The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling - By Lawrence Block Page 0,10

was full of dresses and furs, including one Ray’s wife would have salivated over. Good labels in everything. A drawer in the dressing table—French Provincial, white enamel, gold trim—held a lot of jewelry. A cocktail ring caught my eye, a stylish little item with a large marquise-cut ruby surrounded by seed pearls.

There was some cash in the top drawer of one of the bedside tables, a couple hundred dollars in tens and twenties. In the other table I found a bank-book—eighteen hundred dollars in a savings account in the name of Elfrida Grantham Arkwright.

I didn’t take any of these things. I didn’t take the Fabergé eggs from the top of the chest of drawers, or the platinum cuff links and tie bar, or any of the wristwatches, or, indeed, anything at all.

In Jesse Arkwright’s study, all the way at the rear of the house’s second floor, I found a whole batch of bankbooks. Seven of them, secured by a rubber band, shared the upper right drawer of his desk with postage stamps and account ledgers and miscellaneous debris. The savings accounts all had sizable balances and the quick mental total I ran came to a little better than sixty thousand dollars.

I’ll tell you. It gave me pause.

I once knew a fellow who’d been tossing an apartment in Murray Hill, filling a pillowcase with jewelry and silver, when he came across a bankbook with a balance in five figures. Clever lad that he was, he promptly turned his pillowcase inside out and put everything back where he’d found it. He left the premises looking as though he’d never visited them in the first place, taking nothing but that precious bankbook. That way the residents wouldn’t know they’d been burgled, and wouldn’t miss the bankbook, and he could drain their account before they suspected a thing.

Ah, the best-laid plans. He presented himself at the teller’s window the very next morning, withdrawal slip in hand and bankbook at the ready. It was a small withdrawal—he was merely testing the waters—but that particular teller happened to know that particular depositor by sight, and the next thing the chap knew he was doing a medium-long bit in Dannemora, which is when I ran into him.

So much for bankbooks.

So much, too, for a double handful of Krugerrands, those large gold coins the South Africans stamp out for people who want to invest in the yellow metal. I like gold—what’s not to like?—but they were in a drawer with a handgun, and I dislike guns at least as much as I like gold. The ones in the library were for show, at least. This one was here for shooting burglars.

So much for the Krugerrands. So much, too, for a shoulder-height set of glassed-in shelves full of Boehm birds and Art Nouveau vases and glass paperweights. I spotted a Lalique ashtray just like the one on my grandmother’s coffee table, and a positive gem of a Daum Nancy vase, and Baccarat and Millefiori weights galore, and—

It was starting to get to me. I couldn’t look anywhere without seeing ten things I wanted to steal. Every flat surface in that study held bronzes, all of them impressive. Besides the usual bulls and lions and horses, I noticed one of a camel kneeling alongside a Legionnaire. The latter wore a kepi on his head and a pained expression on his face, as if he were sick of jokes about Legionnaire’s Disease.

A couple of stamp albums. One general worldwide collection that didn’t look to be worth much, but the other was a Scott Specialty Album for the Benelux countries, and a quick thumbing didn’t reveal too many blank spaces.

And a coin collection. Lord above, a coin collection! No albums, just a dozen black cardboard boxes two inches square and ten inches long. Each was crammed to capacity with two-by-two coin envelopes. I didn’t have time to check them but I couldn’t resist. I opened one box at random and found it was filled with Barber quarters and halves, all Proofs or Uncirculated specimens. Another box contained superb Large Cents catalogued by Sheldon numbers.

How could I possibly leave them?

I left them. I didn’t take a thing.

I was in one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor, playing my penlight over the walls and admiring a very nice pencil-signed Rouault lithograph, when I heard a car in the driveway. I checked my watch. It was 11:23. I listened as the automatic garage door swung upward, listened as the car’s engine cut out.