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First the burglar alarm. You wouldn’t think one was necessary at the Charlemagne, but then you probably don’t have a houseful of objets d’art and a stamp collection on a par with King Farouk’s, do you? If burglars don’t take u
You could tell there was a burglar alarm because there was a keyhole for it, set in the door at about shoulder height, a nickel-plated cylinder perhaps five-eighths of an inch in diameter. What man can lock, man can unlock, and that’s just what I did. There is a handy little homemade key on my ring that fits most locks of that ilk, and with just the littlest bit of filing and fiddling it can make the tumblers tumble, and-oh, but you don’t want to know all this technical stuff, do you? I thought not.
I turned the key in the lock and hoped that was all you had to do. Alarm systems are cu
Ah, well. The other lock, the one that was keeping the door shut, was a Poulard. According to the manufacturer’s advertisements, no one has ever successfully picked the Poulard lock. I’d walk into his offices and dispute that claim, but where would it get me? The lock mechanism’s a good one, I’ll grant them that, and the key’s complicated and impossible to duplicate, but I have more trouble on average with your basic Rabson. Either I picked the Poulard or I made myself very long and narrow and slithered in through the keyhole, because within three minutes I was inside that apartment.
I closed the door and played my pencil-beam flashlight over it. If I’d made some grave error knocking off the burglar alarm, and if it was the sort that was ringing in some agency’s office, then I had plenty of time to get away before they came calling. So I examined the cylinder to see how it was wired in and if anything seemed to have gone awry, and after a moment or two of frowning and head-scratching I started to giggle.
Because there was no alarm system. All there was was a nickel-plated cylinder, attached to nothing at all, mounted in the door like a talisman. You’ve seen those decals on car windows warning of an alarm system? People buy the decals for a dollar, hoping they’ll keep car thieves at bay, and perhaps they do. You’ve seen those signs on houses, BEWARE OF THE DOG, and they haven’t got a dog? A sign’s cheaper than rabies shots and Alpo, and you don’t have to walk it twice a day.
Why install a burglar alarm at a cost of a thousand dollars or more when you could mount a cylinder for a couple of bucks and get the same protection? Why have a system you’d forget to set half the time, and forget to turn off the other half of the time, when the illusion of a system was every bit as effective?
My heart filled with admiration for John Charles Appling. It was going to be a pleasure to do business with him.
I’d been reasonably certain he wasn’t home. He was at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West-by-God-Virginia, playing golf and taking the sun and attending a tax-deductible convention of the Friends of the American Wild Turkey, a band of conservationists dedicated to improving wilderness conditions to create a more favorable habitat for the birds in question, thereby to increase their numbers to the point where the Friends can hie themselves off to the woods in autumn with shotgun and turkey lure in tow, there to slay the object of their affections. After all, what are friends for?
I locked the door now, just in case, and I drew my rubber gloves from my attaché case and pulled them on, then took a moment to wipe the surfaces I might have touched while checking the fake alarm cylinder. There still remained the outside of the door, but I’d smudge those prints on the way out. Then I took another moment to lean against the door and let my eyes accustom themselves to the darkness. And-let’s admit it-to Enjoy the Feeling.
And what a feeling it was! I read once of a woman who spent every free moment at Coney Island, riding the big roller coaster over and over and over. Evidently she got the thrill from that curious pastime that I get whenever I let myself into another person’s place of residence. That charged-up sensation, that fire-in-the-blood, every-cell-alive feeling. I’ve had it ever since I first broke into a neighbor’s house in my early teens, and all the intervening years, all the crimes and all the punishments, have not dulled or dimmed it in the slightest. It’s as much of a thrill as ever.
I’m not boasting. I take a workman’s pride in my skills but no pride at all in the forces that drive me. God help me, I’m a born thief, the urge to burgle bred in my bones. How could they ever rehabilitate me? Can you teach a fish to leave off swimming, a bird to renounce flight?
By the time my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, the thrill of illegal entry had subsided to a less acute sense of profound well-being. Flashlight in hand, I took a quick tour of the apartment. Even if Appling and his wife were sequestered with the rest of the turkeys, there was always the chance that one of the rooms held some relative or friend or servant, sleeping peacefully or cowering in terror or putting in a quiet call to the local precinct. I went quickly in and out of each room and encountered nothing living but the houseplants. Then I returned to the living room and switched on a lamp.
I had plenty to choose from. The cobra door knocker was the first but hardly the last piece of art nouveau I encountered, and the living room was festooned with enough Tiffany lamps to cause a power failure. Large lamps, small lamps, table lamps, floor lamps-no one could want that much light. But then the collecting mania is by definition irrational and excessive. Appling had thousands upon thousands of postage stamps, and how many letters do you suppose he sent out?
Tiffany lamps are worth a fortune these days. I recognized some of them-the Dragonfly lamp, the Wisteria lamp-and you can pick up a nice suburban house for what a couple of those would bring at Parke-Bernet. You could also earn a very quick trip to Da
The Applings seemed to have separate bedrooms, and I found jewelry in hers, in a stu
A cagey one. A burglar whose presence in the Charlemagne that night was a matter of record, and who thus had to avoid stealing anything that would be conspicuous by its absence. I did take the ruby earrings-my profession, after all, can never be 100 percent risk-free-but when I came upon a sheaf of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills in J. C. Appling’s dresser drawer, I left them there.
Not without effort, let me admit. There wasn’t a fortune there, $2,800 at a rough count, but money is money and you just can’t beat cash. When you steal things you have to fence them, but with cash you just keep it and spend the stuff at leisure.