Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes Read Free

newspapers with heavy black headlines, as follows: “Lottery Ticket No. 514!” … “The Crime on the avenue Henri-Martin!” … “The Blue Diamond!” … The interest created by the intervention of the celebrated English detective, Herlock Sholmes! The excitement aroused by the various vicissitudes which marked the struggle between those famous artists! And what a commotion on the boulevards, the day on which the newsboys announced: “Arrest of Arsène Lupin!”
    My excuse for repeating these stories at this time is the fact that I produce the key to the enigma. Those adventures have always been enveloped in a certain degree of obscurity, which I now remove. I reproduce old newspaper articles, I relate old-time interviews, I present ancient letters; but I have arranged and classified all that material and reduced it to the exact truth. My collaborators in this work have been Arsène Lupin himself, and also the ineffable Wilson, the friend and confidant of Herlock Sholmes.
    Every one will recall the tremendous burst of laughter which greeted the publication of those two telegrams. The name “Arsène Lupin” was in itself a stimulus to curiosity, a promise of amusement for the gallery. And, in this case, the gallery means the entire world.
    An investigation was immediately commenced by the Crédit Foncier, which established these facts: That ticket No. 514, series 23, had been sold by the Versailles branch office of the Lottery to an artillery officer named Bessy, who was afterward killed by a fall from his horse. Some time before his death, he informed some of his comrades that he had transferred his ticket to a friend.
    “And I am that friend,” affirmed Mon. Gerbois.
    “Prove it,” replied the governor of the Crédit Foncier.
    “Of course I can prove it. Twenty people can tell you that I was an intimate friend of Monsieur Bessy, and that we frequently met at the Café de la Place-d’Armes. It was there, one day, I purchased the ticket from him for twenty francs—simply as an accommodation to him.
    “Have you any witnesses to that transaction?”
    “No.”
    “Well, how do you expect to prove it?”
    “By a letter he wrote to me.”
    “What letter?”
    “A letter that was pinned to the ticket.”
    “Produce it.”
    “It was stolen at the same time as the ticket.”
    “Well, you must find it.” It was soon learned that Arsène Lupin had the letter. A short paragraph appeared in the  Echo de France —which has the honor to be his official organ, and of which, it is said, he is one of the principal shareholders—the paragraph announced that Arsène Lupin had placed in the hands of Monsieur Detinan, his advocate and legal adviser, the letter that Monsieur Bessy had written to him—to him personally.
    This announcement provoked an outburst of laughter. Arsène Lupin had engaged a lawyer! Arsène Lupin, conforming to the rules and customs of modern society, had appointed a legal representative in the person of a well-known member of the Parisian bar!
    Mon. Detinan had never enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Arsène Lupin—a fact he deeply regretted—but he had actually been retained by that mysterious gentleman and felt greatly honored by the choice. He was prepared to defend the interests of his client to the best of his ability. He was pleased, even proud, to exhibit the letter of Mon. Bessy, but, although it proved the transfer of the ticket, it did not mention the name of the purchaser. It was simply addressed to “My Dear Friend.”
    “My Dear Friend! That is I,” added Arsène Lupin, in a note attached to Mon. Bessy’s letter. “And the best proof of that fact is that I hold the letter.”
    The swarm of reporters immediately rushed to see Mon. Gerbois, who could only repeat:
    “My Dear Friend! That is I … Arsène Lupin stole the letter with the lottery ticket.”
    “Let him prove it!” retorted Lupin to the reporters.
    “He must have done it, because he stole the writing-desk!”