Bill Pronzini - The Bughouse Affair

His senses all sharpened at once; he stood immobile, peering through the lilac’s branches. The movement came again, a shadow drifting among stationary shadows, at an angle from the rear of the property toward the side porch. Once the figure reached the steps and started up, it was briefly silhouetted-a man in dark clothing and a low-pulled cap. Then the shape merged with the deeper black on the porch.

Several seconds passed. Then there was a brief flicker of light-the beam from a dark lantern such as the one in Quincannon’s pocket. This was followed by the faintest of scraping sounds as the intruder worked with his tools.

Once again stillness closed down. The scruff was inside the house now. Quincannon stayed where he was, marking time. No light showed behind the dark windows. The professional burglar worked mainly by feel and instinct, using his lantern sparingly and shielding the beam when he did.

When Quincannon judged ten minutes had passed, he left his hiding place and cat-footed through shadows until he was parallel with the side porch stairs. He paused to listen, heard nothing from the house, and crossed quickly, bent low, to a tall rhododendron planted alongside the steps. Here he hunkered down on one knee to wait.

The wait might be another ten minutes; it might be a half hour or more. No matter. Now that the crime was in progress, he no longer minded the cold night, the dampness of the earth where he knelt. Even if Truesdale owned a safe not easily cracked, no burglar would leave premises such as these without spoils of some sort. Art objects, silverware, anything of value that could be carried off and eventually sold to one of the many fences operating in the city. Whatever this lad emerged with, it would be enough to justify a pinch.

Whether Quincannon turned him over to the city police immediately or not depended on the scruff’s willingness to reveal the whereabouts of the swag from his previous jobs. Stashing and roughhousing a prisoner for information was unethical, if not illegal, but Quincannon felt righteously that in the pursuit of justice, not to mention a substantial fee and bonus, the end justified the means.

His wait lasted less than thirty minutes. The creaking of a floorboard pricked up his ears, creased his freebooter’s beard with a smile of anticipation. Another creak, the faintest squeak of a door hinge, a footfall on the porch. Now the burglar descended the steps into view-short, slender, but turned out of profile so that his face was obscured. He paused on the bottom step, and that was when Quincannon levered up and put the grab on him.

He was much the larger man, and there should have been no trouble in the catch. But just before his arms closed around the wiry body, the yegg heard or sensed danger and reacted-not by trying to run or turning to fight, but by dropping suddenly into a crouch. Quincannon’s arms slid up and off as if the man were greased, pitching him off balance. The housebreaker bounced upright, swung around, blew the stench of sour wine into Quincannon’s face while at the same time fetching him a sharp kick on the shinbone. Quincannon let out a howl, staggered, nearly fell. By the time he caught himself, his quarry was on the run.

He gave chase on the blind, cursing sulphurously, hobbling for the first several steps until the pain from the kick ebbed. The burglar had twenty yards on him by then, zigzagging toward the bordering yew trees, then back away from them in the direction of the carriage barn.

In the moonlight he made a fine, clear target, but Quincannon did not draw his Navy Colt. Since the long-ago episode in Virginia City, when he had accidently caused the death of a woman and her unborn child, and suffered mightily as a result, he’d vowed to use his weapon only in the most dire of circumstances-a vow he had never broken.

Before reaching the barn, his man cut away at another angle and plowed through a gate into the carriageway beyond. Quincannon lost sight of him for a few seconds, then spied him again as he reached the gate and barreled through it. A race down the alley? No. The scruff was nimble as well as slippery; he threw a look over his shoulder, saw Quincannon in close pursuit, suddenly veered sideways, and flung himself up and over a six-foot board fence into one of the neighboring yards.

In a few long strides Quincannon was at the fence. He caught the top boards, hoisted himself up to chin level. Some fifty yards distant was the backside of a stately home, two windows and a pair of French doors ablaze with electric light; the outspill combined with pale moonshine to limn a jungle-like garden, a path leading through its profusion of plants and trees to a gazebo on the left. He had a brief glimpse of a dark shape plunging into shrubbery near the gazebo.

Quincannon scrambled up the rough boards, rolled his body over the top. And had the misfortune to land awkwardly on his sore leg, which gave way and toppled him to his knees in damp grass. He growled an oath under his breath, lumbered to his feet, and stood with ears straining to hear. Leaves rustled and branches snapped-his man was moving away from the gazebo now, toward the house.

The path was of crushed shell that gleamed with a faint, ghostly radiance; Quincannon drifted along parallel to it, keeping to the grass to cushion his footfalls. Gnarled cypress and thorny pyracantha bushes partially obscured the house, the shadows under and around them as black as India ink. He paused to listen again. There were no more sounds of movement. He resumed his forward progress, eased around one of the cypress trees.

The man who came up behind him did so with such silent stealth that he had no inkling of the other’s presence until a hard object poked into and stiffened his spine, and a forceful voice said, “Stand fast, if you value your life. There’s a good chap.”

Quincannon stood fast.

QUINCANNON

The man who had the drop on him was not the one he’d been chasing. The calm, cultured, British-accented voice, and the almost casual choice of words, told him that.

He said, stifling his anger and frustration, “I’m not a prowler.”

“What are you, then, pray tell?”

“A detective on the trail of a thief. I chased him into this yard.”

“Indeed?” His captor sounded interested, if not convinced. “What manner of thief?”

“A blasted burglar. He broke into the Truesdale home.”

“Did he, now? Mr. Truesdale, the banker?”

“That’s right. Your neighbor across the carriageway.”

“A mistaken assumption. This is not my home, and I have only just this evening met Mr. Truesdale.”

“Then who are you?”

“All in good time. This is hardly the proper place for introductions.”

“Introductions be damned,” Quincannon growled. “While we stand here confabbing, the thief is getting away.”

“Has already gotten away, I should think. If you’re what you say you are and not a thief yourself.” The hard object prodded his backbone. “Move along to the house and we’ll have the straight of things in no time.”

“Bah,” Quincannon said, but he moved along.

There was a flagstone terrace across the rear of the house, and when they reached it he could see people in evening clothes moving around inside a well-lighted parlor. His captor took him to a pair of French doors, ordered him to step inside. Activity in the room halted when they entered. Six pairs of eyes, three male and three female, stared at Quincannon and the man behind him. One of the couples, both plump and middle-aged, was Samuel Truesdale and his wife. The others were strangers.

The parlor was large, handsomely furnished, dominated by a massive grand piano. On the piano bench lay a well-used violin and bow-the source of the passages from Mendelssohn that had been played earlier, no doubt. A wood fire blazed on the hearth. The combination of the fire and steam heat made the room too warm, stuffy. Quincannon’s benumbed cheeks began to tingle almost immediately.