I was considering several possibilities for the next Fortnightly Book, but the set-up of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar for the next published work in the series, Arsène Lupin vs Herlock Sholmes, wetted my appetite for the latter, particularly since, when I listened to a few audiobook versions of the books a while back, I remember this book as being, by far, the funniest of the books.
In the last story of the first book, "Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Soon", Arsène Lupin and Sherlock Holmes briefly meet, as Lupin is leaving and Holmes, having been sent for but having to cross the Channel, is just arriving:
When the last horseman had passed, Sherlock Holmes stepped forth and brushed the dust from his clothes. Then, for a moment, he and Arsène Lupin gazed at each other; and, if a person could have seen them at that moment, it would have been an interesting sight, and memorable as the first meeting of two remarkable men, so strange, so powerfully equipped, both of superior quality, and destined by fate, through their peculiar attributes, to hurl themselves at the other like two equal forces that nature opposes, one against the other, int he realms of space. (p. 188)
As it happens, Holmes has already deduced, based on the information he has on the case on which he was going to consult and Lupin's behavior, that the other man is Lupin, but he does not regard this as a major priority at the moment. Holmes continues to his destination, where he solves in ten minutes the key to a centuries-old puzzle, which Lupin also had solved, and sets to return. As he does so, however, he is met by a car -- Lupin sent it to him from the train station, knowing that Holmes would not need much time, and Holmes takes it for the compliment it is. But in the car is a box with a watch -- Holmes's watch, which Lupin had managed to lift in their brief meeting. Holmes does not take this gift so well:
The Englishman never moved a muscle. On the way to Dieppe, he never spoke a word, but fixed his gaze on the flying landscape. his silence was terrible, unfathomable, more violent than the wildest rage. At the railway station, he spoke calmly, but in a voice that impressed one with the vast energy and will power of that famous man. He said:
"Yes, he is a clever man, but someday I shall have the pleasure of placing on his shoulder the hand I now offer to you, Monsieur Devanne. And I believe that Arsène Lupin and Sherlock Holmes will meet again some day. Yes, the world is too small -- we will meet -- we must meet -- and then --" (p. 198)
The next Fortnightly Book, Arsène Lupin vs Herlock Sholmes, is the tale of their meeting again. Of course, as the story was being serialized, after the first two chapters were published in Je sais tout, Arthur Conan Doyle squelched the use of the name 'Sherlock Holmes'; so LeBlanc just started calling the detective 'Herlock Sholmes'. (He was not the first to use the name to get around Doyle and later the Doyle estate, although in many ways he was the most talented and successful.) This was how the whole story was done in book format. Some English translations, perhaps a little less sure that they could evade the matter so easily, used 'Holmlock Shears' instead. Time has proved stronger than the litigiousness of the Doyle estate, so nowadays you can also occasionally find versions that just use 'Sherlock Holmes'. My version has 'Herlock Sholmes'. The result, in any case, was perhaps the greatest non-Doyle Sherlock Holmes story ever written. Of course, being French, LeBlanc can't resist using the occasion to poke fun at English foibles, as well.
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Quotations from Maurice LeBlanc, Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar, Fox Eye Publishing (Leicester, UK: 2022).
