Lord Lister No. 0040: De valsche spoorwegdief

"Lord Lister No. 0040: De valsche spoorwegdief" by Matull and Blankensee is a pulp crime novella written in the early 20th century. It centers on the gentleman-thief Lord Lister (John Raffles) and his loyal aide Charly Brand as they target a ruthless moneylender while staying a step ahead of Scotland Yard. Expect audacious break-ins, moral redress for the poor, and a cat‑and‑mouse duel with both police and a corrupt financier. The opening of the story shows Raffles calmly finishing a piano piece before boldly entering banker Felix Meijer-Wolf’s Oxford Street office, cracking the safe, and discovering not cash but a hidden desk compartment holding predatory contracts, a diamond necklace, and a letter revealing the rightful heir, Hetty Brown. After eluding a tailing detective with a deft blow, he rescues a young woman from London’s slums—who later proves to be Hetty—and restores her inheritance, vowing to sell the diamonds to free her from the banker’s claims. Meanwhile Inspector Baxter finds Raffles’s calling card at the scene as newspapers trumpet a supposed half-million haul; Raffles replies in print that the safe was empty. Learning the banker plans an Italian deal, Raffles adopts disguises, manipulates calls, and shadows him to Trient, where Meijer-Wolf withdraws a vast sum. The section culminates in a tense first‑class carriage: a cool, needling stranger (implied to be Raffles) unnerves the banker with pointed hints about recent railway robberies, pushing him into a panicked, blustering confession of being armed. (This is an automatically generated summary.)