Toward Fame and Glory: Renown in Anonymity

Roger Deeble who fancies himself a versatile genius tries to achieve world fame in music, but his ugly voice when he sings lieders is hissed and whistled in a concert hall. Only Albitore, his flatterer and would-be-impresario, encourages him to go on… With Albitore’s incentives, he tries his hand at ‘modern art’. None to buy his daubs in an exhibition where, before him, a ‘fashionable’ artist has sold worthless pictures by dozens. Albitore turns his back on him at last. Left by himself, Deeble hides his face behind a mask and anonymously succeeds in becoming known by means of a mass murder he commits on a Halloween night, killing twenty children and their mistress who were bobbing for apples . Only Albitore sees him. He somewhat blackmails him into helping kidnap babies and selling them to rich childless couples. Not a penny of the proceeds goes to his pocket as promised. He ends up killing Albitore and when a second wholesale assassination is committed a year later by an unknown murderer who tries to imitate him he is charged with both crimes and tries by hook or by crook to get an alibi…