Lord Lister No. 0001: De Groote Onbekende

In a sun‑drenched office on London’s bustling Strand, the affluent silk importer Lukas Brown summons his young clerk, Miss Walton, for a private conversation. The city outside hums with the latest headlines—Raffles, the enigmatic “gentleman thief,” has vanished after a daring heist of a quarter‑million jewels. Brown, a man accustomed to control, watches the street vendors hawking the sensational news, his mind already turning over the implications of such a bold criminal.

His seasoned accountant, Thomas, offers a wry commentary, admiring Raffles’s cunning while suggesting the rogue may be redistributing stolen wealth to London’s poorest districts. The banter grows tense as Brown, both fascinated and unnerved, wonders whether the phantom thief might ever set foot in his own world of wealth and propriety.