The Hollow Needle Maurice Leblanc - The Hollow Needle (Or, The Further Adventures of Arsène Lupin), by French novelist Maurice Leblanc, was originally published in 1909 in French, and in English as translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos in 1913. This famous novel features the adventures of the gentleman thief, Arsène Lupin. Seeing Arsène Lupin look into the The Mystery of the Hollow Needle. The needle hides a secret that the Kings of France have been handing down since the time of Julius Caesar. The most fabulous treasure ever imagined, a collection of queens' dowries, pearls, rubies, sapphires and diamonds, the fortune of the kings of France...The work was first serialized in the French magazine Je sais tout from November 1908 to May 1909.