The Burglar Who liked to Quote Kipling

CHAPTER Six

I wanted to look him in the eyes but I couldn’t keep from staring at the gun.

“There is something,” I said.

“Yes.”

“I’ve got it behind the counter, see, because of a personal interest-”

“Yes.”

“But since you’re a fan of Kipling’s, and because your devotion is obvious-”

“The book, please.”

His free hand snatched it up the instant I laid it on the counter. The smile was back now, broader than ever. He tried the book in his jacket pocket but it didn’t fit. He set it back on the counter for a moment while he drew an envelope from an inside pocket. He was still pointing the gun at me and I wished he’d stop.

“For your trouble,” he said, slapping the envelope smartly on the counter in front of me. “Because you are a reasonable man.”

“Reasonable,” I said.

“No police, no troubles.” His smile spread. “Reasonable.”

“Like Brutus.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No, he was honorable, wasn’t he? And I’m reasonable.” The book screamed at me from the counter top. “This book,” I said, my hand pawing the air above it. “You’re a stranger in my country, and I can’t let you-”

He scooped up the book and backed off, teeth flashing furiously. When he reached the door he pocketed the gun, stepped quickly outside, and hurried off westward on Eleventh Street.

Gone but not forgotten.

I stared after him for a moment or two. Then I suppose I sighed, and finally I picked up the envelope and weighed it in my hand as if trying to decide how many stamps to put on it. It was a perfectly ordinary envelope of the sort doctors mail their bills in, except that there was no return address in its upper left-hand corner. Just a simple blank envelope, dime-store stationery.

Rudyard Whelkin had agreed to pay me fifteen thousand dollars for the book he wanted. Somehow I couldn’t make myself believe this little envelope contained fifteen thousand dollars.

I opened it. Fifty-dollar bills, old ones, out of sequence.

Ten of them.

Five hundred dollars.

Big hairy deal.

I dragged the bargain table in from the street. Somehow I wasn’t eager to stay open a few extra minutes in order to peddle a few old books at three for a buck. I hung the Closed sign in the window and set about shutting things down, transferring some cash from the register to my wallet, filling out a deposit slip for the check I’d taken in on the Trollope set.

I folded the ten fifties and buttoned them into a hip pocket. And snatched up a brown-wrapped book from a drawer in the office desk, and let myself out of the store and went through my nightly lock-up routine with the steel gates.

For a few minutes I just walked, north on Broadway, then east on Thirteenth Street, then uptown on Third Avenue. The corner of Fourteenth and Third was aswarm with persons addicted to any of a variety of licit and illicit substances. Junkies scratched themselves, winos passed pints around, and a methadone enthusiast kept slamming the heel of his hand thoughtfully against a brick building. I straightened the knot in my tie-I’d put the tie on before leaving the store-and walked onward, resisting the temptation to give my hip pocket a reassuring pat.

Five hundred dollars.

There’s a big difference between five hundred and fifteen thousand, and while the latter sum represents a very decent return on a night’s labor, the former is small compensation for risking life and limb, not to mention liberty. So a five-hundred-dollar payment for The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow was like no money at all.

On the other hand, five hundred dollars was a princely sum for the Grosset amp; Dunlap reprint edition of Soldiers Three, which is what my turbaned and bearded visitor had taken from me at gunpoint. I rather doubt it was what he wanted, but you don’t always get what you want, do you?

I’d had the book priced reasonably enough at $1.95. And I had the Haggard copy of The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow all nicely wrapped in brown kraft paper and tucked under my arm, and wouldn’t Rudyard Whelkin be happy to see it?

It’s funny how things work out.