, Edison had been electrocuting animals, as well as everyone who was caught unaware, in order to prove that alternating current was extremely dangerous. And now Tesla had counterattacked. Three nights ago, while Edison and his wife were sleeping, suddenly the bedroom lit up as if it were day time. His wife sat up in bed and blurted out: “Turn off that damn light! I'm fed up with you! Tomorrow I will file for divorce!" That was the drop of water that made the vase overflow. She continuously complained that her husband turned on the light in the middle of the night...

When Jacob Schlemihl and Michael Schlimazl were asked who was the most extraordinary person they had met in the course of their activity as researchers of enigmas, their answer was Nikola Tesla (although Jacob hesitated between him and Santa Claus or maybe Sheldon Appelbaum, his barber). When they met him, Tesla was already seventy years old, but he was still active. He kept patenting new inventions and at that time maintained close contact with beings from other planets. He lived in two adjoining rooms on the 33rd floor of Hotel New Yorker. Tesla himself had hired ENIGMA CONSULTANTS S.L. to investigate whether those little green men who occasionally appeared on his balcony were really extraterrestrials or dwarves painted green, as he had sometimes suspected. (The transmission of knowledge between these little green men and Tesla worked in the opposite direction to that assumed today by conspiracy theorists.) As long as their investigation lasted, Tesla invited Michael and Jacob to res...