Arsène Lupin’s attempted robbery of the deputy Daubrecq has gone horribly wrong, leaving behind a murdered man and two of his accomplices in the hands of the police. Now he finds himself pulled into an ever more conspiratorial spiral as he attempts to gain leverage over the people who can free his men. Set before the events of the preceding 813 , this again portrays Lupin in a much different light to the earlier books. At times almost coming to despair, this story shows him grappling with his personal morals whilst trying to do the best for those closest to him.

The story was originally serialised in Le Journal in 1912, before being published as a novel in both the original French and this English translation by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos in 1913.