Part 3 (1/2)

Forget everything I said to Ray Kirschmann. True, I was getting older. True, I shrank from the prospect of getting chewed by attack dogs and shot by irate householders and locked by the authorities in some pickproof penitentiary cell. True, true, all of it true, and so what? None of it mattered a whit when I was inside someone else's dwelling place with all his worldly goods spread out before me like food on a banquet table. By G.o.d, I wasn't that that old! I wasn't old! I wasn't that that scared! scared!

I'm not proud of this. I could spout a lot of bilge about the criminal being the true existential hero of our times, but what for? I don't buy it myself. I'm not nuts about criminals and one of the worst things about prison was having to a.s.sociate 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-gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sers-by that n.o.body 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 gla.s.sware 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 bra.s.s 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, 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. 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 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 c.o.c.ktail 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 Faberge eggs from the top of the chest of drawers, or the platinum cuff links and tie bar, or any of the wrist.w.a.tches, 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 gla.s.sed-in shelves full of Boehm birds and Art Nouveau vases and gla.s.s 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 alb.u.ms. One general worldwide collection that didn't look to be worth much, but the other was a Scott Specialty Alb.u.m for the Benelux countries, and a quick thumbing didn't reveal too many blank s.p.a.ces.

And a coin collection. Lord above, a coin collection! No alb.u.ms, 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. As the garage door swung down again I quit listening and walked the length of the hall to the staircase leading to the third floor. I was up those stairs and crouching on the third-floor landing by the time Jesse Arkwright's key hit the slot at the side of the house. First he turned off the burglar alarm, then he opened the door, and I fancied I could hear him refastening half a dozen locks after he and Elfrida had made their entrance.

m.u.f.fled conversation, barely audible two floors below me. I moved a rubber-gloved forefinger and wiped perspiration from my forehead. I'd planned on this, of course. I'd even checked the attic stairs earlier to make sure there were no squeakers in the lot.

All the same, I didn't like it. Burglary's a tightly wired proposition at best, but I generally get to do my work in precious solitude. If householders come home while I'm on the job, my usual impulse is to depart abruptly.

This time I had to linger.

Two floors below, a teakettle whistled briefly, then sighed as someone removed it from the flame. For an instant I'd mistaken its cry for a police siren. Nerves, I thought, taking deep breaths, beseeching the patron saint of burglars for a dose of serenity.

Maybe I'd been right when I talked to Kirschmann. Maybe I was getting too old for this. Maybe I didn't have the requisite sang-froid. Maybe- Crouching was uncomfortable. I got stiffly to my feet. The attic was finished off, its central hallway covered with a length of faded maroon carpeting. I walked clear to the front of the house, where a bra.s.s floorlamp equipped with a timer sent out forty watts' worth of light through a curtained window. A maid's room, it looked to be, although the household no longer employed live-in servants.

A day bed stretched along one wall. I lay down on top of it pulled a green and gold afghan coverlet over myself, and closed my eyes.