The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling - By Lawrence Block Page 0,17
sound one. I expected there would be buyers for other institutions as well.”
“Did you expect to outbid them?”
“I expected to try. I didn’t know just how high I myself was prepared to go, and of course I had no way of knowing what levels the bidding might reach. Upon arriving in London, I learned there was a Saudi who wanted that particular lot, and rumor had it that an agent for some sort of Indian prince or Maharajah was paying extraordinary prices for top-level Kiplingana. Could I have outbid such persons? I don’t know. The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow is interesting and unique, but it hasn’t been publicized sufficiently to have become important, really, and the work itself is of low quality from a literary standpoint.” He frowned, and his eyebrows quivered. “Still in all, I should have liked the chance to bid in open auction.”
“But the lot was withdrawn.”
“By the heirs prior to sale. The gentleman from Trebizond’s was quite apologetic, and reasonably indignant himself. After all, his agreement with the heirs precluded their making private arrangements. But what could he possibly do about it? The buyer had the book and the heirs had the money and that was the end of it.”
“Why arrange a private sale?”
“Taxes, Mr. Rhodenbarr. Taxes. Death duties, Inland Revenue enquiries—the tax laws make finaglers of us all, do they not? What voice on earth speaks with the volume of unrecorded cash? Money in hand, passed under the table, and the heirs can swear the book was set aside as an heirloom, or destroyed in a flash flood, or whatever they choose. They won’t be believed, but what matter?”
“Who bought the book?”
“The good people at Trebizond’s didn’t know, of course. And the heirs weren’t telling—their official line was that the book hadn’t been sold at all.” He put his elbows on the table and placed his fingertips together. “I did some investigatory work of my own. The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow was sold to Jesse Arkwright, an artful dabbler in international trade.”
“And a collector, I suppose?”
“An acquirer, sir. Not a collector. A gross ill-favored man who surrounds himself with exquisite objects in the hope that they will somehow cloak his own inner ugliness. He has a library, Mr. Rhodenbarr, because to do so fits the image he would like to project. He has books, some of them noteworthy, because books are the sine qua non of a proper library. But he is hardly a collector, and he most certainly does not collect Kipling.”
“Then why—”
“Should he want this book? Because I wanted it, Mr. Rhodenbarr. It’s that simple.”
“Oh.”
“Do you remember the Spinning Jenny?”
“It was a dance craze, wasn’t it?”
He looked at me oddly. “It was a machine,” he said. “The first machine capable of producing cotton thread. Sir Richard Arkwright patented it in 1769 and launched the modern British textile industry.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “The Industrial Revolution and all that.”
“And all that,” he agreed. “Jesse Arkwright claims descent from Sir Richard. I’m no more inclined to take his word on that point than any other. His surname means builder of arks, so perhaps he’ll next hire a genealogist to trace his roots clear back to Noah.”
“And he bought the book to keep you from having it?”
“I once acquired something that he wanted. This seems to have been his way of paying me back.”
“And he won’t sell it.”
“Certainly not.”
“And there’s no other copy extant.”
“None has come to light in half a century.”
“And you still want this particular copy.”
“More than ever.”
“How fortunate that you happened to pop into Barnegat Books this morning.”
He stared.
“You called me by name before I had a chance to supply it. You came into the shop looking for me, not for Mr. Litzauer. Not because I sell secondhand books but because I used to be a burglar. You figure I’m still a burglar.”
“I—”
“You don’t believe people change. You’re as bad as the police. ‘Once a burglar, always a burglar’—that’s the way you figure it, isn’t it?”
“I was wrong,” he said, and lowered his eyes.
“No,” I said. “You were right.”
CHAPTER
Five
I don’t know what time I got into bed, but by some miracle I got out of it in time to open the store by ten-thirty. At a quarter to eleven I called the number on J. Rudyard Whelkin’s business card. I let it ring unheeded for a full minute, then dialed 411 for the number of the Martingale Club. They charge you for those calls, and I could have taken a minute to look it