The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling - By Lawrence Block Page 0,9

criminals and one of the worst things about prison was having to associate with them. I’d prefer to live as an honest man among honest men, but I haven’t yet found an honest pursuit that lets me feel this way. I wish there were a moral equivalent of larceny, but there isn’t. I’m a born thief and I love it.

I made my way through a butler’s pantry and an enormous brick-floored kitchen, crossing a hallway to the formal living room. The light I’d noted from the street cast a warm glow over the room. It was a noteworthy object in and of itself, a leaded-glass dragonfly lamp by Tiffany. I’d last seen one in an antique shop on upper Madison Avenue with a $1,500 tag on it, and that was a few years ago.

But I hadn’t come all the way to Queens to steal furniture. I’d come with a very specific purpose, and I didn’t really need to be in the living room at all. I didn’t have to take inventory, but old habits die hard, and I could hardly avoid it.

The lamp made it easy, saving me the trouble of using my flashlight. There was a timer so that it would turn itself off during daylight hours and resume its vigil at dusk, burning bravely until dawn, announcing to passers-by that nobody was home.

Considerate of them, I thought, to leave a light for the burglar.

The lamp was perched on an ornamental French kneehole desk. Four of the desk’s six drawers were fakes, but one of the others held a Patek Philippe pocket watch with a hunting scene engraved on its case.

I closed the drawer without disturbing the watch.

The dining room was worth a look. A sideboard absolutely loaded with silver, including two complete sets of sterling tableware and a ton of hallmarked Georgian serving pieces. No end of fine porcelain and crystal.

I left everything undisturbed.

The library, also on the ground floor, was a room I would have gladly called my own. It measured perhaps twelve by twenty feet, with a glorious Kerman carpet covering most of the buffed parquet floor. Custom-built bookshelves of limed English oak lined two walls. In the middle of the room, centered beneath a fruited Tiffany shade, stood a tournament-size pool table. At the room’s far end, twin portraits of Arkwright ancestors in gilded oval frames looked down in solemn approbation.

A pair of wall racks, one holding cue sticks, the other a locked cabinet that displayed sporting rifles and shotguns. A couple of overstuffed leather chairs. An elaborate bar, the crystal glassware etched with game birds in flight. Enough liquor in one form or another to float a fair-sized cabin cruiser, plus decanters of sherry and port and brandy placed at convenient intervals about the room. A smoker’s stand, mahogany, with a few dozen briar pipes and two cased meerschaums. A cedar cabinet of Havanas. A whole room of brass and wood and leather, and I yearned to nail the door shut and pour myself a stiff Armagnac and stay there forever.

Instead I scanned the bookshelves. They were a jumble, but there was no shortage of dollar value. While they ran heavily to uncut sets of leather-bound memoirs of unremembered hangers-on at pre-Revolutionary Versailles, there were plenty of other items as well, many of which I’d never seen outside of the catalogs of the better book dealers and auction galleries. I happened on a pristine first of Smollet’s rarest novel, The Adventures of Sir Laurence Greaves, and there were any number of fine bindings and important first editions and Limited Editions Club issues and private press productions, all arranged in no discernible order and according to no particular plan.

I took one book from the shelves. It was bound in green cloth and not much larger than an ordinary paperback. I opened it and read the flowing inscription on the flyleaf. I paged through it, closed it, and put it back on the shelf.

I left the library as I’d found it.

The stairs were dark. I used my flashlight, went up and down the staircase three times. There was one board that creaked and I made sure I knew which one it was. Fourth from the top.

The others were comfortingly silent.

Twin beds in the master bedroom, each with its own bedside table. His and hers closets. His ran to Brooks Brothers suits and cordovan shoes. I especially liked one navy suit with a muted stripe. It wasn’t that different from the one I was wearing. Her closet