Fortnightly Book, October 12

 In working through Maurice LeBlanc's Arsene Lupin stories, we find ourselves having to make a judgment call after The Confessions of Arsene Lupin. The next published work is The Teeth of the Tiger, but it is peculiar in that it was published in English translation, in 1914, before it was published in the original French, in 1920. In 1916, LeBlanc published The Shell Shard (or The Shrapnel), which was originally a standalone tale, but which was written to be a Lupin tale and re-published as such in 1923. Then comes The Golden Triangle, serializec in 1917 and published in book form in 1918. We can set aside The Shell Shard as not being Lupinesque until later (and it may well be that, in any case, LeBlanc got the idea that he could make The Shell Shard a Lupin story from how he handled Lupin in The Golden Triangle), but we have to make a choice as to the order of the other two. After some thought, I have decided to follow the French publication order here, which means that the next fortnightly book is The Golden Triangle, also known as The Return of Arsene Lupin. This also has the advantage, in this case, of following the internal chronology of the narrative.

At the end of the tragic events of 813, Arsene Lupin left for the Foreign Legion, assumed by most of the world to be dead, and The Golden Triangle gives us a glimpse of him afterward. By all the descriptions, it seems to be in the style that would later be associated with Marquand's Mr. Moto -- that is, he is not the main character of the story but the resolving character, the one who links the essential elements so that the whole can come to a resolution. As some of the prior Lupin works gave us a bit too much of Lupin himself, showing the gentleman thief in a more indirect light could very well be showing him in a better light. We shall see.

Captain Patrice Belval rescues a woman from an attempted kidnapping. The ensuing adventure brings him into contact with a conspiracy to steal the gold reserves of France, and in opposition to a dangerous adversary. To deal with this problem, he gets help from a friend of a friend, Don Luis Perenna, but saving three hundred million francs in gold during World War I is going to require solving some difficult problems....

A Most Excellent Creator

 Let us, then, now seek the Trinity which is God, in the things themselves that are eternal, incorporeal, and unchangeable; in the perfect contemplation of which a blessed life is promised us, which cannot be other than eternal. For not only does the authority of the divine books declare that God is; but the whole nature of the universe itself which surrounds us, and to which we also belong, proclaims that it has a most excellent Creator, who has given to us a mind and natural reason, whereby to see that things living are to be preferred to things that are not living; things that have sense to things that have not; things that have understanding to things that have not; things immortal to things mortal; things powerful to things impotent; things righteous to things unrighteous; things beautiful to things deformed; things good to things evil; things incorruptible to things corruptible; things unchangeable to things changeable; things invisible to things visible; things incorporeal to things corporeal; things blessed to things miserable. And hence, since without doubt we place the Creator above things created, we must needs confess that the Creator both lives in the highest sense, and perceives and understands all things, and that He cannot die, or suffer decay, or be changed; and that He is not a body, but a spirit, of all the most powerful, most righteous, most beautiful, most good, most blessed.

[Augustine, De Trinitate XV, iv, 6.]