The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling - By Lawrence Block Page 0,12

one of the big chain. It was empty, but a quick sniff revealed it had recently held cognac—a very good cognac at that, judging from the bouquet.

There was a book next to the snifter, Sheridan’s Plays, bound in red leather. Bedtime reading.

I went to the bookshelves. Had Arkwright inspected the little green clothbound volume as part of his nightly ritual? I couldn’t tell, as it was right where I’d found it earlier in the evening. But it was his treasure. He’d probably had a look at it.

I took it from the shelf and just managed to fit it into my jacket pocket. Then I nudged the surrounding volumes so as to fill up the space where it had been.

And left the library.

He had turned off the alarm to enter the house, then reset it once he and Elfrida were inside. All the while, of course, the alarm system continued to guard all of the house but the kitchen door. I now left through that very portal, closing it after me and relocking its three locks by picking them in reverse. I had to leave the chain bolt dangling and I couldn’t do anything about the bolt I’d hacksawed earlier. Nobody’s perfect.

I was very damned close to perfection, though, in the way I restored the alarm system, rewiring it to render the kitchen door once more unbreachable. Every impulse urged me to quit Arkwright’s property while I had the chance, but I spent a few extra minutes, and only an imperceptible scrap of electrical tape hinted that the wires had ever been tampered with.

Professionalism? I call it the relentless pursuit of excellence.

I had almost reached the end of Copperwood Crescent when the police car turned the corner. I managed to furnish a smile and a perfunctory nod without breaking stride. They went along their merry way, and why not? They’d seen only a well-dressed and self-possessed gentleman who looked as though he belonged.

They hadn’t seen any palmless rubber gloves. Those wound up tucked in a pocket before I left the Arkwright driveway.

The Pontiac was where I’d left it. I hooked up my jumper wire and was on my way. In due course I was back on West Seventy-fourth Street. One nice thing about swiping a car from a hydrant is you can generally put it back where you found it. I did just that, pulling in next to the fireplug even as a brindle boxer was lifting a leg against it. I unhooked my jumper wire and got out of the car, careful to push down the lock buttons before I swung the door shut.

The boxer’s equally brindle owner, leash in one hand and wad of paper towel in the other, admonished me that I was risking a ticket or a tow. I couldn’t think of an answer so I walked off without giving him one.

“Crazy,” he told the dog. “They’re all crazy here, Max.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

In my own apartment, nibbling cheese and crunching Triscuits and sipping the special-occasion Scotch, I let go and enjoyed the glow that comes afterward on those too-rare occasions where everything goes like clockwork. All the tension, all the discomfort, all the anxiety—it was all bought and paid for by moments like this.

Earlier, stretched out on that lumpy day bed, I’d been unable to stop thinking of all the treasures the Arkwright house contained. The cash, the jewels, the stamps, the coins, the objets d’art. I’d had fantasies of backing a moving van onto the lawn and just stealing every damned thing, from the oriental rugs on the floors to the cut-crystal chandeliers overhead. That, I’d decided, was really the only way to do it. A person who wanted to be selective would have his problems. He wouldn’t know what to steal first.

And what did I have for my troubles?

I picked up the book, taking pains not to dribble Scotch on it, though someone had dribbled one thing or another on it over the years. It certainly didn’t look like such a much, and the leisurely inspection I could give it now was disclosing flaws I hadn’t spotted earlier. There was water damage on the front cover. Some of the pages had been foxed. The past half-century had not been gentle with the little volume, and no bookseller could conscientiously grade it higher than Very Good.

I flipped through it, read a stanza here and a stanza there. The author’s meter was unmistakable and he had never lost his dexterity at rhyming, but what I