A New York detective arrives in an insurance office, asks entirely the wrong questions, and touches one of Lupin’s hidden joints and makes it click. The escape is improvised, the plan amended on the fly — and this unsettles him more than failure would have done. Sherlock Holmes arrives for a diplomatic theft and finds Lupin working the same case from the other direction. Their first exchange, in a drawing room on the Rue de l’Université, is ostensibly about a cupboard. Neither of them is talking about furniture. In Cap d’Antibes in 1913, an operation goes without resistance — perfect entry, clean exit, the safe emptied before midnight — and Lupin stands on a hotel balcony unable to convert perfection into appetite. A neighbour asks if he’s waiting for someone. He says no. It is the truest thing he says all book.

The rivals are the ones who don’t find brilliance impressive. They look at locks, timings, the age of sealing wax, and the undefended joint in every plan. The last story is set one year before the war.

He was not waiting for anyone. By 1913, that was the answer to more questions than he had intended to ask.

The Rivals of Arsène Lupin is the final volume in The Lupin Stories — literary short fiction in Belle Époque France.

Also in the series: The Masks of Arsène Lupin and The Debts of Arsène Lupin.