813

A murder in a Paris hotel, a scrap of paper with three digits and a letter, and a manhunt in which Lupin plays both the criminal and the chief of the detective bureau hunting him. Leblanc wrote it in 1910 as a serial for Le Journal and let his hero lose, badly, before the end. The secret behind the number is a matter of European politics. Fifty-six plates from 1820 to 1920, among them Schuch and Bogoliouboff, trace the streets, bridges and city nights that shadow Lupin's chase.