"Lord Lister No. 0038: Een Museumdiefstal" by Kurt Matull and Theo von Blankensee is a detective adventure novella written in the early 20th century. It centers on gentleman-thief Lord Lister (aka Raffles), who stumbles into a string of audacious art crimes while traveling in Italy, involving a swapped Raphael Madonna, a reclusive painter’s long-lost copy, a mysterious lady, and a publicity-loving American tycoon.The opening of the story finds Lister leaving London for a “vacation,” cheekily registering in Rapallo under Inspector Baxter’s name and being summoned to Florence by Professor Ciatti, where he learns the famed Raphael Madonna has been replaced by a masterful copy. A supposed suicide in the Cascine (the shady antiquities runner Pasini) strikes him as murder and seems tied to a wealthy American traveling incognito and a veiled woman. Following leads to Rome, Lister hears of a fresh theft at the Quirinal, confirms from painter Grombeck that he once copied the Madonna for a woman named Kitty who vanished with it, and tracks the woman (now Signora Potter) and the American onto the Rome–Paris express, noting coded exchanges and suspicious luggage. In Paris, he infiltrates the tycoon’s mansion as an electrician, overhears a blackmailer named Dent, triggers an arrest, and intercepts a prison letter that threatens to involve the eccentric Duke des Esseintes—whom Lister goes to approach as this opening section ends. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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