"I meant that what you hold, we will have, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it."
Item: SCP-8136
Object Class: Folio
Calling card of SCP-8136 (former).
Special Containment Procedures: Though the return of SCP-8136 remains a possibility, it is unlikely, as the associated terms will be found distasteful to the SCP Foundation.
SCP-8136 will only be returned on the event of the SCiPnet database's disclosure to the general public and release to the public domain, complete and entire, without revision, excision, or redaction.
The present owner (and subject) of SCP-8136 labours under no delusion that these terms will be accepted.
They will therefore be realized by the owner (and subject) himself, to wit, my own august personage, without Foundation assistance—I here refer, of course, to knowing assistance.
I regret, and delight in, the inconvenience this is certain to cause your organization. If it should be any consolation, a great many of the items in your catalogue are most certainly counterfeit, or at least the files describing them are. For a modest fee, I will gladly identify these for you once the full manifest is safely in my possession.
(No Longer) Yours,
— Arsène Lupin,
SCP-8136 (former), purveyor of unpurveyables and recent immigrant to the realms of the 'real'
Description: SCP-8136 is the previous file slated for this SCiPnet database slot, never uploaded due in part to pataphysical corruption. Said file described the apparent real-world manifestation of Arsène Lupin, an early twentieth century French literary figure typifying the archetype of the 'gentleman thief'. SCP-8136 was stolen from the Site-19 local database on 11 February 2025 by Lupin himself. The present file was apparently opened by Lupin and uploaded to SCiPnet on this same date via unknown means, consisting only of the nonstandard Special Containment Procedures seen above.
As all related research and secondary documentation has also been lost, only one practical means of recovering the series of events culminating in Lupin's burglary of Site-19 exists. On 15 February 2025, Foundation webcrawler I/O ANACHRON reported that an unknown user had uploaded scans of a pair of related manuscripts to Parawatch.org: "The Thief Who Stole Himself" by Edgar Allan Poe, supposedly published in the American Graham's Magazine, and "Arsène Lupin Breaches Containment" by Maurice LeBlanc, supposedly published in the French magazine Je Sais Tout. I/O ANACHRON's scrutiny was triggered by the following facts:
- Neither work was previously known to exist, despite the fame of both authors;
- Graham's Magazine has been defunct since 1858;
- Je Sais Tout has been defunct since 1939;
- Edgar Allan Poe has been deceased since 1849;
- Maurice LeBlanc has been deceased since 1941;
- Both works carry a publication date of February 2025, in apparent further contradiction of the above.
Both works depict the creation and theft of SCP-8136, from two different perspectives:
- the close personal friend of Poe's proto-detective character C. Auguste Dupin;
- a close personal friend of LeBlanc's Arsène Lupin.
The provenance of each work is unknown, and literary analysis has neither confirmed nor denied their putative authorship.
Addendum 8136-1, Timeline Reconstruction: As all other perspectives are undergoing reconstruction at this time, the remainder of this file will consist of the following:
- commentary from Site-19 Chief of Investigation Detective Quinn Roscoe, HMCL supervisor for this file (and its predecessor); and
- excerpts from the supposed Poe and LeBlanc narratives.
SCP-8136 Report
by Quinn Roscoe
I will be commenting on each passage in turn, but a very brief preamble should serve to allay the reader's fears.
A lengthy and overly-verbose treatise on the nature of the anomalous, the Foundation, and the Veil of Normalcy prefaces the 'Poe' text. The bulk of this has been excised for brevity and legibility, though I have included the opening paragraphs to give the reader a taste of what they aren't missing. As with the real Poe, luckily, the author settles into a rhythm once the plot finally gets moving.
I've made similar edits to both works; on the whole, however, the prose in the 'LeBlanc' piece requires far less literary intervention than with 'Poe'. I would say that's evidence in favour of the texts' authenticity, but…
I will allow the remainder of this file to speak to that issue.
The Thief Who Stole Himself
by Edgar Allan Poe
It is a fact to be deplored that a credulous populace, ensnared as they are in the coils of a collective ignorance wholly or in part engendered by an abhorrence of analysis —born no doubt of adolescent preferences for play above practicality —bordering often on the manic, if not religious, turns so often in its paroxysms of fear to explanations rather fantastical than rational. That minds too timorous to conceive of such terrors as Euler's Constant in the cold light of day might still imagine into being such laughable bogey-men as Spring-Heeled Jack, El Coco, or the Bonhomme Sept-Heures, is a sad commentary on the otherwise risible gullibility of our fellow human creatures. And yet my eminent friend C. Auguste Dupin, foremost analytical mind of his generation and ratiocinator par excellence, assures me that there does exist a world, careening through the unsoundable void alongside the one we together inhabit, which admits of some such possibilities within the rigid frameworks constructed with such care by Pascal, Newton, Franklin et al. Knowledge of this scenario is not widely shared, and there is to blame a behemoth of both endeavor and science perverted to the cause of universal ignorance, a corporate entity known from Occident to Orient as the Foundation…
Suffice to say it is established in this opening section that the narrator and his talented friend are both now aware of the world on our side of the Veil, though how this came to pass is never explained.
Arsène Lupin Breaches Containment
by Maurice LeBlanc
It is no strange thing to exist. Men have existed as long as mankind, by logical default. But only a mind self-honed in advance to admit any possibility, no matter how unlikely, could long survive the strangeness of discovering not only that one's own existence was once merely fanciful, but also that it now has turned factual. Such a mind has Arsène Lupin.
On discovering himself transported to a setting far removed, if only temporally, from the Paris of his previous exploits, a world of some eight billions wielding mastery over time and space which had only ever known him as a figment of fiction, that worthy wasted no time on slack-jawed awe or superstitious remonstration. His world had never kept up with him before. This one would not long outpace him.
In the glow of electric light run rampant, Arsène Lupin gazed on the motor-cars, aero-planes, thinking machines and mobile telephones of this brave new Earth, and set immediately to the task of acquiring them for himself.
Lupin indulges in a series of escapades across the modern world, promptly acquiring the technological facility necessary to resume his traditional depredations. Notably, rather than hoarding the items he steals or gifting them to the less fortunate as was his prior modus operandi, he releases them to the public domain, or at least the assets required to reverse-engineer them, wherever possible.
My companion on occasion heeds the call to showmanship. That he may derive from a single glance, an inch of foolscap or a scrap of speech a veritable wealth of excellent clews I have already shewn, but on the occasion of our remarkable transportation, he required only one; and lacking an immediate audience to impress with his skills of deduction, that single clew sufficed. Still, he remained Dupin, and could not resist the allure of a dramatic presentation.
"The air," he declared suddenly, as we promenaded in the mist of the Faubourg Saint Germain. "The air is foul. Carbon dioxide, I should say. Yes. My friend, it is the future!"
"Whatever can you mean, Dupin?" I cried. "In what way is carbon dioxide the future?"
But he shook his head, and peered up at the sky. I followed his gaze, and fancied I witnessed a bird in flight, though the sun caught its breast in a manner most unusual. "You have heard me discourse on the gas turbine, P__, have you not?"
I could not for the life of me comprehend how this was not a changing of the topic, but knowing that my companion's course never wavered without reason, I merely nodded and awaited explication.
He quickened his pace, and I jogged to keep up. "This malaise is the natural —nay, not natural, but scientific! —end to such advances. Did I not tell you? Perhaps Otto has finished his engine… oh, but no, this is so much more. So much more, mark me!"
And by the force of his own strides he ejected himself from the arcade, and I behind him. We stepped together into the streetside proper, and I saw that what he claimed, fantastic though it was, was so.
I have never seen my friend so stirred to emotion as when he spun on the curb and exhorted me, breathless, to "Behold! To-morrow!"
Dupin and Poe quickly learn that the mansion they once inhabited, rumoured to be haunted, is now quarantined by the SCP Foundation. They are able to secure room and board above a flower shop when Dupin successfully diagnoses the shop-owner's allergic condition after only a brief conversation, at which point the armchair detective begins an earnest study of news media to catch up on his new circumstances. He soon secures a modest income via 'gig' detective work using the Paris classifieds, until a chance encounter with a local police officer results in him solving a locked-room murder mystery wherein the cause of death was a heart attack, and the culprit was, in Dupin's words, "an tremendous Gorilla, clad in fabric such as your astro-nauts are said to wear." I/O ANACHRON flagged this for review, resulting in both the re-containment of SCP-2006 and the detention of Dupin and Poe by the Foundation.
My memories of those first frightful days have the quality of scuffed crystal: clear, in the main, but with an indelible halo of… well. I shall leave that mystery as an exercise for the reader, at present.
It was always the fashion of my friend Lupin to be one step ahead of his would-be interlocutors on all matters pertaining to his art. I say fashion, because it was not a firm rule; of these, by both temperament and necessity, he had few. But he did like to be informed, and so before embarking on what was bound to become his most exuberant spree, he availed himself of a century's worth of literature on the matter of genteel crime.
In those annals he discovered, to his considerable delight, that he himself had become the ideal type of daredevil rapscallion.
He also discovered that he was held not to exist, but to be a fictional personage created by one M__ L_B__.
"L_B__!" he addressed me, laughing. "What a hash you have made of my exploits!"
He made great fun of chastising me for authoring so many extraordinary adventures, and ascribing their execution to him (though every word, I attest, was God's own truth). But on the matter of his fame, he resolved in grave solemnity to out-do in every respect his known performances, such that the reality of Arsène Lupin would rapidly outstrip his notoriety in print.
In a fortnight he was the terror of the unseen world. Who was it, cried android and golem and technomancer alike, that had stolen the Red ICE from the Bank of Eurtec without raising one of its seven hundred finely-tuned alarms? Surely anyone but Arsène Lupin, whose calling card was found at the scene, because that man did not exist. Who dared, the Black Lord of Alagadda demanded, to pilfer the choicest volumes of his Athenaeum of Severed Tongues? It could not be Arsène Lupin, whatever the relic left in his wake might claim, because never even in the Nevermeant had the denizens of serialized fiction sprung to life. Why, the King of Hy-Brasil wanted to know, had someone assumed the unlikely name of Arsène Lupin to extract a sum of gold coin from his treasury, and leave in its place one of the stolen sherds of crystal needed to restore its wards of old? He would have paid three times the price, and not had to replace the locks.
The most obvious answer, though least likely, was soon known to be true.
Arsène Lupin, the man, the legend, the menace of the idle rich, was real.
It was at this point that we started to take notice. Lupin managed to piss off just about every single Group of Interest in the normalcy community, within the space of a month, dumping most of what he stole on the internet and committing it to the commons. Given that copyright is a tricky business when most of the Earth's legal apparatus is on the other side of the Veil, it was increasingly difficult for the affected parties to find redress or reclaim their property.
We knew it was only a matter of time before he came for us.
Luckily, or so I thought at the time, we were ready.
Those early days in this latter age were troubling in the main, and so the Chevalier and I were wont to pass our nights beneath le Dame de Fer. There was comfort in that spire of steel; though it spoke without a doubt to the advanced date, a thing we could scarcely have imagined in our own time, still it was far closer to our advanced antiquity than the motor-carriages and cell-phones which crowded us at every hour.
Dupin was mid-lecture on the mind of M. Eiffel —something about the shape of one stanchion in particular, through a long line of reasoning, spoke to the architect's longing for brotherly love —when a trio of toughs emerged from the shadows and swaddled us in stultifying velvet.
We awoke, together, in a bland and sterile space, a room so perfectly white and yet so redolent with despair, it might have been the unholy bastard of le Hôpital Lariboisière and le Hôpital général, equal parts sanitarium and gaol. An inscrutable personage sat across the steel table, and when they spoke, it was in a voice of authority.
"My name is Detective Roscoe," our captor intoned. "Who the h_ll are you?"
I bristled at the vulgarity, while my companion raised a brow at the familiarity. As was the custom between us, Dupin spoke for both. "I am only C. Auguste Dupin, a gentleman of modest means and modest talent." I chuckled to myself at the thought of Dupin termed 'only' and 'modest'. "This is my close companion, whose identity does not concern you."
Roscoe rolled their eyes. "Dupin. Okay. That's familiar, which is a bad thing. I'll have to look it up."
At this, I thought it my turn to intervene. "Only that same C. Auguste Dupin who resolved The Murders in the Rue Morgue! Who discerned the true circumstances of The Murder of Marie Rogêt! Famed recoverer of The Purloined Letter! Only he!'
Dupin placed a hand on my shoulder, and I thrilled at the touch. "Hush," he murmured. "You do me too much honor, and that runs but a thin credit in the bastille."
Roscoe held a device up to their face, and began tapping at it with narrowed eyes. I had seen such curious things in the city, though I had not yet had time (nor, in truth, mustered courage) to determine their purpose for myself, or at least ask Dupin.
"Might I inquire on what charge we are detained?" Dupin asked demurely.
Roscoe looked up from their tablet-device, and smirked. "Not being real."
"Ah." Dupin nodded. "It would naturally become necessary to regulate such things, should they become possible. I comprehend."
I stared at my friend. "I do not. What does it mean, 'Not being real'?"
Dupin merely patted my shoulder, and continued to address the 'detective'. "You are incorrect, however, in your assumption. My motivations are purely intellectual, true, but I am not averse to recompense. Particularly in my present strained circumstances."
I smiled in anticipation of what was to follow, as Roscoe first nodded absent-mindedly, then fixed my companion with that stare which I knew all too well. "Sorry," they murmured, "run that by me again? I didn't say anything about your motivations."
"You were wondering," Dupin smiled, "whether the aid of a person such as myself might be obtained for a fee, or the promise of release. It is a simple deduction. You hold in your hand some manner of tablet computer. By the hesitancy of your tapping, I suspect one of two possibilities: you are unaccustomed to this device, or your training predates its wide use. By the crow's feet around your eyes, I determine the latter more likely. You tapped the same space twice, and by the consternation apparent in your brow I can surmise this represents an error. Your eyes rolled —you really must restrain that impulse, if law enforcement is your career, as it quite gives up the game as regards your emotional state —and you instinctively twitched your typing hand in the direction of your back pocket. I know our times are not so far removed in terms of social convention as to have altered the customary location of a gentleperson's purse. You were thinking you are not compensated well enough for the frustrations of your post, and this produced the habitual impulse to assure yourself of the presence of your pocket-book. At this thought the light of intrigue entered into your eyes, and as you glanced up at me briefly, you acquired what by your standards is likely a sly expression. You were wondering if my own services might be secured for a sensible sum. You then took in my attire, its admittedly ghastly state of repair —I have seen that look from policemen before, in both my time and yours, as suspicions of loitering were raised —and your shoulders sank almost imperceptibly in disappointment. You had reached the conclusion that I am a mere dilettante, an hobbyist, and not an expert for hire. For how could I present myself so shabbily, how could I not afford a more elaborate wardrobe, if my obvious talents were for sale? At this point I feel the need to intervene, because the course of your thoughts has run far too athwart of reality's channel. I am most certainly available for employment, Detective Roscoe, and I suspect I have just passed my interview before it even begins."
It was all I could do not to break into laughter as every known emotion crossed our interviewer's face.
I was not at all surprised to see them settle on a hungry smile.
Dupin had figured out that he was fictional pretty quickly. Probably as soon as he figured out Google. His buddy — who does in fact answer to Poe, and looks a lot like him, too, though that's where the resemblance ends — was a lot slower on the uptake; he's like a parody of Watson. Or I guess Watson is a more competent version of him. Whatever.
In any case, I expressed polite interest in Dupin's offer to work for us. I had to run it past a lot of folks higher-up, but by this point Lupin was becoming such a serious concern that they were willing to give it due consideration.
It was Goemon who ended up tipping the balance.
A day after my interview with the transplanted fictional Frenchmen, a bandit claiming to be the historical Ishikawa Goemon, but resembling more closely the mythological version, was captured at Bio-Research Area-12 while attempting to steal specimens of SCP-143, apparently to construct weapons and armor. Correspondence with the Japanese Branch and IJAMEA confirmed that a figure matching Goemon's description had already engaged in a series of daring robberies on Honshu. As further reports of anomalous crime began to rise across the globe, it became apparent that we were dealing with a much more serious problem than we'd realized.
We've known about pataphysics long enough to know that the only thing which can effectively oppose a fictional antagonist is a fictional protagonist.
I am sure it speaks ill of my character that I would accept charity of unsavoury origin, but I allowed my friend Lupin to put me up in comfortable apartments whilst we worked out the facts of our new existence. "Consider it repayment of royalties," he winked, before assuring me these funds in particular had come to him via a comparatively principled transaction: the repatriation of certain ritual items from the Royal Alberta Museum to the descendants of their owners, facilitated by a wealthy and morally scrupulous donor who wishes at this time to remain anonymous.
With the aid of that fanciful invention, the inter-net, I daily negotiated the complications of plying my authorial trade using my own name, assumed by all and sundry to be a nom de plume due to my own apparent demise a generation prior. I enjoyed only indifferent success at this, literary standards having apparently altered significantly in the interim, until a rude interruption arrived at my doorstep in the form of a stout, stolid gentleman of the law—in fact the only such individual alive with whom I was already acquainted.
The great detective Ganimard, who had so often troubled (and been troubled by, out of all proportion) my friend Lupin, had found me. He asked with great politeness whether I might allow him entry, and having little to hide of which he was apparently not already aware, I acquiesced.
"How is it that you are here, detective?" I inquired as we sat in my sitting-room. "More to the point, how is it that you exist?"
The old sleuth grunted. "Your friend Monsieur Lupin is a wily adversary. It is impossible to find him if he does not wish to be found. You, on the other hand, are no more cagey than a Seine salmon."
I am forced to admit this assessment hit the mark.
"But what purpose have you in confronting me so?" I pressed.
Again, he grunted. "This is no confrontation. I seek your assistance."
"What assistance can I be to you?"
"I find myself unable to secure employment," he admitted with a twinge of embarrassment. "While my reputation precedes me, it also holds me to be a character from dime store novels."
"Ah," I agreed. "I find myself in similar straits."
A third grunt. "But I have followed the new career of our mutual acquaintance, M. Lupin, and my investigations have given me great insight. Have you had occasion to notice the character of this world to which we have been transported, Monsieur L_B__?"
"I cannot imagine to what you refer, detective."
He sat forward, shoulders hunched. "These are times fantastic strange," he said gravely.
"Pah." I dismissed his concerns with a wave. "This is nothing new to us. Have you forgotten the affair of the god-stone, or the Fountain of Youth?"
"This Earth stands on a knife's edge," he continued as though I had not spoken, "with oblivion all around. That renegade may bring us all toppling down at any time, with his selfish games. Would you have all eternity's end on your conscience?"
With reference to the Foundation's role in preserving the stability of baseline reality, Ganimard succeeded in convincing LeBlanc that Lupin must be, if not captured, at least convinced of the error of his ways. Having shadowed both narrator and thief to the extent his abilities allowed, the detective knew what sort of activity would attract our attention. He performed it, and both individuals were promptly contained and transported to Site-19 for interview. To nobody's surprise, the narrator resembled the real Maurice LeBlanc and answered to his name, though the personal history he related to me was that of his fictional persona only.
Ganimard immediately offered his assistance with Lupin's detainment; as the latter's spree had by now become a matter of global import, and the attention of the mundane press had been captured as well, this offer was seriously considered.
Complicating the matter was an individual claiming to be Irene Adler, fictional rogue from Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia." Adler had been running a blackmail racket implicating the Patriarchs of the Cogwork Orthodox Church, the Chairman of the Manna Charitable Foundation, the Assistant Director of the Unusual Incidents Unit, and Dr. Wondertainment; her error was in attempting to add members of the Overseer Council to this list.
It was now confirmed that Lupin's appearance was no isolated incident.
It was a source of great consternation to me that Dupin and I were kept separate during this period of trial incarceration, though we were allowed to visit during lunch-times and at dinner. In these intervals I would find the Chevalier lost in meditation, whether under interrogation or not; he had been allowed to retain his green eye-glasses, and he employed them to disguise his mental absence whilst the idle prattle of our captors washed over him.
When interviewed, as well, we were almost never parted. I began to fancy they considered us a matched set, which sufficed for my only source of pleasure in those greyest of days.
One such interview, however, stands out as the most auspicious, for it marked a change in the fortunes of all involved, and many others beside. Detective Roscoe, who had repeatedly dismissed my friend's asking after the results of his offer, finally accepted it with a handshake and the signing of some papers.
"That's settled," Roscoe sighed. "You work for us, now."
"For the time," Dupin allowed.
Roscoe allowed this impertinence to pass uncommented-upon. "Your first assignment is to help me catch Arsène Lupin."
Dupin blinked. "Arsène Lupin?"
"That's what I said."
My friend placed a hand upon his temple, and closed his eyes. I knew from long acquaintance he was racking his brains to place the name, and its import, within his own internal library. That voluminous archive at times took days, even weeks to search, but this time the results came swiftly. "Ah, yes. I encountered that name in my early researches. A fictional thief, was he not? And a very good one, although," and I saw mischief enter into Dupin's eyes, "he rather relied on a lot of authorial assistance for his exploits, I thought. Like the world was all set up for him to succeed, as it so rarely is in reality."
"Whereas," the detective remarked archly, "your own logical hopscotches are totally fair and reasonable."
Dupin scoffed. "I make no leaps, Detective. I merely walk the shortest path from intuition to resolution."
Roscoe shook their head, but they were smiling. "Well, whatever. Lupin is real, just like you. And he's stealing everything nailed down, the kitchen sink, et cetera. We need him stopped. We're putting together a team."
At this, my friend was visibly taken aback. "Am I to understand," he frowned, "that you consider my talents insufficient to the task?"
"It's not that, precisely." Roscoe tapped at their tablet-device, and turned it around so we could see. "It's just that we have more than one offer, and this one comes with an inside perspective."
We glanced at the device, which displayed an electronic image of a man in strange walking-clothes sitting in a room very much like our own. "Ought I to know this fellow?" Dupin inquired. "I am not precisely up-to-date on the names and appearances of your local gentry."
Roscoe recovered the device. "His name is Ganimard. He's a detective, like us."
"I am a ratiocinator," Dupin declared.
"Cool." I meant to ask after the meaning of this idiom, but Roscoe's brusque manner admitted of no interruption. "He's a whatever that is, then, like us. Specifically he's the guy who's spent his career chasing Lupin. Knows all about him. Name of Ganimard."
At this, Dupin's eyes lit up. I well knew why. "Ganimard!" he cried. "He must be none other than the progeny of our own Prefect G_!"
I nodded agreement. It had to be so.
"This man may be of some use to you," Dupin agreed. "If you can be made certain of his identity, that is. Have you such means?"
Roscoe smiled. "Leave that to me. The only thing I want you two focused on is how to catch the uncatchable thief."
The decision was made to employ both Dupin and Ganimard from within containment, with limited credentials, but not to let them meet; being separate anomalies from separate fictional sources, the pataphysical implications could apparently be severe. A secure partition was created on Site-19's filespace for their data, via which they might collaborate.
To the list of peculiar Persons of Interest we also added Zenigata Heiji, a fictional Japanese policeman who had apparently been pursuing Goemon, and that pursuit led him to us. Though we contained Zenigata, as we had Goemon and Adler, his existence did attest to the possibility that our detectives might also be the real deal.
As a fly on the wall, I observed how my friend's nemesis and his opposite number embarked on their collaborative enterprise.
Vexatious though it was at the time, the reticence with which M. Ganimard greeted his new relationship with M. Dupin spoke well of the former's prudence and skepticism. "What do you know of this man Dupin?" he asked Detective Roscoe.
"He's basically the first detective," Roscoe mused. "The model for Sherlock Holmes."
Ganimard, stone-faced, addressed that absurdity thus: "You are referring perhaps to Herlock Sholmes?"
Nonplussed, Roscoe did a thing M. Dupin could not do: they ignored what they did not understand. "Let me put it another way. You're the evolution of what he was. He's an amateur at the thing you do professionally."
'Amateur', I have since learned, now carries pejorative connotations none of our time-travelling set would have understood or appreciated. M. Ganimard would have understood this to mean instead that his prospective partner was a mere hobbyist, a suggestion which did nothing to mollify him, for his suspicions were actuated not by jealousy but the sting of long-past failures. "I am not casting aspersions on his methods, monsieur," he told Roscoe. "I am suggesting he may be Arsène Lupin."
But Roscoe was unruffled. "Do you remember your intake interview?"
"Of course," the elder detective rumbled. "Your questions were impertinent, and by that I mean entirely beside the point."
"That was a lie detector test. We were confirming your identity. You might have been a fictional character, but you're real now. The same tests that work on real people—and our tests do work, rest assured—work on you. We gave those tests to Dupin, his friend, and yours. All of you are who you claim to be."
Ganimard allowed this with an inclination of the chin, but responded in tones of strictest caution: "That may well be, and I am glad to hear of it, but remember you this: Arsène Lupin is a master of disguise, and he will always appear where you expect him least."
This in fact formed the basis of the first snare laid by M. Roscoe, under the direction of both M. Dupin and M. Ganimard. Lupin had announced his intention to burgle a residence belonging to one Iris Dark, and that frightful personage was convinced to turn the premises over to Roscoe's management with little to no coaxing, due to the reputation my friend had so far cultivated amongst the uneasy upper crust. Everyone employed at the mansion was quietly replaced with a Foundation doppelganger, coached in their roles by Dark herself and indistinguishable from the real thing. Each would check in with Roscoe at regular intervals, and so their replacement would prove impossible.
In the aftermath, with Mme. Dark's private reserve of Atlantean spirits largely pilfered, M. Ganimard remarked to M. Dupin: "Did I not tell you he was slippery? He always, always has men on the inside. He attracts co-conspirators in proportion to his renown."
When next the trap was set, sprung, and found empty—this time an elaborate scheme to ferret out Lupin sympathizers in the Three Portlands Opera House, which resulted only in the loss of the sole surviving copy of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Won—M. Ganimard remarked: "Did I not tell you he was sly? The man works out every possible way to thwart his intention, and develops countermeasures for each. He has planned a way out of every outcome wherein you clap irons to him. You must be devious as a fox to come close to matching my nemesis."
The final complete collaboration, a near-miss wherein Roscoe themself 'winged' the thief in the shoulder as the latter fled, produced the most basic remonstration of all from M. Ganimard: "Did I not tell you? He flees not as though the devil were on his heels, but as though pursued by God himself. If he is running, you will never catch him. If his object is accomplished, his escape is a foregone conclusion. Unless escape is not his aim."
At this M. Dupin declared that he had learned more than enough to secure the containment of Arsène Lupin. With M. Ganimard's aid, he constructed less a plan than a constellation of interlinked schemes certain to draw in the notorious rogue and trap him in its excess of webbed fibres. At the centre was the employment of all the detectives had learned in the creation of a comprehensive dossier on Lupin, with the dubious title of SCP-8136. The file would remain local, sequestered from the wider database, to prevent something called 'pataphysical corruption' which no-one took pains to explain to either protagonist.
"And that," M. Dupin remarked with satisfaction, "will be sufficient to collar the crook."
M. Ganimard quite agreed.
At this point the Site .aic identified a serious security breach attempted with Ganimard's credentials. Apparently the old detective had been snooping in high-clearance files — specifically the ones related to our other fictional inmates, to whose number we had recently added an extremely nonplussed Belgian detective.I keep trying to add his name to the file, and it won't save. What's going on? — and overstepped his boundaries. A Department of Containment expert took Ganimard into custody, grilled him for an hour, and then had him amnesticized so hard he lost every moment he'd spent in the present day. They dropped him in a cell, and that's where I found him, baffled and totally useless.
Worse, Lupin's narrator, 'LeBlanc', was nowhere to be found. I began to fear that Ganimard's admonitions had been correct: Lupin had been among us, and was no longer. Perhaps the old detective hadn't abused his credentials after all.
But Dupin wasn't worried. LeBlanc had never seen the plan, and even if he had, I doubt he could have comprehended it. I'm still having trouble with the details myself, and that's after seeing it put into action.
I have never known Dupin to be close-lipped after success, but the curious case of the containment of Arsène Lupin proved an outlier in that respect. Once the thief was packed away, my friend would not be moved by any plea to reveal precisely how the thing was so neatly done.
The only wrinkle in an otherwise immaculate execution was Lupin's 'theft' of a few choice documents in facsimile form, transmitted from the Site via means unknown. The public received their customary tribute, though I can't imagine what they made of it. Lacking the context to understand an S-C-P file, might one not brush it off as a mere flight of fancy? In any case, electronic back-ups abounding, nothing of value was actually lost.
Though the details of my friend's operation may remain forever occluded, the most basic facts are not in dispute. Lupin was ensnared by his own vanity. He had been building up to the burglary of Site-19, and had been presented with a prize he could not countenance living without. A prize tailored precisely to his arrogance, and his fascination with succeeding beyond the bounds of mere possibility.
In failing this test of character, he instead became the prize of M. Dupin.
It's nice to see I don't get any respect in Poe's narrative. The plan might have been Dupin, with a hint of Ganimard, but I put it into motion. And really, we let Lupin do all the work for us. I was extremely relieved that it all worked out, considering the man was a hair's breadth away from making off with some extremely dangerous anomalies.
I should have known better.
At any rate, this victory promised an even harder road ahead. I'd been reading up on Lupin, and it was a really instructive exercise.
In his very first story, he's arrested by Ganimard and imprisoned.
In the second story, he nevertheless steals again.
In the third, he escapes.
So I wasn't exactly filled with confidence when the man turned to me, grinning like a fool, and said this:
"Let it be known that I, Arsène Lupin, plan on mounting the greatest heist the Foundation has ever seen! One month from now, you will come to know a loss so severe, you will simply be unable to continue as you were."
With Ganimard out of commission, there was really nothing for it. Against the protests of the Department of Pataphysics, I agreed to let Dupin interview the thief.
The following vignette was related to me at the conclusion of this sordid affair. Let it be known I am less than well-pleased at my part in this drama, though with time and a little distance I may yet learn to find it amusing.
Arsène Lupin has a phenomenal memory, and a charitable streak, so I imagine his re-enactment of the following fateful meeting to be accurate in every respect. Certainly he has no reason to portray his opponent in such a favourable light, unless it be a ploy to ensure the ratiocinator confirms the narrative's veracity, and Lupin's own rampant witticisms.
When the rumpled sleuth entered Lupin's cell, he found there a charming, lively young man of athletic build and sanguine disposition. "Bonjour, M. Dupin!" he cried, and stood to attention. The cotton slippers he wore did not click, but the gesture was there nevertheless. "I salute your success." And this he did.
M. Dupin looked the thief up and down, and smiled wryly. "You know my name? Of course, you would have heard it over the radio."
But Lupin shook his head, grinning. "Long before that. I made a study of potential adversaries, you know, before I began my… carousal, shall we say? And of my potentials, I daresay you rated most highly. Save perhaps for Herlock Sholmes, but that one's always too tardy to catch more than my dust."
Dupin sat down, and the thief followed suit. "Tell me," the 'Chevalier' demanded, "how did you know it was I who hounded you?"
Lupin laughed. "By the rational timbre of your baying. Your barks have a linear quality, Dupin, and I mean that as a compliment. The shortest distance between two points, as it were." He gestured to demonstrate the metaphor. "From conception to entrapment, a straight line. Very logical."
Dupin leaned back, and regarded the other man with something like respect. "And yet you were captured," he pointed out. "Why, if you were able to glean so much about your pursuers?"
Lupin pursed his lips. "Perhaps you might tell me?"
Dupin's face lost all the characteristics of a set of human features save their physical shape, all ego and affect draining out of them, and in a monotone he half-chanted: "Your statement to Detective Roscoe suggests you allowed yourself to be captured in order to send a message. You send messages to lay false trails, or unsettle your marks. You could have sent this message without allowing yourself to be captured, so the message was a false blind. You wanted to be captured because it would allow you to realize your ulterior motive. That motive would have to be impossible to achieve except through long-term occupancy of this facility. You would only have set me on this train of thought if you wanted me to consider the points I have already outlined. You therefore grow closer to your goal by engaging in this interview. You therefore expect to learn something from me, or implant some notion in my head, which will allow you to escape and/or acquire your chosen object. You allowed yourself to be captured so that we might meet."
Lupin clapped. "Brilliant! Ratiocinated to a 't', my good man. I never doubted you for a second. A lesser reasoner might have discounted his own excellence as the impetus for another's actions, but never the humble C.A. Dupin!"
Dupin, his monologue concluded, gradually gathered up the threads of his public face. "Mm," he murmured. "But to what end, these theatrics? What use do you expect to make of me?"
"Oh, come." Lupin slid back his chair, produced his slippers from beneath the table, feet warmly ensconced within, and placed them on the steel between himself and the expert amateur. "Neither of us wants to make it that simple."
"That is true. I will question you more directly, then, and make what I will of however you respond. What is this business about the public domain? Why this mania for abstracting art, literature, and baser things to the commons?"
"That is not my secret alone, and so I alone cannot tell you. For my part, though, I will say that taking a thing has always been far more gratifying than simply possessing it."
Dupin nodded. "Fine. What did you mean by your ultimatum to Detective Roscoe?"
Lupin allowed his own façade to drop, and he said very seriously: "I meant that what you hold, we will have, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it."
Dupin nodded again. "You are speaking of SCP-8136. The file I opened on you."
Lupin brightened. "Was that you? Of course it was. You set the lure. You knew I could never resist the narcissistic impulse. To own myself! The dream of every accomplished gentleman."
"Mm."
"And I'll note it's the only item of its kind, despite a wealth of potential subjects. Why is that, I wonder? To further underline its rarity?"
Dupin offered him nothing.
"Oh, yes," Lupin chuckled, "I know all about your system, what it does and does not contain. Your merciless catalogue."
"Not mine," Dupin protested. "I have a catalogue of my own, but it is just and only that. My own." And he tapped his temple meaningfully.
Lupin doffed an imaginary cap. "Apologies. I would hate to tar such a fine pheasant as yourself with the same brush I will use on his employers."
Dupin yawned. "I am sorry, but where mixed metaphors are concerned, I am a lightweight. I have drunk my fill of bandying. Tell me something useful, something interesting, M. Lupin, or I shall have to bid you good-night."
Lupin stretched his hands behind his head, and from that louche position, offered only this: "What I have in mind, M. Dupin, will benefit us both. And though you and I may be evenly matched, you will need rather a lot of help if you are to defeat my master plan."
Dupin stood, and buttoned his breastcoat. "Be that as it may, I may essay the thing myself. I am deprived of expert counsel, thanks to the blundering of your fool friend Ganimard."
This arrested the thief's attention, and he straightened his slouch in response. "Ganimard? Where is the old dullard? Not ill-used, I hope. He is so nearly brilliant, you know. Only needs a bit of polish, to augment his Gallic nose."
Dupin merely bowed, however, and called for the gaoler.
"Ganimard," Lupin repeated when his interviewer had left. "Yes, Ganimard may be just the thing."
As Dupin had suspected, the thief showed his hand. I gave him permission to interview Ganimard in person, since meeting Lupin had failed to destroy the universe or cause anyone to melt into the floor like in Timecop.
And not, as has been suggested elsewhere, because I was getting reckless after we had to arrest Robin Hood for attacking D.C. al Fine's motorcade.
By this stage in our strange collaboration with the S-C-P Foundation, scarce any attention was paid me by anyone save Dupin. The latter continued to confide in me, of course, as he had long become accustomed to a sounding board of my particular composition, but I was otherwise free to observe without fear that I might myself become the topic of conversation.
And so I bore witness when the two fictive bloodhounds finally met.
Ganimard was hollow-eyed and furtive, as might have been expected from a man of the law who awakes to find himself in strange quarters in a stranger era. He had been told nothing, and had many questions.
"Who are you, monsieur?" The old police-man gripped the edges of the table as though afraid it might float away if he did not. Clinging to the only solid thing left him. "By what right do you detain me so?"
Dupin folded his hands neatly in front of him, and spoke in tones of gentle conciliation. "Monsieur Ganimard, I am one such as you. A foreigner in bondage. There is not time to explain how we came to this place, or the implications of our meeting. I assure you all will be made plain, and soon. But first there is the matter of Arsène Lupin."
At the mention of that name, Ganimard's entire body seemed to relax. He slouched back in his chair, and uttered a mirthless bark. "Lupin. Of course. How else… of course. Monsieur, I have been hornswoggled and made a fool. What scheme has my… adversary, concocted this time, and how do I fit into it?"
Dupin smiled. "That is precisely what I would like to know. It is believed you were brought here under false pretenses, by Lupin in the guise of a mutual friend —you are familiar with M. LeBlanc?"
Ganimard scoffed. "LeBlanc as well? I always knew his interest in Lupin was more than mere curiosity."
"Quite so. You were brought here to aid in Lupin's capture, but now it is obvious the fellow himself interfered in the execution of that feat. But not indefinitely, as we have him now safely stowed. Yes, I quite agree, although I will need to have certain assurances before we move forward."
Ganimard had done nothing but widen his eyes a fraction; at my friend's customary imposition on his thoughts, he narrowed them again. "I was going to say that I should like to speak to Lupin, but you responded before the words had left my mouth. What manner of devil are you?"
"A useful one. My name is Dupin, and I am very pleased to meet your acquaintance for a second time. I have also had some dealings with your grand-father, in times long gone, or else I am very much mistaken."
A curious thing happened then. A look of complete serenity came over Ganimard, as though every earthly sensation had left his body, and then in an instant he re-collected himself and smiled. "Of course. Dupin. Grand-pere spoke of you often, monsieur, and with something near to reverence. It would be an honor to aid you in your task. No, I quite agree, he most certainly will."
Now it was Dupin's eyes which widened. "I am unaccustomed to having that little trick used against me. Perhaps we truly are kindred spirits."
But Ganimard laughed, with a little more delight than before, and shook his head. "No, monsieur, I merely surmised that you must know Arsène Lupin quite well to have successfully detained him, and if you know him so well as that, you also know what must come next. And what we must attempt. And how favorable, or not, are the odds of our success."
I admit I was entirely lost as to the meaning of these implications. It was as though a nightmare of mine had come true: I was in the company of two Dupins, the greater and a lesser, and following their conversation was like reading one half of a telegraphy correspondence.
"Still." Dupin rose, and buttoned his waistcoat with great care before extending his hand. "Must needs we try, eh?"
Ganimard took his hand, and made no promises.
But nothing exploded, so there.
I will continue to relate these events from Lupin's own perspective, as I do not trust my own judgement in this matter. He has been 'kind' enough to provide a summary of his final interview, and as I can confirm the general veracity of his account, I append it now below.
"The man incarcerated knows few pleasures, and the company of his fellow man least of all. It was therefore a source of joy to me when the door to my chamber opened, and I beheld the bedraggled visage of my old friend Ganimard.
I believe I must have shouted when I saw him, 'Detective!' and then leapt to my feet to embrace him. He shrank from the familiarity, and I saw from the look in his eyes that he knew he had been ill-used. I clapped him on both shoulders, and I told him: 'It has all been necessary, you will see. There is rhyme and reason to it all. A greater good has been served here'.
He brushed past me and sat down, heavily, as a man sits when his burdens are too great for him to bear. 'Sit down, Lupin', he growled.
This I did, though with more lightness of spirit (and, if it is not too crass to comment, of frame as well). I steepled my fingers, and waited for him to speak.
And speak he did. 'You'. He stabbed the air between us with one gnarled and calloused finger. 'You have arranged all of this, somehow. You amaze me no longer. Nothing is beyond you, and nothing beyond your reach. Why not simply tell me your object? We both know you will attain it, or obtain it, or both'.
I might have applauded his wordplay, but that I knew he would take offence. So I nodded instead, and responded: 'I have only one object in this moment, detective, and that is justice for the indignities you have suffered. Do I hear correctly, that you have been incarcerated in this very facility, as a common vagabond? As no better than my own lowly self, in fact?'
He scoffed. 'Not nearly so prized a prisoner as you, Lupin. You are the jewel of this collection, as you well know. But yes. They have used me, used me up and discarded me. They have taken from me my only earthly possessions, by which I mean my memories. The weeks I have spent here are a tremendous blank, an empty page. And I cannot be convinced it is not by your design that this came to pass'.
'Then I shall not waste time attempting to convince you!' I cried. 'Let us talk further of your memories, though. Are you quite sure they are taken? You have not merely misplaced them?'
The wily old hound examined me with his practiced eye, and when he spoke again, his tone was deadly calm and measured. 'What are you suggesting, Lupin?'
'Why, Ganimard, merely that you may have left the better part of yourself in that chamber. It so often happens that way, does it not? We forget ourselves abroad, for our hearts are left at home.'
The detective sighed. 'I have spent each waking hour in that bright and claustrophobic tomb, Lupin. If my memories were there, do you not think we might have found each other?'
'Still', I mused. 'It could not hurt to check?'"
Under (very heavily) armed guard, Ganimard was permitted to visit his own containment chamber in the presence of Lupin. The latter made a show, presumably for the cameras, of pretending to search the space, before declaring in theatrical tones that "Nothing obscures dark deeds like too much light." At that moment, Site-19 experienced a full facility blackout and the closure of all emergency doors.
It must have felt an eternity until light was restored to Site-19, though its return shed only confusion on the scenes of Lupin's latest crime. In my days atop the flower-shoppe I had acquainted myself with that most miraculous of modern inventions, the tele-vision; Dupin had procured for me a subscription to something called 'Netflix', and I had become quite a deft hand at remote-controlling. These skills I put to use examining each vignette in the larger drama, and this is what I saw:
In the chamber, Lupin and Ganimard locked in a physical altercation, though by this point all the prison's fantastical electronics suffered serious disruption and the recording devices failed and flared back to life with intermittence. When backup finally arrived at the chamber, two of Lupin's guards were found unconscious by the door. There had been three, before the blackout.
My friend Dupin was engaged in feverish application of his own newfound facility with technology, hammering away at a key-board and accessing the data he and Ganimard had collected on the master thief. I did not know his aim, but I was certain it was well-chosen, and certainly he required no aid from me in achieving that end.
I aided him best I could in other ways, having days ago resolved to play a part in this epic drama which my friend would no doubt come to appreciate. As he had so often done to me, I felt that I read his thoughts as an open book, first chapter to last, that I knew his mind entire on the subject of Arsène Lupin, that even his innermost desires were known to me.
And I had the power to realize them, after so long spent inadequate in the face of the Chevalier's genius.
Almost as an afterthought, I returned my tele-visuals to Ganimard's squalid cell. The guards had overcome both quarreling figures, and though their disguises came off readily enough, the mania incited in them was not so easily dispelled. Where all had before beheld Ganimard, now quite clearly stood a guard in Ganimard's clothing. Where once was Lupin, now was Ganimard clad in the thief's orange jumpsuit. Both were bewildered beyond immediate repair, a state only worsened when they realized what had transpired.
Through means unknown and wondrous, Arsène Lupin had again escaped.
We completely lost track of Poe during the containment breach, and I would soon have reason to believe it wasn't the first time that had happened. Pataphysics tells me the evidence — what little we've been able to recover — suggests his nature as an observer in the Dupin stories gave him something of an antimemetic glamour. Since he was never the protagonist, when we weren't actively considering him, he wasn't easy to perceive. I would have assumed the same was true of LeBlanc, but… well, we're almost there.
"It was such a simple matter to arrange my removal from the chamber that I will leave it to others to explain. Once free, I took every advantage of the fortuitous holes now opening and closing in the Site's once-formidable security. I raced to the server room, where I knew the electronic copies of each and every local file were kept, where indeed my own file could be found, and applied myself to the console I found there.
But the database was impregnable!
And so I applied myself more forcefully, and set the entire thing alight.
'If I cannot possess myself', I cried to the nearest camera, as its light flickered from red to green, 'I must deprive you of that right!' I contented myself with the removal of a trifle no larger than a man's thumb, then made my merry way to the next containment wing.
Wherein, to coin a phrase, I commenced a shopping spree. While the band of bullies in the Foundation's employ were well-armed and armoured, I regret to report that there were serious deficiencies in the matters of shielding the backs of their knees, and the speed with which they could track a moving target with their rifles. I left perhaps a dozen of them on the tiles as I beat my retreat, laden down with well-earned prizes many and various.
My bags and ambition thus filled, I looped back around to the 'humanoid' block, and engaged in an act of even more radical liberation. What a motley crew was soon assembled there! A vengeful bandit, an elegant scofflaw, a noble turned brigand. Could anything of value remain long beyond our clutches, once we had absconded with ourselves?
My final acts at Site-19 were to re-collect my personal effects—ah! I felt quite myself again!—and to leave a token of my esteem in the office of that fine servant of my hosts, Detective Roscoe.
Then away, as was my custom, to the night.
But not, this time, alone."
When Lupin and the other thieves were well and truly gone, the entire Site abruptly stopped going haywire. I dispatched every MTF on hand to bring them back, but I had no expectation of success. They were gone.
At least I could take comfort in two facts:
1. Lupin hadn't seen fit to release the detectives, who we still might be able to make use of, and
2. He had not achieved his goal, however badly he had compromised ours.
But we'd lost everything on SCP-8136. I was already mentally steeling myself to interview all the principals; that wouldn't end up being necessary, as somehow each narrator managed to get their account published, despite… well, you'll see below. Still figuring out why, and more importantly how, they accomplished that. Maybe they thought they were helping me. Maybe a little Lupin rubbed off on them. I hope not, in both cases.
At the time, however, I thought it had all been a colossal waste of time and resources. I thought we'd lost everything. In despair, I sought out Dupin for a debrief.
I'll let Poe's published account close out the file, since it offers the closest thing to closure anybody's getting on this matter.
For now.
I quietly rejoined my companion at the close of that great flurry of activity, and just in the nick of time, as a cohort of stone-faced thugs manifested at Dupin's office and escorted us back to that stark apartment wherein we first made acquaintance with Detective Roscoe.
That worthy arrived in due course, gaunt and troubled, and of course we both knew why.
"Dupin," Roscoe rasped. They had, it took no great leap of deduction to see, been shouting rather a lot. "He f_cked us."
But the Chevalier shook his head. "Hardly. I think it was a great success."
"A great success?" Roscoe repeated. Their eyes were glassy, their manner that of one who walks in dream. "Lupin destroyed the local server, stole a bunch of anomalies, set mother f_cking Robin Hood and company free, and escaped! Lupin destroyed his own file."
"Oh, hardly," Dupin scoffed. "Why would he want to do that? No, the file is quite safe."
Roscoe blinked, and awaited explanation.
Dupin acquired his customary mien of rational address, and recited as though from memory: "I knew, as Lupin knew, that his file had never been uploaded to the wider network. It existed only here, at Site-19. I recognized his object immediately when I saw that the course of surveillance interruptions would lead him to the server-room, and so I quickly copied the file and all associated data to the secure partition I shared with the redoubtable Ganimard."
Roscoe breathed: "You mean you have it? You have the file?"
Dupin smiled. "Indeed not. Upon contact with our partition, automatic safeguards immediately detected what you call 'pataphysical corruption' and proceeded to erase everything."
"Erase…?" Roscoe pinched the fat beneath their left arm. "Safeguards…? We had all that stuff turned off!"
"Indeed," Dupin agreed. "Lupin would have turned them back on. Ingenious. I lost far more by this gambit than I might have saved. We are quite bankrupt of documentation now."
The detective attempted, thrice, to begin his next sentence. The fourth attempt succeeded. "Then what the h_ll do you mean, the file is 'quite safe'? Safe in oblivion?"
"Did you perceive that Lupin removed a device from the server room before absconding?"
"Yes," Roscoe allowed, "but that can't have been it. You can't withdraw files from the server with a thumb drive, if that's what you're getting at."
"You can," Dupin corrected, "if those files can be found in the temporary cache."
Roscoe stared at him.
"As in the case," Dupin continued, "of some clever individual attempting—"
"To copy the file," Roscoe spat, "to a secure partition. You're telling me Lupin made you steal his file for him?"
"So it would seem," Dupin agreed.
Roscoe shook their head, then shook it again. "I don't…" They threw their arms in the air in a gesture of comical frustration. "Dupin," they roared. "Give it to me from the top, would you just?"
My friend leaned back, and closed his eyes. His voice became even more measured, even more deliberate. "You recall when Ganimard first approached the Foundation, 'LeBlanc' in toe? That was not Ganimard at all. That was Lupin."
"What?" Roscoe shouted. "We thought LeBlanc was Lupin!"
"Perhaps you did. But no, LeBlanc was Ganimard."
Roscoe spluttered incoherently.
"LeBlanc was Ganimard, hypnotized by Lupin at the outset into believing he was, in fact, LeBlanc. Did the thief, in Ganimard's guise, not tell you Lupin once traveled the world, acquiring all related arts of subterfuge, concealment, and perfidy? No doubt he mastered some ancient Buddhist rite of hypnosis in his voyages, and applied it thus to the credulous detective. Master of disguise, the thief presented himself to you as Ganimard, with the real Ganimard in guileless tow."
"But we tested them!" Roscoe cried. "We tested all four of you!"
"The hypnosis would have withstood such questioning, and as for Lupin? I trust he could have convinced you, face to face and unadorned, that he was your own mother should it have suited his aims."
I had never heard such unqualified praise from Dupin. My breast heaved with jealousy.
"Lupin used Ganimard's position as my partner to set the stage for his eventual escape, whilst also setting the terms of his own arrest —and no doubt familiarizing himself with the abilities and locations of his peers, with whom he has now made common cause. You recall 'Ganimard' was placed under suspicion of overstepping his bounds, and deprived of his memories? And then his companion promptly vanished? That was only smoke and mirrors. Lupin contrived the situation himself. He removed the detective's disguise, broke the spell on his mind, left him in that chamber to play his later part, and falsified the necessary documents to deflect your scrutiny."
"Our scrutiny," said Roscoe.
Dupin did not acknowledge the interruption. "No doubt at this time, Lupin secreted in that chamber the necessary materials to apply additional disguises, so that he might later effect a distraction with Ganimard and his escort. I imagine you will find a high level security key-card is missing as well. By such means would he gain the access required for his caper."
I raised an eyebrow at this, but my friend did not see.
"It now appeared that only LeBlanc, who had never existed, had escaped. Lupin then allowed himself to be caught, so that he could…" A flash of Dupin's ego asserted itself, ever so briefly, before submerging again in the ebb tide of his logical formula. "…so that he could meet me, take my measure, see what manner of man he was up against. So that he could enhance his own reputation, and no doubt satisfy his own vanity, by escaping from your clutches as himself. So that he could empty your growing gallery of rogues. So that, most importantly, he could take from you that which has never before been taken. An SCP database file, to wit, his own."
Something snapped in the detective, and they slapped the table angrily. "Just one thing doesn't make sense. All the countermeasures turned themselves off as Lupin required them to. That would have required a very complex computer program to manage. Are you saying he found a computer programmer accomplice, or that one of my own people was involved?"
"Neither," Dupin smiled. "Your countermeasures were disabled by my companion."
My veins filled with ice, but when that smile was turned on me, I confess the chill abated in an instant.
"What?" Roscoe regarded me with a mixture of incredulity and rage. "Poe? Poe helped Lupin escape?"
"But of course." Dupin shook off the last of his reverie, and sat forward. "I will not do him the disrespect of suggesting he was coerced by our late prisoner; more likely, he was convinced. He has seen my talents wasted, year by year. He has shared my days and nights, and brought me great comfort, but he knows the only cure to what ails me. Conundra, and the chase. I may not have expressed this to him, but he knew. It is a clever trick, we all agree, to read a man's mind. But to read his heart, well, that is the province of…"
And I swear to you, my friend Auguste Dupin blushed, and said no more.
Roscoe examined each of us by turns, seemingly at a loss for how to proceed. Finally, they asked: "How much of this did you know beforehand?"
"Oh," Dupin considered. "The main of it. Very nearly all."
"And you ALLOWED IT TO HAPPEN?" the detective thundered, rising to their feet so swiftly that their chair was flung aside.
"But of course." Dupin regarded his colleague calmly, uncowed by the threatening gesture. "I agreed to help you solve M. Lupin's crimes, detective. I never agreed to prevent them."
A silence settled over us for what felt a small eternity.
Finally, Roscoe spoke again. "I'm going to put you both in a cell, and I'm going to lock the door, and I'm going to put in your file —a file we're going to copy to every single network we've got, relevant or not —that it's not to be opened until you're both too old and grey to remember your own names."
I had not the time to consider the gravity of this menace before Dupin laughed it away. "Come now, Roscoe. You shall do nothing of the sort. This was the best of all possible outcomes, and deep down inside you know it, or you are no spiritual descendant of my own."
The detective clamped their jaw shut, and ground their teeth in impotent fury.
"You're right, Roscoe," said I. "That is precisely what he intended."
Dupin raised a brow in my direction.
"By the set of their jaw and the calculating look in their eyes," I recited, employing my best face for poker, "I see the detective has surmised the truth. They wish to continue their tirade, but they know we have learned far more about the aims and capabilities of Arsène Lupin in escape than we could ever have learned in captivity. They know that you have both played them for a fool, and immeasurably advanced their project. And so they are deadlocked with themself."
Dupin placed a hand on my shoulder, and squeezed. "That is not the whole of it, my dear friend, but you have seen the outline, and that is something veiled from the sight of most. I knew from the start my investment in you would pay dividends."
Roscoe finally sat down, and we both turned to face them again. "What," they grumbled, "are we going to do now?"
Dupin rose.
"We are going to move on from this preface, detective, having gleaned all of value that is there. We are going to commune and make common cause with my counterparts in bonds, who are no doubt as eager as I to see this alarming business resolved. And when the tale of Arsène Lupin's master plan unfolds, we shall be ready to fold it back up."
"With him inside," I added.
"Quite so," smiled Dupin. "His demonstrations of hypnotism were most instructive, but I am no slouch in the traditions of the Far East, myself, and we do have an asset in that fellow Zenigata. I should like it very much if we could educate M. Lupin on the finer points of origami."
The Containment of Arsène Lupin