The Red Silk Scarf: from The Best of Lupin

By Maurice Leblanc

When a tantalizing clue to a young woman’s murder—a torn silk scarf—falls into the hands of Arsène Lupin, the internationally famous gentleman-thief, he senses an irresistible opportunity. Lupin is both a brilliant planner of elaborate heists and an ingenious solver of mysteries, and in this short story he turns his deductive skills to accomplishing three tasks simultaneously: finding the killer; teasing his archrival, the Inspector Ganimard of the Paris Police; and turning a handsome profit for himself. Drawn from the short story collection The Best of Lupin, “The Red Silk Scarf” showcases Maurice Leblanc’s witty and clever hero at his finest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9780593688342

Maurice Leblanc

Maurice Leblanc est un romancier français né le 11 décembre 18641, à Rouen, et mort le 6 novembre 1941, à Perpignan. Auteur de nombreux romans policiers et d'aventures, il est le créateur du célèbre gentleman-cambrioleur Arsène Lupin. Relégué au rang de « Conan Doyle français », Maurice Leblanc est un écrivain populaire en France et à l'étranger. Dès 1919, les studios d'Hollywood achètent des droits pour porter à l'écran Les dents du tigre et 813. En 1932, Jack Conway réalise au cinéma Arsène Lupin et en 1938 les spectateurs peuvent regarder Le retour d'Arsène Lupin. Bien des années plus tard, en 2021, Arsène Lupin est à nouveau adapté dans une minisérie française à succès diffusée dans le monde entier en VoD (vidéo à la demande).

Book preview

Cover for The Red Silk Scarf, Author, Maurice Leblanc; Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

Maurice Leblanc (1864–1941) was born in Rouen, France, and is best remembered now for his short stories and novels featuring the brilliant master criminal, Arsène Lupin. There were five collections of Lupin stories: Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar (1906), Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes (1908), The Confessions of Arsène Lupin (1912), The Eight Strokes of the Clock (1922), and Arsène Lupin Intervenes (1928). A selection of stories drawn from all five of these books appears in The Best of Lupin: The Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief (Vintage Books, 2024).

The Red Silk Scarf

from The Best of Lupin: The Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief

Maurice Leblanc

Translations by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

A Vintage Short

Vintage Books

A Division of Penguin Random House LLC

New York

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Published in paperback as part of The Best of Lupin in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2023.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Classics and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for The Best of Lupin is available from the Library of Congress.

Ebook ISBN 9780593688342

Cover design by Perry De La Vega

www.vintagebooks.com

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Contents

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

The Red Silk Scarf

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THE RED SILK SCARF

On leaving his house one morning, at his usual early hour for going to the Law Courts, Chief-inspector Ganimard noticed the curious behaviour of an individual who was walking along the Rue Pergolèse in front of him. Shabbily dressed and wearing a straw hat, though the day was the first of December, the man stooped at every thirty or forty yards to fasten his boot-lace, or pick up his stick, or for some other reason. And, each time, he took a little piece of orange-peel from his pocket and laid it stealthily on the curb of the pavement. It was probably a mere display of eccentricity, a childish amusement to which no one else would have paid attention; but Ganimard was one of those shrewd observers who are indifferent to