Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who liked to Quote Kipling

“It’s just that I hate to see you walk into trouble.”

“So do I, but let’s play the hand out as dealt, huh? I’ll be with the two of them so they can’t get cute while you’re downstairs. We worked it out before, Bern, and it made sense then and it still makes sense now. You want to know something? It’s probably dangerous for us to spend the next six hours arguing in the vestibule, if you’re so concerned with what’s dangerous and what’s not, so why don’t you ring their bell and get it over with?”

First, though, I rang the bell marked Porlock . I poked it three times, waited half a minute, then gave it another healthy tickle. I didn’t really expect a response and I was happy not to get one. My finger moved from the Porlock bell to the one marked Blinn . I gave it a long and two shorts, and the answering buzzer sounded almost at once. I pushed the door and it opened.

“Darn,” Carolyn said. I looked at her. “Well, I thought I’d get to watch you pick it,” she said. “That’s all.”

We went up the stairs and stopped at the third floor long enough to peek at the door of 3-D. As I’d figured it, the cops had sealed it, and the door was really plastered with official-looking material. I could have opened it with a scout knife, but I couldn’t have done so without destroying the seals and making it obvious that I’d been there.

Instead, we went up another flight. The door of 4-C was closed. Carolyn and I looked at each other. Then I reached out a hand and knocked.

The door opened. Arthur Blinn stood with one hand on its knob and the other motioning us in. “Come on, come on,” he said urgently. “Don’t stand out there all night.” In his hurry to close the door he almost hit Carolyn with it, but he got it shut and fussed with the locks and bolts. “You can relax now, Gert,” he called out. “It’s only the burglar.”

They made a cute couple. They were both about five-six, both as roly-poly as panda bears. Both had curly dark-brown hair, although he’d lost most of his in the front. She was wearing a forest-green pants suit in basic polyester. He wore the trousers and vest of a gray glen-plaid business suit. His white shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and his tie was loosened for comfort. She poured coffee and pushed Scottish shortbread at us. He told us, over and over again, what a relief it was to see us.

“Because I told Gert, suppose it’s a setup? Suppose it’s the insurance company running a bluff? Because honestly, Mr. Rhodenbarr, who ever heard of such a thing? A burglar calls up, says hello, I’m you’re friendly neighborhood burglar, and if you cooperate with me a little I won’t rat to the insurance people and tell them your claim is lousy. I figured a burglar with troubles like you got, wanted for killing a woman and God knows what else, I figure you’re not going to knock yourself out shouting you never stole a coat or a watch.”

“And what I figured,” Gert said, “is why would you be coming here, anyway? ‘He wants to get rid of witnesses,’ I told Artie. ‘Remember, he already killed once.’ ”

“What I said is what did we ever witness? I told her, I said forget all that. Just hope it’s the burglar, I told her. All we need is some insurance snoop. You don’t care for the shortbread, young lady?”

“It’s delicious,” Carolyn said. “And Bernie never killed anybody, Mrs. Blinn.”

“Call me Gert, honey.”

“He never killed anyone, Gert.”

“I’m sure of it, honey. Meeting him, seeing the two of you, my mind’s a hundred percent at ease.”

“He was framed, Gert. That’s why we’re here. To find out who really killed Madeleine Porlock.”

“If we knew,” Arthur Blinn said, “believe me, we’d tell you. But what do we know?”

“You lived in the same building with her. You must have known something about her.”

The Blinns looked at each other and gave simultaneous little shrugs. “She wasn’t directly under us,” Gert explained. “So we wouldn’t know if she had loud parties or played music all night or anything like that.”

“Like Mr. Mboka,” Artie said.

“In 3-C,” Gert said. “He’s African, you see, and he works at the U.N. Somebody said he was a translator.”

“Plays the drums,” Artie said.

“We don’t know that, Artie. He either plays the drums or he plays recordings of drums.”

“Same difference.”

“But we haven’t spoken to him about it because we thought it might be religious and we didn’t want to interfere.”

“Plus Gert here thinks he’s a cannibal and she’s afraid to speak to him.”

“I don’t think he’s a cannibal,” Gert protested. “Who ever said I thought he was a cannibal?”

I cleared my throat. “Maybe the two of you could talk to Carolyn about Miss Porlock,” I suggested. “And if I could, uh, be excused for a few moments.”

“You want to use the bathroom?”

“The fire escape.”

Blinn furrowed his brow at me, then relaxed his features and nodded energetically. “Oh, right,” he said. “For a minute there I thought-But to hell with what I thought. The fire escape. Sure. Right through to the bedroom. But you know the way, don’t you? You were here yesterday. It’s spooky, you know? The idea of someone else being in your apartment. Of course, it’s not so spooky now that we know you, you and Carolyn here. But when we first found out about it, well, you can imagine.”

“It must have been upsetting.”

“That’s exactly what it was. Upsetting. Gert called the super about the pane of glass, but it’s like pulling teeth to get him to do anything around here. Generally he gets more responsive right before Christmas, so maybe we’ll get some action soon. Meanwhile I taped up a shirt cardboard so the wind and rain won’t come in.”

“I’m sorry I had to break the window.”

“Listen, these things happen.”

I unlocked the window, raised it, stepped out onto the fire escape. The rain had stepped up a little and it was cold and windy out there. Behind me, Blinn drew the window shut again. He was reaching to lock it when I extended a finger and tapped on the glass. He caught himself, left the window unlocked, and smiled and shook his head at his absent-mindedness. He went off chuckling to himself while I headed down a flight of steel steps.

This time I was properly equipped. I had my glass cutter and a roll of adhesive tape, and I used them to remove a pane from the Porlock window swiftly and silently. I turned the catch, raised the window, and let myself in.

“That’s what I was talking about before,” Gert said “Listen. Can you hear it?”

“The drumming.”

She nodded. “That’s Mboka. Now, is that him drumming or is it a record? Because I can’t tell.”

“He was doing it while you were downstairs,” Carolyn said. “Personally I think it’s him drumming.”

I said I couldn’t tell, and that I’d been unable to hear him from the Porlock apartment.

“You never hear anything through the walls,” Artie said. “Just through the floors and ceilings. It’s a solid building as far as the walls are concerned.”

“I don’t mind the drumming most of the time,” Gert said. “I’ll play music and the drumming sort of fits in with it. It’s in the middle of the night that it gets me, but I don’t like to complain.”

“She figures it’s the middle of the afternoon in Africa.”

We had a hard time getting out of there. They kept giving us shortbread and coffee and asking sincere little questions about the ins and outs of burglary. Finally we managed to fight our way to the door. We said our goodbyes all around, and then Gert hung back a little while Artie caught at my sleeve in the doorway.