Nobody's Perfect

Chapter 1

Ian Macdough (pronounced Macduff: no relation to Macbeth's friend) was a happy man. He had been unknown, and he would be famous. He had been poor, and he would be rich. He had been an unwilling country squire confined by circumstance to the family manse near Inverness, and he would be a London toff. A bluff, big-boned, red-haired, hearty, freckled gent of forty-odd, Ian Macdough was a happy man, and he wanted the world to know it. "Bring us another bottle of Teacher's," he told his floor valet at the Savoy, though it was barely lunch time, "and a little glass for yourself."

"Thank you, Mr. Macdoo," said the floor valet, who was a Portugee or Eyetie or some other sort of swarthy unfortunate, "but I shouldn't drink on the job. I'll bring the bottle straight away."

"Macduff," said Macdough, a bit shortly. He didn't like people who refused to drink with him, nor did he like them to get his name wrong. Most of the people he'd met so far in London would drink with him right enough, but few and far between were those who'd get his name right first crack out of the box. Macdoo indeed. Up north in the Grampians everybody knew his name.

"Mick-duff," agreed the Mediterranean, and bowed himself out of the suite.

Well, what could you expect from a foreigner? Nothing could spoil Macdough's mood for long these days, so while be waited for the bottle to arrive he stood smiling out of his sitting-room windows at the Thames, gleaming and glistening beneath midsummer sunshine.

London. All roads elsewhere might lead to Rome, but all roads in the British Isles lead to London. (Which is one of the reasons the traffic is so snarled.) A Scotsman or a Welshman or an Ulsterman might sit at home and think his dour dark thoughts about England, that often bullying big kid of the United Kingdom, but when his thoughts turned to a city, a real city, it wasn't of Edinburgh or Cardiff or Belfast he thought, but of London. Happy is he who can stand at the window of a suite in a major hotel in one of the world's queen cities, and smile out at the summer sun.

Bring bring, went the phone. Bring bring. London calling. The smile still lighting his ruddy face, Macdough turned from the view and replied: "Are you there?"

An extremely English male voice, one of those voices in which the vocal cords seem determined to strangle each word before it can struggle out to freedom, said, "Mister Macdow?"

"Macduff," said Macdough. The combination of the mis-pronounced name and a public-school accent was enough to curdle his smile completely.

"I'm so sorry," garbled the voice. "Leamery here, from Parkeby-South."

Which put Macdough's smile right back on his face, redoubled. "Ah, yes," he said. "They did tell me you'd call."

"Praps you could drop over this afternoon? Would four be convenient?"

"Certainly."

"Fine, then. Just ask for me at the cashier's desk."

"At the cashier's desk? Certainly. At four o'clock."

"Till then."

As Macdough cradled the receiver, his mind turned idly to the amazing series of events that had led him to this happy moment. The brawl in New York last winter, during the Queen's Own Caledonian Orchestra's performance (which he had attended through the generosity of old fellow-officers from the Brigade), his own lucky escape from the swarming police, and his utter astonishment when, in his hotel room next morning, he had awakened (a bit hung over) to find himself in possession of an extremely valuable painting stolen – according to the newspaper brought by room service with his breakfast – just the evening before. The terror he'd felt while smuggling the thing home (concealed inside a great mawkish framed landscape purchased for twenty-five dollars specifically for that purpose, the valuable Old Master undetected behind the dreadful New Monstrosity) was only a dim memory now, as was the utter bewilderment he had felt when faced with the question of how to turn his stroke of luck into actual cash. If Aunt Fiona hadn't chosen that moment to pass away (not prematurely; she was eighty-seven, as mad as an African general and as incontinent as Atlantis), Macdough would still be at a loss. Blessed Aunt Fiona, nothing became her life like the leaving of it.

The Macdough clan, which included Ian and his Aunt Fiona among its scores and multitudes, was one of the oldest and least successful families in all of Scottish history. Over the centuries, whenever the Scots fought the English they seemed to do so on Macdough land, and the Macdoughs got the worst of it. If Scot fought Scot, the Macdoughs invariably lined up on the wrong side. The Campbells and MacGregors might ebb and flow, but the Macdoughs immemorially ebbed.

So it was with low expectations that Macdough, as Aunt Fiona's sole heir, had first learned of her demise. The old lady had never owned anything in her life except rubbish bequeathed her by prior indigent Macdoughs. Several sheets of the inventory attached to the will were actually in scrabbly spidery eighteenth-century handwriting, describing pikestaffs and saddles and pewter plates which, while theoretically passing from hand to hand down the generations, had actually remained untouched and unwanted in various barns and basements and in the still-enclosed portion of the uninhabitable Castle Macdough high in the grim Monadhliath Mountains. However, the rituals had to be observed, and so Macdough had sat in a cluttered musty solicitor's office in Edinburgh and listened to the reading of the will, which included an endless droning recital of the inventory – what rubbish was here being gallantly preserved! – and was very nearly asleep when he suddenly sat bolt upright and stared at the solicitor, who, startled, stared right back. "What?" said Macdough.

The solicitor blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"What was that? What you just read there."

The solicitor found his place in the list: "Mead barrels, oak, six, with bungs."

"No, before that."

"Wounded stag with two rabbits, bronze, height sixteen inches, broken antler, one."

"Good God, man, before that."

"Frame, wood, gilt, ornate, with painting, oil, comic figures."

"Frame, wood," Macdough muttered. "Painting, oil. Comic figures?"

"So it says."

"Where is this, er, frame?"

"Mmm, mmmm." The solicitor had to leaf back through two pages of inventory to the nearest heading. "Castle Macdough."

"Ah," Macdough said. "I might find a use for a good wood frame." And he napped through the rest of the inventory, then drove his venerable Mini at high speed (well, its highest speed) north from Edinburgh, through Perth and Pitlochry on the A 9, turning off beyond Kingussie on the old road not even on the maps. More trail than road, and more gully than either, it climbed into the inhospitable mountains and arrived at last at Castle Macdough, a ravaged ruin covered with mildew. Some of the ground floor remained, windows broken and floors buckled, while below were fairly weather-tight storerooms strewn with rubbish, all of it carefully recorded in that everlasting inventory which now nestled against Ian Macdough's own will. (Macdough being a confirmed bachelor of a bluff, hearty, masculine yet asexual, peculiarly northern type, the next recipient of all this muck was slated to be a nephew of his, one Bruce Macdough, currently nine years of age.)

Stumbling over a baton used in relay races, Macdough struggled his way by flashlight from room to room until one bit of debris glittered back at him. Gilt? Yes. Frame, wood? Indubitably. Ornate? Good heavens, yes. Macdough pulled the object from its recess and found it to be almost exclusively frame; nearly four feet square, it was runnel and channel and riband and curlicue of gilded wood vastly surrounding a murky little picture possibly sixteen inches by eighteen. Dragging the thing into the light of day, Macdough found the tiny illustration thus so sumptuously engarbed was in fact an awkward amateurish comic drawing in oil of three drunken kilted men staggering on a road, trying to hold one another up. The moon in the sky was lopsided, though not by apparent intent.

Hadn't the inventory mentioned a double-bladed battle-axe? Descending into the depths, Macdough found the thing, carried it with some difficulty – it was damned heavy – up the slimy stone stairs, and proceeded to reduce the frame, wood, gilt, ornate, with its painting, oil, comic figures, to several zillion slivers. These were packed into the Mini and distributed into the air a few at a time over the next fifty miles.

It took another trip to Edinburgh to find an appropriately old frame which would match both the inventory's description and the stolen masterpiece's dimensions. This frame, happily, already contained an old painting – of a grandmotherly lady asleep in a rocker by the fire, a kitten and a ball of wool in her lap – so Macdough could use the same tacks to put the valuable Veenbes in its place. Another solitary trip to Castle Macdough was necessary, to seed the Veenbes there, and then Macdough awaited the right moment to introduce the subject of his inheritance into a conversation with a pair of old drinking pals, Cuffy and Tooth (both of whom had, as a matter of fact, been along on the night of the New York concert). Was it Cuffy who finally said, "Damn it, man, there could be something of value there. Why not have a look-see?" It might have been Tooth. In any event, it wasn't Macdough; he'd steered the conversation, but he'd let the others make the decisions, and when he asked them to join him for the projected look-see they fell in with the idea at once.

Neither of them, however, turned out to have the brains or the taste of a donkey, and after they'd both stumbled past the Veenbes without a second look Macdough had finally to discover the thing himself. "Now, look at this picture. Might be worth something, don't you think?"

"Not a bit of it," Cuffy said. "It's a mere daub, anyone can see that."

"The frame might be worth something," Tooth suggested.

"I'll take it along for the frame, then," Macdough decided, and so he did, and was subsequently astounded and delighted when word came from the Edinburgh art dealer that what he had was, in point of fact, a masterpiece of incredible value.

Borrowing on his prospects – the Parkeby-South valuation was security enough for Macdough's Inverness bankers – he had come here to London in July, two months before the auction that would make him rich, and was staying at the Savoy while looking about for a more permanent London abode; some flat, maisonette, pied-a-terre, some little somewhere to stay from now on, whenever he was "in town." Oh, by glory, but life was turning good!

A knock at the door. Macdough turned from his views – the outer view of London and the inner view of well-deserved success – and called, "Come in."

It was the floor valet, with a bottle of Scotch on a silver salver. And, Macdough noted at once, two glasses. "Ah hah," he said, with an amiable smile. "You will join me after all."

The man's own smile was both sheepish and conspiratorial. "You're very kind, sir. If you'll permit me to change my mind?"

"Certainly, certainly." Macdough came forward to pour with his own hands. "Take your opportunities, that's my advice," he told the fellow. "In this life, never let your opportunities slip you by."

Chapter 2

To Dortmunder's surprise, he could get a passport. He'd paid his debts to society – at least the ones society knew about – and the privileges of citizenship were his for the asking. With the other necessary preparations, it was already July before everything was ready, but by God here he was, on a 747, leaving the United States of America, bound for London. In England.

And beside him was Kelp, who was grumpy. "I don't see why we can't ride in first class," he said, for about the fifteenth time.

"Chauncey's paying," Dortmunder answered, for maybe the seventh time. "So we do it his way."

Chauncey's way, as it happened, was that he and Leo Zane would travel beyond the maroon curtain in first class, with the free liquor and wine and champagne, and the prettier stewardesses, and the wider seats with more legroom, and the spiral staircase to a bar and lounge on an upper level, while Dortmunder and Kelp would travel in economy: the cattle car, here in back. Dortmunder had an aisle seat, so at least he could stretch his feet out when nobody was walking by, but Kelp had the middle seat, and a stout elderly Indian lady in a sari, with a red dot on her forehead, had the window seat. Kelp was sort of squeezed in there and – particularly since Dortmunder had won the struggle over whose elbow would have the armrest – Kelp was apparently pretty uncomfortable.

Well, it would only last seven hours, and when the plane landed they would be in London, and it would then be up to Dortmunder to make good on his latest brainchild. He'd be hampered in more ways than one – by not knowing the city at all, for instance, and by having to limit himself to a string consisting of one Kelp and two amateurs (Chauncey and Zane) – but there really hadn't been much choice. It was either find some way to help Chauncey or become fresh notches on Zane's gun. If that cold son of a bitch ever did anything as human as notching a gun.

The plan, as with others of Dortmunder's, combined the simple with the unusual. In this one he proposed to switch the copy and the original before the sale took place in September. Chauncey could then, in defending himself against the insurance-company lawsuit, insist the version at the auctioneers be reappraised. It would be denounced as a fake, the lawsuit would stop, and Chauncey would retire with his painting and money intact.

All Dortmunder had to do was figure out the details of that one simple act, in a foreign city, with a half-amateur crew, while a gun was held at his head.

As far as he was concerned, this plane could stay up here in the sky forever.

Chapter 3

Chauncey loved London, but not like this. In the first place, this was July. Nobody ever came to London in July, that's when the place was crammed with Americans and foreigners. In the second place, Chauncey's companions on this trip left much – in fact, everything – to be desired. In the cab from Heathrow, he and Zane occupied the rear seat, with Dortmunder and Kelp facing them on the jump seats, and while Chauncey noticed that Kelp very carefully made sure his knees were not annoying Zane in any way, Dortmunder wasn't controlling his own knees at all. Chauncey's legs were crammed over against the door, his view was of nothing but Dortmunder's lugubrious pan, and the damp English air blowing in through the open side windows was absolutely hot.

Still, it was all in a good cause. Beyond Dortmunder's beetled brow, and beyond the meter ticking away just past Dortmunder's right ear, Chauncey could see the mound of their luggage piled up in the space beside the driver, and prominent among his own Hermes and Zane's American Touristers and Kelp's six canvas ditty bags and Dortmunder's anonymous brown elephant-skin two-suiter with the straps loomed the golf bag behind the lining of which lurked the Griswold Porculey imitation of Folly Leads Man to Ruin. Sometime soon – very soon, please God – the imitation would go away and the original would slip into its place in the golf bag, and Chauncey would leave this city of teeming millions and fly away to Antibes, where everybody sensible was spending the summer.

In the meantime, the only thing to do was make the best of a bad situation. Oppressed by the continuing silence in the cab, these four large bodies sweating lightly in the hot July London air, Chauncey made a desperate stab at small talk:

"This your first trip to London, Dortmunder?"

"Yeah." Dortmunder turned his head slightly to look out the window. The cab, having come in the M 4 from Heathrow, was now inching through the normal traffic jam on Cromwell Road. "Looks like Queens," Dortmunder said.

Chauncey came automatically to the city's defense. "Well, this is hardly the center of town."

"Neither is Queens."

Cromwell Road became Brompton Road before Chauncey tried again: "Have you traveled much outside the United States?"

"I went to Mexico once," Dortmunder told him. "It didn't work out."

"No?"

"No."

Kelp unexpectedly said, "You were in Canada a couple times."

"Just hiding out."

"Still."

"Just farmhouses and snow," Dortmunder insisted. "Could of been anywhere."

The cab finally reached Hans Place, a long oval around a tree-filled park, fringed by tallish orange-brick nineteenth-century houses done in the gabled ornate style termed by Sir Osbert Lancaster "Pont Street Dutch." When the cab stopped, Chauncey gratefully ejected himself onto the sidewalk and paid the fare while the others unloaded the luggage. Then Edith and Bert appeared from the house to welcome Chauncey back and to carry his baggage while the others could do as they wished with theirs.

This house had been divided long ago into four separate residences, complexly arranged. In Chauncey's maisonette, staff quarters and kitchen were on the ground floor rear, a front-windowed sitting room and rear-windowed dining room were on the first floor, and a spiral staircase from the dining room led up to two bedrooms plus bath at the rear of the second floor. Edith and Bert, a tiny shriveled couple who spoke an absolutely incomprehensible form of cockney in which R was the only identifiable consonant, were the maisonette's only full-time residents, with their own small room and bath downstairs behind the kitchen. They grew brussels sprouts in their bit of a garden in back, they did their shopping two blocks away at Harrods on Chauncey's charge account, they pretended to be valet and cook during those occasional intervals of Chauncey's presence in town, and all in all they lived the life of Reilly and knew it. "Hee bee," they said to one another, tucked into their teeny bed together at night. A maisonette in Knightsbridge! Not bad, eh, Mum? Not bad, Dad.

With much piping and chortling and recourse to the letter R, this happy couple welcomed Chauncey home. He perceived the sense, if not the substance, and told them, "Show these gentlemen to the guest room."

"Aye. Aye. R, r, r, r."

In the house they all went, and up the half flight to the sitting room, and thence up the spiral stairs, Edith and Bert struggling like trolls with Chauncey's luggage, cheerfully barking all the way. Zane went next, limping so garishly up the spiral staircase he seemed a living parody of a Hammer film, followed by Kelp, whose half dozen ditty bags gave him no end of trouble, constantly tangling and snagging with the staircase's banister rails and his own legs and – for one terrifying instant – with Zane's bad foot. The look Zane shot down at him was so cold, so lethal, that Kelp staggered backwards into Dortmunder, who'd been plodding steadily and unemotionally around the spiral like the mule circling an Arab well. Dortmunder stopped when much of Kelp landed on his head, and said, with tired patience, "Don't do that, Andy."

"I'm – I'm just–" Kelp righted himself, dropped two of his bags, stuck his rump in Dortmunder's face as he gathered them up, and climbed on.

Chauncey brought up the rear at rather a safe distance, and when he reached the top, Edith and Bert were already unpacking his bags in his room, while a dispute was starting in the guest room. Dortmunder expressed the core of the problem in a question to Chauncey: "All three of us in here?"

"This is it," Chauncey told him. "On the other hand, the sooner the job is done, the sooner you'll be able to leave and go home."

Dortmunder and Kelp and Zane looked around at the room, which had been designed with married – or at least friendly – couples in mind. One double bed, one dresser, one vanity, one chair, one writing desk, two bedside tables with lamps, one closet, one window overlooking the garden. Kelp, looking apprehensive but determined, said, "I don't care. He can shoot me if he wants, but I'm telling you right now I won't sleep with Zane."

"I believe there's a fold-up cot in the closet," Chauncey said. "I'm sure you'll sort something out."

"I can't sleep on a cot," Zane said. "Not with this foot."

"And I can't sleep with you," Kelp told him. "Not with that foot."

"Take it easy, you," Zane said, pointing a bony finger at Kelp's nose.

"Let's all take it easy," Dortmunder suggested. "We'll draw straws or something."

Zane and Kelp were both objecting to that plan when Chauncey left the room, closing the door behind him, and entered his own civilized quarters, where Bert and Edith had not only finished his unpacking but had laid out a change of clothing on the bed and were starting a hot tub. "Lovely," Chauncey said, and then told them, "Now, those men with me, they're very eccentric Americans, just pay them no mind at all. They'll be here for a few days, on business, and then they'll be gone. Just ignore them while they're here, and if they behave at all strangely, pretend you don't notice."

"Oh, r," said Edith.

"Aye," promised Bert.

Chapter 4

Leaning against a Chippendale chifferobe, Dortmunder watched two Japanese gentlemen bid against one another for a small porcelain bowl with a bluebird painted inside it. That is, he assumed it was the two Japanese gentlemen who were doing the bidding, since their slight head-nods were the only activity in the crowded room apart from the steady chanting of the impeccably dark-suited young auctioneer: "Seven twenty-five. Seven-fifty. Seven-fifty on my right. Seven seventy-five. Eight hundred. Eight twenty-five. Eight twenty-five on my left. Eight twenty-five? Eight-fifty. Eight seventy-five."

They'd started at two hundred, and Dortmunder had by now become bored, but he was determined to stay here in this spot long enough to find out just how much a rich Japanese would spend on a peanut bowl with a bird in it.

Here was one of the auction rooms at Parkeby-South, a large auctioneer-appraisal firm in Sackville Street, not far north of Piccadilly. Occupying a bewildering cluster of rooms and staircases in two adjacent buildings, the firm was one of the oldest and most famous in its line of work, with connections to similar companies in New York, Paris and Zurich. Under this roof – or these roofs – were miles of rare books, acres of valuable carpet, a veritable Louvre of paintings and statuary, a bull's dream of china and glass, and enough armoires, commodes, tallboys, chiffoniers, secretaries, wardrobes, rolltop desks and cellarets to fill every harem in the world. The place looked like San Simeon, with Hearst just back from Europe.

There were three kinds of rooms at Parkeby-South. There were half a dozen auction rooms filled with people seated on rows of wooden folding chairs as they bid incredible amounts for marble thises and crystal thats; there were display rooms crammed with everything from a life-size bronze statue of General Pershing's horse to a life-size blown-glass bumblebee; and finally there were rooms behind closed doors featuring the discreet notice: PRIVATE. Modest unarmed gray-haired guards in dark blue uniforms made no ostentatious display of themselves, but to Dortmunder's practiced eye they were everywhere, and when Dortmunder experimentally pushed open a PRIVATE door to see what would happen, one of these guards immediately materialized from the molding and said, with a helpful smile, "Yes, sir?"

"Looking for the men's room."

"That's up on the first floor, sir. You can't miss it."

They were already on the first floor. Dortmunder thanked him, collected Kelp from his mesmerized pose in front of a glass cabinet full of gold rings, and went on upstairs, where he was now watching a pair of Orientals struggle with one another for a jelly-bean bowl.

He was also brooding. There must be over a million dollars worth of goods in this building. Guards were all over the joint like flu in January, and so far as Dortmunder could see there were no burglar alarms on the windows. Which could only mean live guards in the place all night long.

"Eleven hundred," said the auctioneer. They were going by fifties now. "Eleven-fifty. That's eleven-fifty on my left. Eleven-fifty? No? Eleven-fifty on my left." Clack went the hockey puck in his left hand onto the top of his wooden rostrum. "Sold for eleven-fifty. Item number one fifty-seven, a pair of vases."

While a pair of gray-smocked employees held up the pair of vases – also porcelain, they featured one-footed flamingoes on their sides – Kelp whispered in disbelief, "They paid eleven hundred fifty dollars for that little bowl?"

"Pounds," Dortmunder whispered back. "English money."

"Eleven hundred fifty pounds? How much is that in cash?"

"More," said Dortmunder, who didn't know.

"Two grand?"

"Something like that. Let's get out of here."

"Two grand for a little bowl," Kelp said, following Dortmunder out to the hall. Behind them, the auctioneer had started the bidding on the vases at six hundred. Pounds, not dollars.

Out on the street, Dortmunder turned toward Piccadilly, but Kelp lagged behind, looking wistfully back. "Come on," Dortmunder said, but Kelp still dawdled, looking over his shoulder. Dortmunder frowned at him: "What's the matter?"

"I'd like to live there," Kelp said. He turned to grin wistfully at Dortmunder, but his expression changed almost immediately into a puzzled stare. He seemed to be looking now at something across the street.

Dortmunder, facing the same way, saw nothing. "What now?" he said. "You wanna live in that silver store?"

"I thought – No, it couldn't have been."

"You thought what?"

"Just for a second–" Kelp shrugged and shook his head. "There was a guy looked like Porculey," he said. "Fat like him. He went in one of those doors over there. You know the way people look like other people. Especially out of town."

"People look like other people out of town?"

"Couldn't have been him, though," Kelp said, and at last he moved briskly forward, leaving Dortmunder staring after him. Looking back, Kelp said, "Well? You coming?"

Chapter 5

"I'm discouraged," Dortmunder said.

Chauncey looked up from his brussels sprouts. "I'm sorry to hear you say that."

The four of them were at dinner in Chauncey's apartment, the meal prepared by Edith and served with many whispered r's by Bert. This was their first repast together since their arrival yesterday, the jet lag caused by the five-hour time difference having thrown them all off for a while. Chauncey had kept himself awake yesterday with Dexedrine and asleep last night with seconal and by this morning had become completely adjusted to British time. The others seemed to have fared less well, with Zane the most obvious sufferer. The man's bleached face was even more pallid and gaunt than usual, and his limp had progressed to a level of grotesquerie not seen in these parts since the days of the Black Death.

As for Dortmunder and Kelp, jet lag and a strange environment seemed merely to confirm both in their pre-existing personalities. Dortmunder was more dour, Kelp giddier, though Kelp this morning had briefly been in an extremely foul mood, apparently brought on by the ultimate arrangement of sleeping accommodations in the guest room. Zane, through a combination of medical necessity and native harshness, had occupied the double bed, alone, with Dortmunder taking the cot; leaving Kelp to sleep on an assemblage of pillows and comforters on the floor. The opened-out cot, however, having already taken up most of the available extra space, Kelp had been forced to recline with his head under the dresser and his feet under the bed, which had resulted in his doing himself some sort of injury when he'd awakened, startled, from a bad dream in the middle of the night.

Kelp's essential good humor had soon returned, however, and he'd seemed basically cheerful when he and Dortmunder left early this afternoon to look over the situation at Parkeby-South. Chauncey himself had gone out not long after, having tea with friends in Albert Hall Mansions, and had seen none of his guests until dinnertime, when his question to Dortmunder about the result of his visit to Parkeby-South had produced the word discouraged.

A word on which Dortmunder was willing to expand: "The place is full of rich stuff," he said. "And full of guards. And it looks to me like there's guards in there at night, when they're closed. I didn't see any alarm systems, but there could be."

"You mean you can't get in?"

"I can get in," Dortmunder said. "I can get in and out anywhere. That's not the problem."

"Then what is the problem?"

"The idea," Dortmunder reminded him, "is to switch these paintings without anybody knowing it. Now, you turn off a burglar alarm and you're home free, you can come and go and nobody the wiser. But you can't walk in and out of a place full of live guards without somebody seeing you."

"Ah," said Chauncey.

Zane, pausing with a fork load of lamb chop and mint jelly halfway to his mouth, said, "Create a distraction."

"Very good!" Chauncey said, and beamed hopefully at Dortmunder. "What about that?"

Dortmunder looked dubious. "What distraction?"

Zane answered again: "Rob the place. Go in with guns, steal a few things, and while you're there switch the paintings."

"Lovely," Chauncey said.

Dortmunder didn't seem to think so. He said, "Another fake robbery? If we're stealing stuff, why don't we steal the painting? The cops'll want to know about that."

"Mm," said Chauncey.

But Zane wouldn't give up that easily. He said, "Did you actually see the picture while you were there? Is it on display?"

"No. I guess they keep the most valuable stuff locked up somewhere until it's sold."

Shrugging, Zane said, "So you didn't see it, that's why you didn't steal it."

Chauncey, tired of shifting between hope and despair, merely raised an eyebrow at Dortmunder this time, waiting for his negative response.

Which didn't come. Frowning, Dortmunder poked brussels sprouts here and there on his plate, saying at last, "I don't know. It sounds complicated. Just the two of us, we don't know how many guards they got in there, we've got to fake a robbery in one part of the place and at the same time find the painting locked up in some other part and get through that lock without anybody knowing, and switch the paintings without anybody seeing, and get away before the cops show up. It doesn't sound good."

Chauncey said, "What sounds better?"

Dortmunder slowly shook his head, having nothing to say. He was brooding, thinking, quite apparently getting nowhere.

It was Zane who broke the silence again, saying casually to Chauncey. "I was looking at that back yard of yours. High walls, nobody can see in, nice soft dirt. Plenty of room back there for a couple graves."

Dortmunder went on brooding as though he hadn't heard, but Kelp babbled, "Don't you worry about a thing, Mr. Chauncey! Dortmunder'll figure it out. He's figured out tougher problems than this one. Haven't you, Dortmunder?"

Dortmunder didn't answer. He continued to brood, pushing and poking at the brussels sprouts on his plate. His fork hit one too hard, and it dropped off the edge and rolled forward to bunk against his wineglass, leaving a thin trail of melted butter in its wake on the damask cloth. Dortmunder didn't seem to notice that either, but went on staring with hooded eyes at his food a moment longer, while the other three watched. Then he sighed, and lifted his head. Pointing both his eyes and fork at Chauncey, he said, "I got a job for you."

"Oh, yes?"

"Yes," said Dortmunder.

Chapter 6

Folly Leads Man to Ruin. It was the Veenbes, all right, the original, last seen on the sitting-room wall in New York. Chauncey could have reached out and touched it, but he restrained himself, merely gazing upon it with disguised hunger, plus a wince of pity for the dreadful garish frame in which the poor thing now found itself. "I don't believe it," he said, casually, with a dismissing shrug. "Frankly, I just don't believe it's legitimate."

"Well, you can believe it," that scoundrel Macdough told him, with a self-satisfied smirk. "That's the genuine article, you can take it from me."

I intend to, Chauncey thought, with no little satisfaction, but all he said aloud was, "I'll be insisting on my own expert valuation, of course."

Leamery, the attentive young twit representing Parkeby-South, simpered diplomatically at them both, saying, "Of course, of course. Under the circumstances, naturally, that's the only thing to do. Everyone agrees."

"Troop your experts through," Macdough challenged, with his whisky-soaked burr. "Troop em up and down and sideways, it's all one to me."

It was at Dortmunder's request that Chauncey was here, in this next-to-the-top-floor value room at Parkeby-South, putting up with Leamery's smarm and Macdough's gloat, gazing helplessly at his own property while feigning disinterest. "You can get in to see the painting," Dortmunder had told him. "You've got a legitimate reason, this picture could cost you four hundred grand to an insurance company. So you'll go in, and you'll look at everything, and when you come back here you'll make me a map. I'll want to know where the painting is, what kind of doors and windows, where's the nearest outside wall, what brand is the lock on the door, what else is in the room, do they have closed-circuit TV, security cameras, everything. Is it a regular room or a safe, or a safe inside a room, or a barred cage, or what is it? And how many locks to go through. Everything."

"I'll do my best," Chauncey had promised. "If in fact I can get in at all, which I very much doubt."

"You'll know somebody," Dortmunder had told him, and he'd turned out to be right. The next morning Chauncey had started making phone calls among his acquaintances in town, and damned if a young friend with a local publisher wasn't the nephew of Parkeby-South's head of publicity. The link had been enough to get Chauncey a sympathetic hearing from a vice-manager of the firm, who was certain something could be, as he said, "sorted out."

The sorting out had taken four days, but on Monday afternoon this fellow Leamery had called to say that Chauncey could most certainly view the painting, though "Mr. Macdoo does insist on being present. He's rather a diamond in the rough, you know, our Mr. Macdoo."

"Mac who?"

"Macdoo. The owner of the Veenbes."

"Oh, Macdow, you mean."

"Are you certain?" Leamery sighed, an aspish sound over the phone. "I never seem to get it right."

In any event, the showing was to take place the following afternoon, Tuesday. "I hope you don't mind," Leamery went on, "but we'd much prefer you saw it in situ, as it were. That is to say, in our value room."

"That's perfectly all right," Chauncey told him, and here it was Tuesday, and here was Chauncey in the value room, surrounded by the most precious items currently in Parkeby-South's care, memorizing everything in sight, trying his damnedest to be distracted neither by his craving for the Veenbes nor by his loathing for Macdough, a smug sloppy otter of a man smirking like a shop steward. Walls, doors, locks, exterior walls, staircases … "I've seen enough," he said at last, reluctantly, and turned away with one last backward glance at Folly and his followers. I shall return, he quoted General MacArthur telepathically at the oil, and left the room, pausing to watch with narrowed eyes as the guard locked the locks.

Down the stairs they went, Chauncey ahead of both Leamery and Macdough, his eyes flicking left and right, and on the ground floor Leamery smiled his wet-toothed pale smile and said, "Would you care for tea? We're just serving, in the office."

"Thank you, no."

"Or a peg," Macdough offered, with that offensive smile. "You look as though you could stand a bracer."

"I suspect, Mr. Macdow," Chauncey permitted himself to say, "that you should save–"

"Macduff," said Macdough.

"–all the bracers you have in stock. You'll be needing them yourself soon."

"The name is Macduff," Macdough repeated, "and I don't believe I will."

Chapter 7

"Let's talk about that window again, the one on the staircase."

"Again? Dortmunder, I've told you everything I know about that window. I've told you everything I know about everything. I've drawn you maps, I've drawn you sketches, I've gone over and over and over–"

"Let's talk about the window."

"Dortmunder, why?"

"I want to know about it. Describe it."

"Very well, yet again. It was a window, on the landing half a flight below the value room. That would put it three and a half levels above the street. It was double hung, with one large pane of glass on top and six small panes in the bottom. The wood was painted a grayish-cream color, and it looked out over Sackville Street."

"What could you see when you looked out through it?"

"I told you. Sackville Street."

"Exactly what could you see?"

"Dortmunder, I passed that window twice, once on the way up and once coming down. I didn't stop and stare out."

"What did you see on the way by?"

"The buildings across Sackville Street."

"Describe them."

"Describe – ? Gray stone upper stories, windows, just – No! By God, now I remember. There was a streetlight!"

"A streetlight."

"I saw it on the way down. It was below window level, of course. But what possible difference does that make?"

"For one thing, it means that staircase won't be dark. Tell me more about the window."

"More? There isn't any–"

"It didn't have a lock."

"Of course it did. All windows have locks."

"Well, it didn't have that – You know, that catch thing in the middle. I can remember distinctly, there was – Ah, wait!"

"You're remembering something else."

"Dortmunder, when you're finished with me I'll be fit for nothing but a sanitarium."

"Tell me."

"It had two locks. Sliding bolts on the inside top corners of the lower half I suppose the top half must be permanently fixed in place."

"Sliding bolts? They slide into the frame on both sides?"

"So that's two new things you remembered about the window."

"No more about the window. Please, Dortmunder."

"Fine. Let's talk about the floor in the hall outside the value room."

"Dortmunder, you're driving me crazy."

"Was it wood? Rug? Linoleum?"

"The floor. God help us. Let me think…"

Chapter 8

"What a country," Kelp said. Trying to shift gears with the stick jutting out on the right side of the steering column, he signaled for a right turn instead, and said, "Damn! Crap! Bastard!" Still signaling for a right turn, he found the other stick, jutting out on the left side of the steering column, and shifted into second.

"Drive on the left," Dortmunder told him.

"I am on the left," Kelp snarled, yanking the wheel hard to the left and thus not hitting that oncoming taxi.

"You weren't before."

"I was."

"You're signaling for a right turn."

"Maybe I'll turn right."

Kelp was in a foul mood, and his first experience driving in London wasn't helping much. Tottering down Sloane Street toward Sloane Square in a maroon Opel, surrounded by coughing black taxis, two-story-high red buses and darting scruffy Minis the size of washing machines and the color of week-old snow, Kelp struggled to deny all his deepest driving instincts. Sitting on the right, driving on the left, shifting with his left hand – and just to compound the confusion, the foot pedals weren't reversed.

Not that Kelp had been his usual cheery self even before entering this Opel. Five nights sleeping on the floor in Chauncey's apartment had already left him stiff, cranky and worn out. His initial alignment, with feet under bed and head under dresser, had quickly proved unacceptable, since both Zane and Dortmunder invariably stepped on his exposed center section if they got up in the middle of the night, and both the bastards were constantly getting up in the middle of the night. Having Zane's gnarled foot, naked, pressing on one's stomach in the dark, was one of life's least pleasant experiences. The result was, Kelp was sleeping – or trying to sleep – curled up under the dresser, and it was having a very bad effect on both his posture and his personality.

And now Dortmunder wanted to go for a drive. "Where to?" Kelp had asked him. "Around," Dortmunder had said. "What are we looking for?" Kelp had asked him. "I'll know it when I see it," Dortmunder had said. He'll know it when he sees it. Driving around all afternoon in city traffic, on the wrong side of the street, on the wrong side of the car – Kelp signaled for a left turn, swore loudly, shifted into third gear, shifted into fourth gear, and almost ran down two women in tan wool cloaks and high leather boots who stepped out right in front of the car.

"Christ, Andy," Dortmunder said, peeling himself off the windshield.

"Those two – those two–" Kelp pointed at the women, more in outright astonishment than rage, while the women in their turn stood in front of the car, giving him reproving looks and pointing to something on the sidewalk. Peering in that direction, Kelp saw a blinking orange globe light over there, atop a pole. "Well, what the hell do you suppose that is?" he said.

"Beats me," Dortmunder said.

The women, having shaken their fingers at Kelp, walked on. Kelp sat blinking at the orange globe, which blinked back. "What am I supposed to do now?" he asked. "Wait for it to stay off, or to stay on?"

Peep, said the Mini behind them, and Dortmunder said, "I think you just go now." So Kelp signaled for a right.

"SHIT!"

First gear; tromp the accelerator; second gear; tromp the accelerator; third goddam gear and there was another one of those orange globes. Tromping the brake, Kelp now saw a similar orange globe directly across the way, and white lines on the street between the two, and as he was himself working out what it meant Dortmunder said, "It's a pedestrian crossing, that's all. Pedestrians got the right of way."

"I know it," Kelp snapped, and tromped the accelerator again, and lurched into Sloane Square. "Which way now?"

"Any way you want."

"I wanna go back under the dresser," Kelp said, because Sloane Square was completely full of traffic and people. Kelp inched the Opel along, painfully aware that he didn't know how much car he had on his left, stuck in the whirlpool flowing clockwise around the square, and was practically back where he'd started before he managed to break free, scooting down Kings Road, which turned out narrower than Sloane Street, with more traffic and more pedestrians and more shops and more buses. "And," Kelp cried, "they don't even have MD plates! What if there's an emergency? How you gonna find a doctor?"

"This car's okay," Dortmunder said.

"You try driving it. You try – Oh, shit."

Another pedestrian crossing, this one full of young people wearing carpet remnants. Kelp realized as he was doing it that he was about to shift gears with the wrong stick again, and said, "That's it." Depressing the stick, signaling for a right, he just kept on bearing down until the stick said snap. "Hold this for me," he said, handed the stick to Dortmunder, shifted into first, and drove on once the carpet sale had reached the sidewalk.

"You're signaling for a right again," Dortmunder told him.

"Tough," said Kelp.

They drove around for another half hour, down through Chelsea and over the Albert Bridge into Battersea, and north again over the Battersea Bridge, and up through Earl's Court and Kensington, with Kelp becoming increasingly adjusted to this weird way of driving, and up in Notting Hill Gate Dortmunder suddenly said, "Stop here."

"Here?"

"No, back there. Circle the block."

So Kelp tried circling the block, and promptly got lost, but after many adventures he got found again, which he didn't realize until Dortmunder suddenly said, "Stop here."

This time Kelp stopped, on a dime (or perhaps on a half pence), and the lorry full of metal pipe behind him complained loudly and bitterly. Kelp didn't care; he was realizing they'd come to the same spot in Notting Hill Gate from the opposite direction. "Now, how did that happen?"

"Pull over to the curb, Andy."

Kelp pulled over to the curb, and the lorry went by, filling the air with Stepney imprecations. "Now what?"

"Now we wait," Dortmunder told him. "You might as well cut the engine."

Notting Hill Gate is the name of a street, not a gate; a commercial street, like a neighborhood in Brooklyn, with movie theaters and supermarkets and dry cleaners. Ahead on the left a storefront was boarded up, with a dumpster at the curb out front and a team of men carrying out basket-loads of rubble. Ahead on the right, a man was working on a street-light, standing in a kind of metal bucket extended way up from the back of a truck parked below; the kind of vehicle known in America as a cherrypicker. Beyond the cherrypicker, a man on a high ladder was replacing the letters on a movie marquee; at the moment it read THE CHARGE OF THE SEVEN DWARFS.

On the left, beyond the boarded-up store, a window washer was washing shop windows. The sidewalks were filled with men and women, carrying plastic bags or walking dogs or staring through freshly washed shop windows or muttering to themselves.

"You're muttering to yourself," Dortmunder said.

"No, I'm not," Kelp said.

"It's the cherrypicker," Dortmunder told him. "I already figured it out," Kelp said.

Chapter 9

When a fellow's been sleeping under a dresser for more than a week it's child's play to fall asleep inside a big roomy armoire. Kelp was dreaming of himself as an angel playing a harp on a fluffy soft cloud when the armoire door was pulled open and Dortmunder rudely awakened him by clamping one hand over his mouth for silence sake and whispering harshly in his ear, "Wake up!"

"Mmm" yelled Kelp, then remembered that he wasn't an angel after all, that he didn't in fact know how to play the harp, and that he was only in this armoire because he was a thief. He and Dortmunder had come into Parkeby-South again late this afternoon, Monday, nearly a week since Chauncey's visit, and had watched and waited and roamed until there'd been opportunities to slip unnoticed into hiding places; Dortmunder into a sheaf of carpets draped over a railing around a stairwell, and Kelp into this armoire. It was slightly after four P.M. when they'd hidden themselves away, and it was slightly before two A.M. now, so Kelp had been asleep for about nine hours. "I'm hungry," he whispered, when Dortmunder released his mouth.

"Food later," Dortmunder whispered, and stepped back so Kelp could clamber quietly out of the armoire. Dortmunder too was hungry, though he wouldn't have admitted it, and at the moment he was less rested than Kelp. An almost overpowering need to sneeze had kept him awake most of the time inside those carpets, and when at last he'd napped for an hour or so an actual sneeze had awakened him. His own sneeze. Fortunately it hadn't alerted any of the guards, so when Dortmunder saw by his luminous watch dial that it was nearly midnight he slipped out of his hiding place. He spent the next two hours dogging the guards' footsteps and at about one-thirty he heard one of them in the ground-floor office say, "Hm. Streetlamp's gone out." So Chauncey was on the job.

Yes, he was. The other day, Kelp and Dortmunder had followed the cherrypicker to its home, a large fenced-in lot in Hammersmith where it was surrounded by other heavy equipment, all painted the same official yellow. Earlier today, Dortmunder and Kelp had dressed in work clothes, armed themselves with a clipboard, and gone back to Hammersmith, where Dortmunder did his unhelpful workman routine while claiming to have been sent "over from the job to get one of those. They were supposed to call from the office." There'd been little difficulty from the pipe-smoking fellow in the little shack by the gate, since they'd been perfectly willing to sign false names to every document be showed them. ("Canadians, are you?" "That's right.") Retiring with the cherrypicker to a quiet cul-de-sac off Holland Road, they'd used black enamel paint to change its ID and license-plate numbers, then parked it quite openly on Pont Street, less than two blocks from Chauncey's maisonette, where Chauncey and Zane had found it waiting at one o'clock this morning. Chauncey, using the key Kelp had given him, had driven the cherrypicker to Sackville Street, where he'd opened the metal plate in the streetlight pole (Dortmunder had shown him how on a streetlight back in Hans Place), and had snipped one wire to put out the light. And now he and Zane were sitting in the cab of the truck, waiting for the signal from inside Parkeby-South.

Within, Kelp stretched and yawned and scratched his head and shook himself all over like a dog in the rain. "You done wriggling?" Dortmunder asked him. "Time we got going."

"Right," Kelp said. Then, patting himself all over, he said, "Wait a minute. Where's my gun?"

Dortmunder frisked him, but Kelp was no longer armed, until they finally found it in the armoire, where it had slipped out of his pocket. A tiny .25 calibre Beretta automatic, it looked like a toy but it was less foolish than the four-inch-barrel custom-made .22 calibre target pistol inside Dortmunder's shirt. Being in a foreign land, away from their normal sources of supply, they'd been limited in armament to whatever Chauncey could come up with, and it had been this: a woman's purse automatic and a target pistol.

"Quietly now," Dortmunder said, unlimbering his own weapon, and the two of them slipped toward the office.

Outside, a complication had developed. Chauncey had been nervous at first – he thought of himself as sophisticated, but armed robbery was rather beyond his experience – but when everything went according to Dortmunder's plan his confidence grew and he found himself quite pleased with the insouciance he was projecting.

Until the bobby came wandering past at about five to two, and stopped to chat. "Out late, are you?" He was a young police officer with a moustache the size and shape and color of a street-sweeper's broom, and he wasn't in the least suspicious of Chauncey and Zane and the cherrypicker. Quite the opposite; a bit bored on these silent empty late-night commercial streets, he'd simply stopped off for human contact, a little shop talk with another pair of night-workers.

Every Englishman, and every American who spends any time at all in England, believes himself capable of imitating a cockney accent, and Chauncey was no exception. Donning his party cockney voice, he said, "Evenin', guvnor. Nice night, innit?"

"Canadian, are you?" asked the bobby.

"Err-yuss," said Chauncey.

Inside, Dortmunder and Kelp, peering out through the eye-holes in the itchy ski masks they were now wearing, entered the cashier's office and told the two guards, "Stick em up."

"Whurr," said one of the guards, and the other clattered his teacup into its saucer, turning to stare with blank astonishment and say, "Ere! Where'd you two come from?"

"Stick em up," Dortmunder repeated.

"Stick what up? Me mitts? I'll spill me tea."

"Put the tea down," Dortmunder told him, "and then stick em up."

"Well, I like that," grumbled the guard, plunking cup and saucer on top of a handy filing cabinet.

"Stickler for ritual, that's what he is," said the other guard, remaining calmly in his chair with his feet up on the desk as in leisurely fashion he stuck em up.

"Trade unionist," agreed the first guard, sticking his own up at last. "Brotherhood a Smash an Grabbers."

Dortmunder pointed the incredibly long barrel of his target pistol at the seated guard – it kept reminding him, unfortunately, of Hansel's stick-finger used to fool the witch about his skinniness – and said, "There's two more guards upstairs. Phone em, call em down here."

The seated guard lowered his feet from the desk and his hands from the air. "Two more upstairs, is it? Where'd you come by that idea?"

"One in an office on the second floor," Dortmunder told him, "one on a chair in a corridor on the fourth."

The guards gave each other impressed looks. "Knows his business," said the first.

"Got the floors wrong, though," commented the second.

"Probably Canadian." The first looked at Dortmunder. "You Canadian?"

"Australian," Dortmunder said. He was tired of being Canadian. "And in a hurry."

"Do like he says, Tom," the second advised. "Get on the blower."

"And be careful what you say," Dortmunder told him.

Outside, Chauncey was being extremely careful what he said, in his conversation with the bobby. They'd discussed the weather – was the summertime drought to be an annual event or not, and if so was it a good idea? – and they'd discussed overtime salary, and the bobby's problems with the London Electricity Board which had very nearly shut off his electricity by mistake, and Chauncey was beginning to wish this son of a bitch would drop down dead on the pavement. Beside Chauncey, Zane was fingering something under his jacket and undoubtedly thinking thoughts of a similar, though perhaps more activist, nature.

In the bobby's breast pocket was a miniature walkie-talkie, which occasionally spoke; disconcerting, at first, to be in conversation with a person whose pocket suddenly joins in. The bobby abruptly responded to one of its staccato announcements by looking alert and saying, "Right." Touching his helmet brim in a casual salute, he said, "Duty calls. Ta-ta."

"Ta-ta," Chauncey agreed, and watched in the cherrypicker's rear-view mirror as the bobby hied himself away toward Vigo Street.

"I was about to shoot him," Zane said.

"I was afraid you were." Chauncey glanced over at Parkeby-South. "And what's taking them so long?"

Nothing. Things were going very well, in fact. Tom had gotten on the blower and had talked first with Frank and then with Henry, telling them both to pop down to the office a minute, and here they came. Dortmunder and Kelp flanked the door, and in less than no time all four guards were having their hands tied behind their backs by Kelp, while Dortmunder stood well back, pointing the long-barreled gun as though at a slide in a lecture.

"All set," Kelp said at last. "Should I tie their ankles, too?" This was a previously rehearsed bit of dialogue, and Dortmunder gave the prepared response: "No. We'll bring em with us. I want my eye on em till we're out of here." Meaning, in truth, just the reverse. The guards would be witnesses that neither of the bandits had ever gone upstairs.

Kelp led the way out of the office, followed by the four guards. Dortmunder brought up the rear, pausing first to pull a pocket flash from his jacket and aim it toward the nearest window: on-off, on-off, on-off.

"At last," said Chauncey. Climbing down from the cab, carrying the rolled-up imitation Veenbes in a black vinyl umbrella sheath, he went around to the back while Zane slid over behind the wheel. Chauncey climbed into the cherrypicker's bucket, which contained its own controls, and with some hesitation sent himself upward. He was a bit awkward at first, nearly whacking into the lamp post and then coming within a hair of braining himself on the light, but with practice came assurance, and after only modest adjustments he very quickly brought himself up to that blessed window that had so fascinated Dortmunder. From his jacket pocket he took a rather large magnet, which immediately fastened itself inexorably to the side of the bucket. "Bastard," muttered Chauncey, and pried the son of a bitch loose. Moving it with difficulty toward the window – it was like walking an Irish setter puppy on a short leash – Chauncey went to work.

This part he was already good at. Dortmunder had fixed a bolt to one of Chauncey's windows, and Chauncey had practiced over and over again the manipulation of that bolt through the window with this magnet. First the magnet slides up the window, up the window, turning the little bolt, freeing its little handle from the little slot. Then the magnet slides across the window, slowly, gently, and the obedient little bolt slides slowly and gently out of its nest in the window frame. Repeat with the second bolt, and the window is unlocked. (Over and over Dortmunder had returned to the question of this window, wanting to know if the bolts were brass or iron, and finally Chauncey had cried, "Iron, for the love of God!" "I hope you're right," Dortmunder had said, "because a magnet won't work on brass." Which was the first Chauncey had known about the magnet, and he too had been hoping he was right ever since. It was quite a relief to discover the bolts really were iron – he'd been guessing.)

Now, Chauncey slid open the window and stepped from bucket to staircase, carrying the umbrella sheath and pausing to close the window behind himself. ("We don't want any guards noticing any unexplained drafts," Dortmunder had pointed out.) Up the half flight of stairs Chauncey hurried to the value room, where he took from his pocket the string-tied bundle of keys given him by Kelp. ("I'm no expert on English locks," Kelp had said, "but if you got the brand right and the appearance right, one of these keys should work on each lock." And he'd shrugged, adding, "If not, the caper's a bust.")

Two locks. Fumbling in the dark, jangling the keys out of haste and nervousness, Chauncey chose one at random and tried it in both slots. No. Second one; no… Third one–

The eleventh key worked in the top lock. The seventeenth key – only four from the last – worked in the bottom lock. Chauncey pushed open the vault-room door, and entered, as from downstairs there came the sound of glass breaking.

It was Kelp, smashing the front of a display case with the butt of his little Beretta. Reaching through the opening, he scooped up fistfuls of gold rings and transferred them to his pockets. In the background, Dortmunder went on pointing his curtain rod ("It's curtains for you! I brought my rod!"), while glancing from time to time at his watch.

Upstairs, Chauncey was also looking at his watch. Dortmunder had told him he'd have ten minutes from the moment of the flashlight signal, and he'd already used seven just getting into the room. Another time he might have dawdled to admire some of the other beauties in here, but now, shining his flashlight around, he had time for nothing but the Veenbes, which was… over there.

Downstairs, Kelp's pockets were full but Dortmunder's watch showed they still had three minutes to stall. "We'll check the next room," he said, and herded the guards ahead of him as Kelp led the way.

Upstairs: Painting off frame, imitation out of umbrella sheath, imitation tacked onto frame, original rolled (carefully, carefully) and inserted into sheath, Chauncey and sheath out of the room with locks snicking into place automatically behind him.

Downstairs: "That's enough," Dortmunder said. "Through that way," he told the guards, leading them to the basement stairs. The four guards went down the staircase, and Dortmunder and Kelp closed and locked the door, then turned and ran for the main exit.

Upstairs: Chauncey and sheath out the window and into the bucket, window closed, magnet out of pocket, magnet stuck to side of bucket, magnet yanked off bucket, magnet used to slide the left bolt back into place, the right bolt back into place.

Downstairs: Dortmunder and Kelp running pell-mell out of the building, Kelp jingling like a Christmas sleigh, and both leaping into the cab of the cherrypicker, one on each side, pushing Zane into the middle, with Kelp behind the wheel. Dortmunder, looking up before entering the cab, saw the bucket descending from the sky, and told Kelp, "He's done. Go."

Kelp went. Throwing the cherrypicker into gear – he was becoming terrific at this looking-glass way of driving by now – he zipped down to Piccadilly and left toward Piccadilly Circus.

In the bucket, Chauncey couldn't believe it when the world suddenly started reeling sideways while he was still descending. "Hey!" he said, releasing the controls – the bucket stopped moving down but continued moving over – and he clutched the rim in both hands as the upper stories of Sackville Street rushed past, "Good God!" said Chauncey, and he didn't at all like the way the cherrypicker swayed when they made the left onto Piccadilly.

"Got to get down," Chauncey told himself. They must be dangerously overbalanced this way. But he couldn't force himself to release either of his handholds so he could operate the controls. Even his toes were making clutching movements, inside his shoes; especially when he looked out and saw Piccadilly Circus dead ahead. "Oh, no," he said.

Oh, yes. Swayyyyy to the right went the bucket toward the Eros statue as the truck angled left, then swayyyyy to the left as the truck roared around the Circus and shot down the hill of Haymarket. The sharp right turn into Pall Mall at the bottom of the downslope nearly sent them tumbling wheels over bucket down Cockspur Street, but the cherrypicker righted itself and hastened on.

"We were on two wheels!" Kelp cried, in outraged astonishment. "What kind of vehicle is this?"

Dortmunder, looking back through the cab's rear window, said, "He's still up there. Why doesn't he bring it down?"

"He'll tip us over!" Kelp was really angry. "What does he think this is, some kind of joyride?"

Chauncey didn't. Chauncey thought he was in Hell.

St. James's Street; another right turn, this one uphill, and to Chauncey's wondering eyes the traffic lights up on Piccadilly were red. Kelp didn't apply the brakes till the last possible second, which meant the bucket tried to keep going, so the two wheels the truck was on this time were both in front. Briefly the cherrypicker looked like some kind of yellow dinosaur imitating a bucking bronco.

But then it dropped back, and in the sudden cessation of movement Chauncey's hands clutched at the controls and dowwwwwnn came the bucket, reaching its bottom position just as the light turned green and Kelp whipped around the left turn into Piccadilly, steaming toward Hyde Park Corner. Midway, another set of traffic lights gleamed red, and no sooner had the cherrypicker shuddered to a halt than Chauncey clambered over the side, gripping tight the umbrella sheath, and ran up to climb into the cab on top of Dortmunder, who said, "What? What?"

"No more," Chauncey said, sitting on Dortmunder. "No more."

"We're being serious up here," Kelp told him angrily, "and you're back there playing games." And while Chauncey gaped at him, speechless, Kelp shifted into first and drove on.

Chapter 10

When Dortmunder awoke, Zane was already up and out of the room, but Kelp slept on, curled like a collie beneath the dresser. "Wake up," Dortmunder suggested, prodding him gently with a bare toe. "This's the day we go home."

Kelp had learned to awaken cautiously, and not sit bolt upright. Rolling slowly out from under the dresser, he straightened himself with a series of snaps and creaks and moans, while Dortmunder went off to the bathroom to make himself pretty for the flight. One P.M., leaving Heathrow, due to arrive at four P.M. (eight hours later and five time zones earlier) at Kennedy in New York. Dortmunder actually smiled at his reflection while shaving, and as a result nicked himself pretty badly.

Wearing a patch of toilet paper on the cut, he dressed himself and went downstairs, where he found a cheerful Chauncey, completely recovered from his ride in the bucket, drinking coffee and reading the Times in the dining-room window seat. "Good morning," Dortmunder told him.

Chauncey beamed over his paper. "Good morning? By God, Dortmunder, this is the sweetest morning of my life! You've made my day, you've turned me into a successful second-story man, and I'm delighted to have been associated with you."

"Sure," Dortmunder said, and reached for the coffeepot.

Edith wandered in, rubbing her hands together in front of her apron and grinning as she asked some sort of question.

"I think we'll have kippers this morning Edith," Chauncey told her. "Enough for four, there's a good girl."

Edith went off, whickering, as Kelp came in, looking stiff and happy. "Never again under that dresser," he said. "It's like a pardon from the Governor." Seating himself, pouring some coffee, he said to Dortmunder, "Whadawe do with the goods we picked up last night?"

"Well, we don't bring it all through US Customs," Dortmunder said, "that's one thing for sure."

"According to the Times," Chauncey said, "you took eighty thousand pounds in merchandise from Parkeby-South last night."

Kelp said, "We're written up in the paper?"

"Right here." Chauncey passed it across.

Dortmunder said, "Eighty thousand pounds? What's that in dollars?"

"Roughly a hundred fifty thousand. How much of that would you get from a fence?"

"Maybe ten per cent."

Chauncey was surprised. "That's all? Fifteen thousand?"

"You don't get top dollar when you're peddling stuff on some police list."

"I'll give you a check myself, right now, for ten thousand dollars," Chauncey suggested. "Is that enough?"

"Not a check," Dortmunder told him.

"Yes, I see." Chauncey frowned, thinking it over. "This cash-only existence of yours can be difficult."

Kelp said, "It says here we were obviously English and well educated and trying to disguise our background with fake Australian accents."

Edith came simpering and bobbing in with four plates of hot buttery filleted kippers with lemon wedges, and they all set to, while Kelp went on reading the Times's exhaustively detailed account of the robbery. He said, "Who's Raffles?"

"Beats me," Dortmunder said.

Chauncey said, "Dortmunder, how about this? I'll phone my accountant this afternoon and tell him to convert ten thousand dollars into cash, for you to pick up next Monday. You'll have a password so he'll know you're the man who should get the money."

"Fine," Dortmunder said.

"If Zane doesn't come down soon," Chauncey said, "his kippers will get cold."

"That's probably the way he likes them," Dortmunder said.

Kelp said, "Can I keep this paper?"

"Of course." Chauncey finished his last mouthful of kipper, swallowed coffee, and got to his feet, saying "I have to look at it. I have to see it again." And he went through into the living room, where the umbrella sheath had been left last night, in the closet by the front door.

Kelp said, "Did I hear right? He'll give us ten grand for that stuff?"

"That's what he says."

"So it didn't turn out so bad after all. With what we got before, that adds up to–" Kelp did some figuring on his fingers. "–twenty-three thousand apiece."

"Twenty-three thousand dollars a year is not good wages."

Dortmunder said, and from the other room came a sudden cutoff howl, as though somebody had wounded a yak. Dortmunder and Kelp stared toward the doorway, and Chauncey staggered back into the room, his face white, ghastly looking in the frame of yellow hair. From his dangling right hand hung the painting, still partly curled, dragging on the carpet.

"Not something else," Dortmunder said, and went over to take the painting out of Chauncey's lax hand. But when he looked at it, everything was fine: Folly continued to lead man to ruin.

Kelp, coming over, holding in his right hand a fork with kipper impaled on it, said, "What's up?"

"Fake," Chauncey said. His voice was hoarse, as though he'd been punched in the throat.

Dortmunder frowned at him. "This is the fake? This is the one you brought there?"

"Different," Chauncey said. "A different fake."

"What?" Dortmunder shook the canvas in irritation. "You saw this damn thing a week ago, why didn't you see then it was a fake?"

"That one was real." Chauncey was recovering now, though his face remained bloodless and his eyes unnaturally wide. "It was real, Dortmunder."

"You mean there's two fakes?"

"Last night," Chauncey said, "I held the real painting in my hands."

"Impossible." Glowering at the painting, Dortmunder said, "You screwed up somewhere, Chauncey, you didn't–" And then he stopped, frowning in a puzzled way at the painting, holding it closer to his face.

Chauncey said, "What is it? Dortmunder?"

Turning back to the dining table, Dortmunder spread the painting on it and pointed at one of the figures behind Folly: a buxom farm girl, carrying a basket of eggs. "Look."

Chauncey and Kelp both leaned over the painting. Chauncey said, "Look? Look at what?"

It was Kelp who answered. "By golly, that's Cleo," he said.

"Cleo? Cleo?"

"Cleo Marlahy," Dortmunder told him. "Porculey's girl friend."

Kelp said, "I told you I saw him, that day outside Parkeby-South."

"Porculey?" Chauncey was struggling to catch up. "Porculey did a second fake? But why? How – How did it get here?" He stared at Dortmunder, but Dortmunder was looking at something on the far side of the table. Chauncey looked in the same direction, and saw the fourth plate of kippers, untouched, cold. Outside, the sun slid behind a cloud. Rain began to fall. "Zane," said Chauncey.

Chapter 11

Leo Zane said, "So we have the picture."

"I don't believe you," Ian Macdough said.

"Don't be silly," Zane told him. "Of course you believe us." Success was within Zane's grasp, and the sense of it was making him expansive, bright eyed, almost warm. He had conceived a complex and daring plan, and he'd succeeded under the very noses of Chauncey and his hired thieves. What would Dortmunder and company think now of their cleverness?

The idea had come to Zane in a sudden flash, back in New York, while Dortmunder had been explaining his own painting-switch scheme to Chauncey. The money, the opportunity, everything was right. Porculey had readily agreed to furnish a second fake Veenbes for a quarter of the return, the switch had been made, and now they were here in the Savoy, Zane doing the talking while Porculey ate toast from Macdough's unfinished breakfast. They had come to give the Scotsman their terms.

"Half," Macdough said bitterly. "You think I'll give you half."

Half. Two hundred thousand dollars, more or less; enough to start life all over again. This last year had convinced him; no more cold wet northern winters. He would live somewhere warm and dry, become healthy, even happy, make friends, perhaps get a dog, a television set. Life would become possible. Two hundred thousand dollars could buy a lot of warmth.

Macdough, this orange-haired red-faced bluff of a man, was wasting everybody's time and his own breath with bad temper. "You're either a pair of filthy liars," he was saying, "or you're despicable thieves."

"Half," Zane said calmly. "If you want the painting back."

"If you even have it. Show it to me, then."

"Oh, no," Zane said. "Not before you sign the agreement."

"How do I know you have it at all?"

"There's an easy way to check," Zane told him, "and you know it yourself. Go to Parkeby-South, look at the painting there, see if it's the right one."

Macdough hesitated, and Zane could see his dark little mind working. The man believed them, all right, and was trying to find some way out. But there was none. Zane had it all sewed up. "Well?" he said.

"All right," Macdough decided. "I'll go to Parkeby-South, and I'll look at my painting, and then I'll more than likely have you two arrested for confidence tricksters."

"We'll all go together," Zane said, getting to his feet.

"You'll wait outside," Macdough told him.

"Of course. Come along, Porculey."

"One minute. One minute." Porculey put the last of Macdough's uneaten bacon between the last two slices of Macdough's toast, and the three friends left the suite and took a taxi to Parkeby-South, where Macdough ran grim-faced inside while Zane and Porculey waited in the cab.

Porculey, showing nervousness now that Macdough was out of sight, said, "What if he calls the police?"

"He won't," Zane said. "Not unless he's an even bigger fool than I think. If he calls the police he loses everything, and he knows it."

Macdough was less than five minutes inside, and when he emerged he actually hurled himself like a javelin across the sidewalk and into the cab, where he faced the other two with a glower of helpless rage and said, "All right, you bastards. All right."

"Back to the Savoy, driver," Zane called, and as the cab moved away from the curb he took from his pocket the two-page contract, prepared and typed by himself, and extended it to Macdough, saying, "You'll probably want to read this before you sign it."

"I shouldn't be surprised," Macdough said, and with their concentration on the contract, none of them in the cab noticed the pale blue Vauxhall that started up from the curb half a block behind them and edged forward in their wake.

Zane smiled as he watched Macdough read the contract. In simple clear-cut language, it said Macdough was to pay Zane and Porculey "for their assistance in preparing the said painting for sale," one-half his net return "before taxes" from the painting's disposition.

"…or paid to the survivor–" Macdough read aloud, and gave them a bitter look. "Trust each other, do you?"

"Certainly," said Zane, ignoring the startled sidelong look he got from Porculey.

Macdough went on reading, then shook his head and said, "All right. You're a pair of unnatural ghouls, but you have me over a barrel."

"My pen," Zane suggested, extending it, and watched smiling as Macdough scrawled his name at the bottom of the second page.

"Now, give me back my painting," Macdough said, handing over the contract and the pen.

"Of course. But if you have a safe place to hide it, I think you should keep it out of Parkeby-South's hands until just before the sale."

Macdough looked startled, and worried. "Chauncey might try to get it back?"

"Of course he will, and so will the men with him."

"The bastards."

"Do you have a safe place," Zane asked him, "or should we hold it for you?"

"You bastards!" Macdough snorted. "I'll hold my own property for my own self, if you don't mind."

"Not a bit," Zane said, unruffled. "But if you don't mind, Mr. Porculey and I will stay with you while you hide it."

"It's a long way from here," Macdough said doubtfully, "and my car isn't the world's biggest."

"We won't mind at all," Zane said. "Will we, Mr. Porculey?" Porculey, who looked like a man rampant with second thoughts, vaguely shook his head, saying, "Not at all, no. Don't mind at all."

"So we'll all go for a drive together," Zane said. Putting one cold hand on Macdough's knee and the other cold hand on Porculey's knee, he smiled at both unhappy men in turn. "One for all," he said. "And all, of course, for one."

Chapter 12

It's difficult to wait unobtrusively in a car on the Strand in the middle of London's horrible traffic jam, but that's what Chauncey was doing, clinging grimly to his bit of curb despite the honking of taxis, the yelling of lorry drivers or the dirty looks of pedestrians. Dortmunder had crossed the street and disappeared into the Savoy, following Zane and Porculey and Macdough, leaving Chauncey and Kelp to wait here in this clogged artery for whatever would happen next.

It was Dortmunder who'd figured it out that Zane would have to go to Macdough, as his only logical customer for the painting, and that Macdough would be bound to check the authenticity of the painting currently held by Parkeby-South. Which was why they'd rented this Vauxhall and taken up a position across the street from the auction gallery. ("By God," Dortmunder had said, with something like awe in his voice, "I'm returning to the scene of the crime.") But even Dortmunder hadn't been able to explain why that despicable trio in the taxi had led them back to the Savoy rather than on to wherever the painting was stashed. Which was why Dortmunder was in there now, trying to find out what was going on without being seen.

Kelp, who had been quietly thinking his own thoughts in the back seat, now leaned forward and said, "You know? I'm getting so I kind of like this town."

"Glad to hear it," Chauncey said. His eye was on the lane leading to the Savoy's entrance.

"It's a lot like New York," Kelp said, "only goofier. You know what I mean?"

"Here comes Dortmunder."

Here came Dortmunder. He trotted across the street, slid in next to Chauncey, and said, "He's checking out, and he ordered his car. A white Mini, license W-A-X three six one A. You owe me five pounds, for bribes."

"Where are they going?" It made no sense to Chauncey that Macdough should suddenly check out of his hotel.

Apparently, it didn't make sense to Dortmunder either. "I suppose they'll go pick up the painting," he said. "After that, I don't know. We'll just stick with them."

"Mini coming," Kelp said.

Out of Savoy Court came an absolutely jam packed white Mini. Macdough was driving, hunched over the steering wheel like a bear riding a tricycle, with Zane a stiff rigor-mortis figure in the passenger seat beside him and Porculey expanding like bread dough all over the back. The Mini's springs were nowhere near able to deal with such a load; burr-rong, it bottomed out, as Macdough turned into the viscosity of traffic on the Strand.

"Keep well back," Dortmunder advised.

"I will. I will."

The Strand, Fleet Street, around Ludgate Circus and up Farringdon Street and Farringdon Road and a right turn onto Rosebery Avenue, in the drab disrepair of Finsbury. Just short of St. John Street the Mini stopped and Zane got out to permit Porculey to emerge, panting and wheezing, like a champagne cork out of a bottle that's gone fiat. Zane waited on the sidewalk, glancing warily about, while Porculey trotted into a nearby Bed & Breakfast establishment. Chauncey and Dortmunder and Kelp ducked their heads and waited, half a block away.

"There it is!" Chauncey was peeking through his fingers, and his whole body vibrated when he saw Porculey crossing the street toward the Mini, carrying a long tubular object wrapped in brown paper. "Let's get it now! We'll go there right now! What could they do on a public street?"

"Kill us," Dortmunder told him. "I'm sure Zane has a gun, and I know I don't."

Porculey handed the package to Zane while he reinserted himself into the Mini's back seat – exactly like putting a champagne cork back into the bottle – then Zane handed the package in to Porculey, settled again in the front passenger seat, pulled the Mini's door shut, and the car moved off, the Vauxhall once again half a block behind.

St. John Street, Upper Street, Holloway Road, Archway Road – "Where are they going?" cried Chauncey. Their helplessness was infuriating.

"Beats me," Dortmunder said. "I don't know this town."

"But they're heading out of town! They're heading for the M1!"

"Just stay with them."

Lyttleton Road, the Great North Way, the on-ramp for the M1. Up on the highway went the Mini, struggling up to sixty miles per hour, bottoming out at every dip, with the Vauxhall nearly a quarter of a mile back.

Dortmunder said, "Where's this road go?"

"Everywhere," Chauncey told him. "Manchester, Liverpool, it's the main road north out of London, it goes up–" He stopped, struck by a sudden realization.

Dortmunder said, "You mean – ?"

In a whisper, Chauncey finished his sentence: "–to Scotland," he said.

Chapter 13

The trip north: The Mini and the Vauxhall both gassed up at a service area near Northampton, then switched from the M1 to the M6, and stopped for lunch at another service area above Birmingham. (Macdough and Zane and Porculey ate hot meals at a table in the cafeteria, while Chauncey and Dortmunder and Kelp chewed sandwiches and drank coffee out of plastic cups in the car. Porculey carried the painting with him into the restaurant, to the chagrin of Macdough, Chauncey, Dortmunder and Kelp.) Another stop for gasoline north of Manchester was made by both cars, and yet another just south of Carlisle. (These motorway service areas were large and busy places, where the Vauxhall could keep an unobtrusive distance from the Mini.)

Above Carlisle the motorway ended, and the two cars switched to the A 74 and then the A 73, stopping for gas in Carluke. The Mini chose a small Shell station and the Vauxhall had to go on by, but just ahead there was a Fina station.

East of Glasgow the two cars picked up the M 8 toward Edinburgh, taking the bypass around the city to the Forth Bridge over the Firth of Forth, then the M 90 and the A 90 north to Perth, where the Mini drove around in circles for a while. (Chauncey became convinced Zane had realized he was being followed and was trying to lose them, but in fact Macdough was looking for a particular restaurant of which he had fond memories. He failed to find it.) The occupants of the Mini ate in an Italian restaurant, while the occupants of the Vauxhall filled their gas tank again and ate takeout food from a Wimpy's.

After dinner, with night coming on, Macdough bought more gas for the Mini and led the way farther north, taking the A 9 up into the mountains. The road became increasingly curving and narrow, the distances between towns grew longer, and the Vauxhall had to drive practically on top of the Mini to keep it in sight. Up they went, and north, through the Obney Hills and the Craigvinean Forest and the Pass of Killiecrankie and Dalnacardoch Forest and Glen Truim, till up above Kingussie the Vauxhall made a hairpin climbing turn around the pockmarked stone flank of an ancient barn, and the Mini was gone.

"Now what?" Dortmunder said.

Ahead in the Vauxhall's lights the road climbed steeply up a rocky broken slope, angling to the right. The Mini could not already have crested the hill. Nevertheless, Chauncey dropped from second gear to first and accelerated at full throttle upward, the back end bouncing and jiggling on the uneven road, the rear tires rattling volleys of stones in their wake.

And at the crest, the view was of a winding descent through hedgerows and stone walls, with three segments of macadam roadway dimly visible, and no vehicle lights at all on any of them.

"They turned off," Dortmunder said.

"But there's no place to turn off."

"Lights over there," Kelp said, and when they both turned to look at him (because they had no idea where "over there" was) he was pointing off to the left. Out that way, apparently at some distance in the mountainous dark, what looked to be headlights were flickering. They disappeared, appeared again, disappeared.

"We missed the turnoff," Dortmunder said.

"Damn." Chauncey twisted sideways to look past Kelp's ear at the downslope, easing his foot cautiously on the brake. He was a shaky driver in reverse, oversteering madly, swinging back and forth in abrupt Vs across the road, but he did make it all the way to the bottom before plowing into the front end of a silver Jensen Interceptor III with stereo t/d, AM/FM, a/c, brown int., calfskin uph., electric windows, all power, immaculate cond., private owner, which was just growling at speed around the corner of the stone barn.

"Damn it to hell, I've hit him!"

"The painting," Dortmunder said, and pointed at the faint trail leading upward, next to the barn.

"The painting." Chauncey looked at Dortmunder, at the rear-view mirror, and made his decision. Into first gear, spin the wheel hard left, and accelerate.

The initial impact had broken the Vauxhall's left-rear tail light and slightly dented a bit of its rear metalwork, while putting out one of the Jensen's headlights, crumpling its radiator and severely denting both its front fenders. The sudden leap forward by the Vauxhall, just as the Jensen's driver was stepping in horror and astonishment out onto the pavement, jolted the Jensen forward, dumped its driver into the mud and gravel at the verge, and then wrenched the Jensen's front bumper loose. Its gonglike clatter when it hit the pavement served as a kind of announcement for the Department of the Environment highway truck, a big yellow Leyland full of stones and dirt, which at that moment came around the corner of the barn and smacked the Jensen very smartly in the rear.

In the Vauxhall, bucketing up the unpaved side road, Chauncey clung grimly to the steering wheel and Dortmunder hung desperately to everything he could find on the dashboard, while Kelp jounced backwards in the rear seat, gazing down the hill toward the road and saying, "He just got it again. Some truck hit him."

Neither Chauncey nor Dortmunder cared what was going on back there. A half moon and several million stars in a cloudless sky showed even more clearly than their headlights a scrub-filled up-and-down landscape virtually as wild as when Hadrian built his wall. The Picts and Celts might no longer be about (except on football weekends), but the countryside which had formed their rough bad-tempered natures was still as it had been, scarred more by nature than by man. Driving through this scrag, not once did anyone in the Vauxhall see a light, nor any other indication of the Mini, till all at once, as they crawled up over rocks and roots between two gnarled and stumpy pines, Porculey appeared in their headlights, blinking nervously and gesturing for them to turn right.

Chauncey lifted his foot from the accelerator in surprise, and the car, barely moving anyway, promptly stalled.

And now Chauncey's door opened, and Leo Zane's voice said, "Out you come. Dortmunder? Kelp? You weren't silly enough to bring guns, were you?"

No; they were silly enough not to bring guns. All three emerged from the Vauxhall, Chauncey looking tense but not frightened, Dortmunder grimly annoyed, Kelp disgusted. Zane said, "Walk up the hill to the right. Griswold, follow with their car. Keep the lights on us."

The three prisoners, followed by Zane, and then by Porculey driving their car, went up the hill, their black shadows long dark charcoal lines lengthening ahead of them. Turning right again at Zane's direction, they found themselves in the battered moss-grown remnant of what had once apparently been a good-sized castle. A few boulderish bits of stone wall, like an early draft for Stonehenge, was all they could see at first, but then Porculey cut the Vauxhall's lights, and in the softer illumination of moon and starlight they could make out still-standing segments of the building clustered across the way.

Zane now used a flashlight to guide them over a gorse-grown former courtyard to a gray stone wall shielding a flight of worn steps leading down. At the bottom, a heavy door shaped like an inverted shield stood open, and they entered upon a clammy empty stone corridor, its distant end obscured by shadow. Zane's flashlight told them to walk down this corridor and then to enter a doorway on the left, while behind them they could hear the heavy groaning of hinges as Porculey closed the stairway door.

They were now in a large cluttered stone room. Barred windows were spaced along one wall, up near the ceiling. To the left and straight ahead the room was filled with decaying old furniture, piles of wooden boxes and cardboard cartons, stacks of newspapers, bits and pieces of armor and old weaponry, clusters of mugs and jugs and bottles, massed decaying flags, mantel clocks, candlesticks, and in every chink some further bric-a-brac. To the right, an area had been cleared, a kind of half circle before a huge deep fireplace. Here the stone floor was covered with a faded old carpet, on which stood a few massive uncomfortable-looking chairs and tables. Three candles burned on the high mantelpiece, and before the unlit fireplace stood Ian Macdough, looking worried. "So it's true," he said, as they all walked in.

"As I told you," Zane said, limping to one side while Porculey closed the door.

"Nice place you got here," Kelp said, with his chipper smile. "Must be tough on the cleaning lady, though."

Dortmunder had turned an accusatory eye on Porculey, saying, "I'm disappointed in you. I knew these other two were no good, but I thought you were an honest man."

"It's that ten thousand you gave me," Porculey said, avoiding Dortmunder's eye. "Money's a strange thing," he added, sounding a bit surprised at himself. "As soon as you have some, it wants you to get more. I never knew I wanted a hundred thousand dollars until I got the ten thousand."

Meanwhile, Macdough was still looking worried, saying to Zane, "Now we've got them, what do we do with them?"

"Nothing," Chauncey said. "There's a public controversy over that painting Macdough, between you and me and the insurance company. What happens to your sale if I disappear before it's straightened out?"

Macdough rubbed a knuckle over his lips and cleared his throat. "You shouldn't have followed us," he said.

"It's my painting," Chauncey said, "and you're going to have to deal with me."

"Split the take six ways? Man, man, that doesn't pay my hotel bill!"

"These two were already paid," Chauncey said, with a gesture toward Dortmunder and Kelp so casual, so dismissing, that Dortmunder understood at once the teams had regrouped, leaving himself and Kelp out in the cold.

So, speaking just as casually, Dortmunder said, "That's right. We just came along to help Chauncey, so now we'll leave you people to dicker without a lot of outside rs–"

"No, no, Dortmunder," Zane interrupted, smiling behind his gun. "Don't you hurry away."

Irritably, Chauncey said, "Why not, Zane? They don't want anything, let them leave."

"With what they know?" Zane shook his head. "They could still make money, Chauncey. From your insurance company, for instance."

Chauncey gave Dortmunder a sudden sharp look, and Dortmunder told him, "You know better than that. All we want is our airfare, and we're quits."

"I can't think about you now, Dortmunder," Chauncey said, shaking his head like a man pestered by gnats.

"Mr. Chauncey," Kelp said, "I didn't sleep under your dresser for a week and a half to be treated like this."

But Chauncey wasn't listening. He'd turned back to Macdough, saying, "I want my painting."

"Buy it at the auction."

"I've already paid for it. It's mine."

"I won't give it to you," Macdough said, "and that's that. And I won't give up the lion's share of the money either."

Dortmunder said, "Why not pull the insurance game again?" Everybody looked at him. Macdough said, "What insurance game?"

"You go back to Parkeby-South," Dortmunder told him, "and say you're worried because of the robbery, you want the same experts to come back and look at the painting. They do, they see it's a fake, you claim the original was stolen during the robbery–"

"Which is what happened," Macdough pointed out, sounding bitter.

"So you aren't even lying. The gallery's insurance company pays you, so you've got your money. You sell Chauncey the original for a few dollars and everybody's happy."

There was interest in Macdough's face, and also in Chauncey's, but then Zane had to stick his two cents in, saying, "That's cute, Dortmunder, but it won't work."

"Sure it will."

"Insurance companies won't pay twice for the same painting," Zane said.

Which was the flaw in Dortmunder's argument, as Dortmunder had already known, but he could only do his best with the materials at hand. "They'll have to pay," he insisted. "How can the gallery's insurance company refuse to pay Macdough for a painting everybody says is real?"

"By stalling," Zane said. "That's the way insurance companies operate anyway. There's already a lawsuit between Chauncey and his insurers in the states. The insurance company here would just tell Macdough they won't settle his claim until the lawsuit on the other side is settled. One of those two might get some insurance money, but not both."

"Chauncey's already had his," Macdough grumbled, and from the lowering expression on his face Dortmunder knew the ploy had failed.

"I'll give you a hundred thousand for the painting," Chauncey told Macdough. "I can't afford it, but we have to break this deadlock somehow."

"Not enough," Macdough said. "I signed a paper with these two for half. I'd only get fifty thousand pounds out of it."

Chauncey shook his head with a rueful smile. "I'm sorry, it's worse than you think," he said. "I meant a hundred thousand dollars."

"What? Sixty thousand pounds? With thirty for me?"

"Keep all sixty," Chauncey told him. "Tax free. It's under the table, you don't have to declare it and these two can't take you to court."

"I wouldn't take him to court," Zane said dryly. "Forget it, Chauncey. Macdough and I – and Porculey, of course – intend to split four hundred thousand dollars. If we get it from you, fine. If not, we'll get it at the auction."

Dortmunder said, "Not if Chauncey makes an anonymous call and tells the London police to check the copy in Parkeby-South. You don't dare stop Chauncey, but he can stop you. Once the cops know the original was stolen, Macdough doesn't dare show up with it. And you're right back with only one buyer: Chauncey."

Chauncey smiled at Zane. "He's right, you know."

"He's not in this conversation," Zane said, angrily.

"I'm the one took the painting away," Dortmunder told Macdough. "I could put it back."

"I can put it back!" Zane yelled, glaring at Dortmunder. To the others he said, "We won't talk in front of these people any more. They're out of it."

Chauncey said, "You can't let them go, and nobody wants you shooting them."

Kelp said, "I'd just like to mention, today's my birthday."

"There are rooms here with doors that lock," Zane said mildly. "We'll put them away till the discussion's over."

Dortmunder said to Macdough, "I could be useful to you." But it wasn't enough; not against Zane's gun. Macdough glanced away, biting the insides of his cheeks, and Zane gestured with the gun barrel, saying, "Come on, you two."

There wasn't any choice. Dortmunder and Kelp went, out the door and farther down the hall to a closed door with a thick wooden bar across it. "Take off the bar and lean it against the wall," Zane ordered, standing back too far for Dortmunder to swing it at him. Then he had them enter the room, which they saw in the flashlight's beam to be filled with the same massed clutter as the room they'd just left.

"There's no light in here," Kelp said, crossing the threshold. "There's nothing interesting to see," Zane assured him. "Step back from the door." When Dortmunder stood facing him, just barely inside the room, Zane smiled at him and said, "Relax. You know they won't let me shoot you."

"They'll let you leave us here. Is that a better way to die?"

Zane shrugged. "Where there's life, I understand," he said, "there's hope." And he shut and barred the door.

Chapter 14

"He's crazy, you know," Chauncey told Macdough, the instant Zane had led his prisoners out the door. "He wants all the money, and he'll kill every one of us before he's done."

"He's my partner," Macdough said. "You're just trying to split us up."

"He's a killer. That's what attracted me to him in the first place."

Porculey, stepping toward the two men, said, "Mr. Chauncey, I agree with you, and I want you to know I am heartily sorry I ever got involved with the man."

"I can handle myself with Zane," Macdough insisted, rather too forcefully. "And with you." Both he and Chauncey ignored Porculey, as though he hadn't spoken, as though he weren't there.

"You're out of your depth," Chauncey said. "I will queer your pitch, Macdough, and even Zane knows he doesn't dare stop me."

"We'll find another buyer. We'll get just as much on the black market. Some Arab sheikh."

Porculey, seeing he'd get cold comfort from both these two, and also seeing how absorbed they were in their argument, sidled as unobtrusively as a stout terrified man can sidle toward the door, picking up the still-wrapped painting on the way by. Quietly, without fuss, he departed the room.

Meanwhile, Chauncey pointed out Macdough's lack of expertise in selling paintings on the black market, and Macdough stated he had nothing but time and could probably sell the painting and collect on Parkeby-South's insurance, and Chauncey said, "And the minute you get your hands on the money, you're a dead man."

Which was when Zane entered, saying "Talking against me, Chauncey?"

"Telling him the truth."

"Macdough knows better than that," Zane said, though from the way Macdough looked at Zane maybe he didn't know better than that. Still, Zane went blithely on, saying, "Porculey and I have no–" Then he stopped, frowned, looked left and right. "Where is my little friend?"

"Porculey?"

"The painting!" Macdough pointed at the table on which it had lain.

"He – he wouldn't dare!"

The three men turned toward the door, about to race in pursuit, Zane already waving his pistol over his head, when Porculey himself came backing in and turned to give their astonished faces a sheepish smile. The tubular package was held at port arms across his chest.

"You!" Macdough shrieked, and led the charge, closely followed by Chauncey and Zane. Porculey, his smile panicky, yelped and ran away into the piles of junk, the other three pursuing, Zane actually firing a shot in the air, a vast blast of explosion which deafened them all in that confined stone room, so that nobody, not even Zane himself, heard his own voice shout, "Stop!"

Porculey wouldn't have stopped anyway. He was climbing an upended mohair sofa, scrambling over pillows and library tables and candelabra up toward the ceiling, with half a dozen hands clutching at his ankles. They were dragging him back, dragging him down, and Porculey was shrieking a babble of absurd explanation, when all at once a voice from behind them all said:

"Ullo ullo ullo, what's this, then?"

They looked back, all of them draped on the stored goods like a quartet of mountain climbers who've just heard a rumble, and coming through the doorway was a tall-helmeted young police constable in uniform, pushing his bicycle.

Chapter 15

The fact was, the driver of that Jensen Interceptor III was locally a Very Important Person. Sir Francis Monvich, his name was, he was fifty-six and very rich, and when his eighty-three-year-old father died he would become the 14th Viscount Glengorn, which in that neighborhood was pretty good. When Sir Francis Monvich's Jensen was hit both front and rear, and when the hooligan who hit it in front promptly ran away into the surrounding countryside, the local constabulary could be expected to take a very serious view of the situation. They would consider their position. They would proceed at once to find some individuals who would assist the police in their enquiries.

"That way," Sir Francis informed the first pair of constables to arrive on the scene, and pointed dramatically toward the winding track leading uphill next to the barn. These constables were on bicycles, which were more a hindrance than a help on the path they were now required to take, though they did get the odd terrifying downhill plunge between the uphill plods. They had reached Castle Macdough, and were studying the empty Vauxhall and Mini, when another pair of constables arrived, these in a white police car. All four spread out, shining their flashlights this way and that, the first two keeping their bicycles with them to prevent their being stolen by concealed miscreants, and thus it was that Porculey, having been forced to hide in another doorway while Zane walked back to the main room from locking up Dortmunder and Kelp, stepped out of his hiding place to see a police officer with a bicycle coming this way, flashing his light from side to side. In panic, Porculey ran on tippy-toe back to the room with the others, and realized just one second too late what a mistake he'd made.

The constable – PC Quillin by name – failed to see Porculey run ahead of him down the corridor, but he did hear the yelling that followed, and he certainly heard the shot. So did the other three constables searching the vicinity, and so did two more constables, just arriving in another police car.

PC Quillin entered the room. Zane thought briefly of shooting him, shooting everybody else, taking the painting, and starting all over again in a new location with an entirely different crowd.

Three more constables entered the room. Zane decided not to shoot anybody. In fact, he tucked his pistol away in among the hassocks and halberds.

Macdough and Chauncey started telling different lies to the constables.

More constables entered the room.

Porculey started telling every truth he could think of.

Zane didn't speak at all, but smiled amiably (as he thought) at all the constables.

PC Quillin, having noticed that the long tubular package seemed to be of general interest to these babbling crooks, took it from Porculey's willing hands and opened it.

Chauncey tried to bribe a constable.

The constable – PC Baligil – gave him a rough unfriendly glower. "American, are you?"

"Canadian," said Chauncey.

"We'll sort this out at the station," PC Baligil decided. "And which of you has the firearm?"

Firearm? Firearm? After the general denials, PC Quillin made a quick search and within thirty seconds found the thing hanging from a halberd. "Careful about fingerprints," PC Baligil told him.

Macdough turned an embittered eye on Chauncey. "I blame you for this entire thing," he said.

"And I blame you," Chauncey responded. "You cheap opportunist crook."

"Blame each other at the station," PC Baligil suggested, "where we can take it all down. Come along."

They were reluctant, but they went along, complaining at one another and trying out new lies on the constables, who paid very little attention. "We might as well see are there any more," PC Baligil said to a young constable called PC Tarvy. "We'll just have a look at these other rooms along here."

So PC Tarvy took one side of the corridor and PC Baligil the other, flashing their lights around one debris-packed interior after another. "It's nothin but lumber rooms," PC Tarvy said.

"Oh, they'll have a deal to tell us, that lot," PC Baligil answered. "All stolen goods, this, I shouldn't be surprised." And he turned to see PC Tarvy removing the bar from a locked room. "Now, then," he said. "Who'd be in a room locked on the outside?"

"I just thought I'd look." And PC Tarvy pulled open the door and shone his light on nothing but more of the same: furniture, old trunks, a cluttered pile of armor on the floor. (In truth, there was no reason these days to keep that door barred; but where else would you keep the bar?)

"Come along, Tarvy," said PC Baligil, and PC Tarvy turned away, leaving that door not only unbarred but open (which is how bars get lost), as he and PC Baligil went up to join the other constables and their prisoners.

Dawn comes early in the highlands in the summer. It had been well after midnight when the Mini had turned off the A 9 and the Vauxhall had ricocheted off that Jensen, and now it was after two in the morning, and the first faint lines of color outlined the mountains to the east as the constables distributed themselves and their bicycles and their prisoners into the four cars and went away.

For several minutes, there was only silence in the moonlit ruin of Castle Macdough. The orange line defining the eastern mountains grew a bit broader, lightening toward a pinkish yellow. Then a kind of clanking sound was heard from deep within the bowels of the castle, and heavily, thud by thud, a suit of armor came up the steps. It stopped when it reached the courtyard, looking left and right, creaking and squeaking with every movement. Then it called, in Dortmunder's voice, "They're gone."

And up came a second suit of armor, slow and clanking like the first. (These two complete sets had been lying on the floor, sprinkled over with stray additional bits and pieces of armor, when PC Tarvy had shone his light into the room.) The second suit of armor, speaking in Kelp's voice, said, "That was a close one."

"It was more than close," the first suit said. "There goes Chauncey with the ten grand he promised us, and the jewels and stuff still in his house, and us with no money for airplane tickets."

"I was thinking about that," the second suit said. "While we were lying on the floor down there. And I think I got a terrific idea."

"Oh?"

"Listen to this. We fake a skyjacking, but what we really do–" And at that point the eager voice faltered to a stop, because the first suit had turned its blank metal face and was gazing fixedly at the second suit. "Dortmunder?" said the second suit. "Something wrong?"

Instead of answering, the first suit raised a mailed fist and swung it in a great half circle, but the second suit jumped (clank!) backward out of the way, so that the first, following the momentum around, nearly but not quite fell down the steps. Balance regained, it advanced on the second suit, which backed away, saying "Dortmunder? Don't be like this. You'll regret it when you're calm."

The first suit kept moving forward, swinging the right arm again and this time striking a spark from a slight knick against the second suit's nose.

"No! cried the second suit. "Dortmunder!" But then it turned and ran, out of the courtyard and down the steep stony hill in the moonlight, the first suit blundering and thundering after, both yelling now, up crag and down glen, clanking and crashing eastward toward the sunrise, one suit of armor chasing another, a thing that hasn't been seen in that neighborhood for years and years. And years.

The End