The Bric-A-Brac Man

Part one of a new novel

Where Should I Start? A tricky question, that. God alone knows where all personal dramas begin, and though He's supposed to be omnipresent, He never seems to be around when you need Him.

I met my cousin, Maurice Fitzjames, by chance in the summer. Having parked my decrepit station wagon outside the Harvard Club, I was trotting along Commonwealth Avenue when I almost collided with him. So I had no opportunity to avoid the bastard.

As usual, he was dressed like the leading man in a drawing-room comedy--Tattersall jacket, paisley shirt, whipcord slacks, suede sandals--and as usual, too, he had on those wrap-around sunglasses to conceal his shifty ophidian eyes. The only uncharacteristic element in his appearance was that he was smiling at me. Knowing him well, I deduced from this that he'd just broken into a poor box or burned down an orphanage to collect on an insurance policy.

"Look who's here," he said in his mildly mocking manner. "Cousin Arnold. How are things?"

I managed to twist my mouth into a reciprocative grin and replied, "As good as can be expected, I guess. I've been meaning to give you a call."

"I should think so," he said. "Haven't heard from you since March. Hey, where the hell is the rest of my money?"

"The money is why I've been out of touch, Maurice. I don't have it yet. My luck lately has been catastrophic--honest. At Easter, I caught the Asian flu, and after that, I wrenched a vertebra carrying a Franklin stove down a flight of steps in Charlestown with Claude Siegfried. I was out of circulation six weeks. Then my Ford got a crack in the cylinder block and I had to buy a whole rebuilt engine. And disasters like that can ruin you mentally. I was totally depressed--nearly had a classic case of nervous prostration."

"Is that a fact, Arnold? What a shame! You must be jinxed or something. Three hundred, wasn't it?" he asked, although he knew the sum even better than I did.

"Three hundred, yes--a trifle when you have it but an Inca's treasure when you don't."

Maurice's smile took on a sardonic tinge. "Business can hardly be that bad. A girlfriend of mine makes three bills a week for typing envelopes. Come on, be reasonable. You could pay me if you wanted to. Look--why don't you do some jobs for me? Nobody in the trade knows how to distress furniture better than you--and nobody knows how to fake bronze patina as good, either. You can work the debt off in a couple of days if you come out to Brookline to the shop. Why should I hire strangers to handle that kind of thing when my own cousin is the best around?"

"All right, Maurice," I said readily, though I hadn't the least intention of becoming his handy man. "I'll be out soon--word of honor."

Maurice and I were only cousins, but we could pass for twins--identical twins, at that. The reason for this strong resemblance lies in the fact that our fathers were brothers and our mothers sisters--an odd circumstance, perhaps, yet natural enough when you think about it. And, also, the difference in our ages was a mere 40 days--he being the older. When we were in our teens, we occasionally swapped girlfriends, without their ever realizing it. Such impersonations worked more to my advantage than to his, actually, because Maurice was always dynamite with the women. They fell at his feet. He had twice as many as he could handle, the bastard. Yes, except for a difference in the shade of our brown eyes and a minor variation in the shape of our jaws, we were duplicates--genuine Doppelgängers. That's probably why we never got along. We suffered from double trouble. With people, as with magnets, like poles are mutually repulsive, it seems.

As kids, we saw a lot of each other, because our mothers operated a curio shop on Huntington Avenue, near where the old Mechanics' Building stood before the Prudential Center went up. The place was full of Chinese brass incense burners, iron doorstops, patterned-glass bud vases and earthenware crocks. At that time, Uncle Maurice, Maurice's father, was away at Bridgewater, serving a sentence for arson. He had a regrettable passion for three-alarm fires and was nabbed one night after starting a dandy in a frame house on Neponset Avenue. Perhaps that was a portent--a glimpse of things to come.

But after four or five years, Uncle Maurice cut his throat with a broken bottle when the guards weren't looking, and Aunt Edna married Jack Fitzjames and quit working. All the family are gone now. My mother died eight years ago. My father's been dead since 1945, the year I was born. He got himself killed at Okinawa, in the Army. Maurice's parents died, too. Maurice and I are the last of the clan.

•

After I spoke to my cousin that day, I went to see Mrs. Dunlap. Back in the Fifties, when property was still cheap, Mrs. Dunlap bought a couple of adjacent Commonwealth Avenue brownstones, hired a contractor to knock down some of the intervening brick walls and then converted the resulting single structure into a home for elderly ladies--elderly ladies of means, that is.

It's an enormous place--40 rooms, I understand--and chock-full of interesting furnishings that have been taken there by the guests, most of whom come from big houses in prosperous suburbs like Winchester, Newton and Wellesley. The furniture is what drew me to Mrs. Dunlap's genteel retreat. When the old girls died, which they did at a remarkably steady rate, those fancy chairs and tables, ottomans and escritoires, four-posters the man who was always given first option to buy. Luckily, Mrs. Dunlap knew little about antiques. Her prices were refreshingly reasonable. For me, it was a beautiful setup.

Between times, to stay on the good side of my benefactress, I used to do trivial chores for her--tighten door hinges, mend rockers, cane chair bottoms, rewire lamps--for very nominal sums.

"Dear me, I almost forgot," she said, as I was leaving. "Dolores Breen--an old friend--has two boxes of Far Eastern ivory statues she wants to sell. Would you be interested, Mr. Hopkins?"

"I might be," I said offhandedly, not wanting to sound eager. "Are you sure they're ivory?" I asked.

"Dolores said they were. After her husband's death, she was completely shattered. Not that she needs money, because her family owned several big restaurants on the North Shore. Japanese. That's what the statues are."

"Japanese," I repeated disdainfully.

"Yes, but her husband claimed they were genuine works of art."

"Why does your friend want to sell them, then, Mrs. D.?"

"She thinks they're disgusting. They are, too--lizards, insects, rats, monsters, dragons. And they're carved so realistically they seem to be alive."

I said I would go and have a look at them, and she gave me the address, which was on Rindge Avenue in Cambridge, and the phone number.

"All righty," she declared. "That's taken care of. By the way, Mr. Hopkins, do you know any reliable person who'd be interested in an efficiency apartment? The little one in the basement is empty again, because the Harbachs returned to Nova Scotia."

"No, but if I hear of somebody who is interested, I'll call you," I said. Then I departed.

Descending the stoop to the sidewalk, I suddenly felt light as a feather. Since I sometimes have odd mental spells that are usually preceded by a sensation of weightlessness, I paused at the foot of the steps, gulped a few deep breaths and walked to the (continued on page 104) Bric-a-Brac Man (continued from page 99) curb and leaned against a parking meter. The disembodied sensation remained with me, however.

These attacks of mine are bizarre. During them, I continue to function perfectly normally, except that my mind fails to record what's happening. The blackouts last only around ten minutes, but of that period I'm never left with the slightest recollection.

Disturbed, I went to see the medical savants for a diagnosis. A doctor on Brookline Avenue said it was petit mal, the milder sort of epilepsy, and told me to stop drinking coffee. But another physician thought it was "spasmodic amnesia," which he patiently explained was a psychomotor seizure, or brief switching off of the various electrical stimuli that governed my memory. From a psychologist at a city clinic, I got a third opinion. He pronounced it an emotional disorder related to narcolepsy and somnambulism, insisting the locus of the problem was my amygdala, in my cerebellum.

So that day on Commonwealth Avenue, I rested against the parking meter until my head stabilized a bit, and then I crossed the street and sat on a bench on the elm-lined mall. In a few minutes, I was my old steady self again.

Nevertheless, the episode reminded me that I had to slacken my pace. The life I led was too hectic. I had to cease whirling about like a lunatic performing a fandango.

I am an ambitious man. I wanted to be like Duveen or Tiffany, but all I had been dealing with recently was rubbish. That's right. I hoped to establish a magnificent gallery on New York's Fifth Avenue, just down from The Plaza. Such was my recurring fantasy. Rengane wasn't wrong when he said:

Insatiable vanity?

It's worse than stark insanity.

I sighed, yanked out my wallet and counted what was in it. That morning, I'd left the house with $43; now I had $46 and the day was virtually over. If something didn't break for me soon, I'd have to go on welfare. Small wonder I was getting lightheaded.

Ah, well, I reflected--the decrees of fate are not always fatal. I had this Dolores Breen that Mrs. Dunlap had presented me with. Perhaps her Japanese ivories would be genuine Japanese ivories and not doctored globs of yellow celluloid. I was certainly due for a windfall.

My contemplations were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a noisy yellow taxi, which came to a halt across from where I sat. An instant later, the door of the house next to Mrs. Dunlap's brownstone opened and three women emerged. They seemed young--in their late 20s or early 30s--though it was impossible to judge this definitely, because they all wore hats with thick veils.

Queer gear, I thought, for such a warm afternoon. They must be going to a funeral.

The rest of their clothing supported this hypothesis, for, while it was fashionably cut, it was somber as widow's weeds. Still, it couldn't conceal the fact that the ladies had willowy figures and splendid legs.

Sisters, I said to myself--the three Fates, turning up on cue to resurrect my failing fortunes.

As they came down the steps, the wayward breeze intensified. It lifted the veil of one of the women and flicked it back over her dark felt hat. Raising a gloved hand, she pulled it down. A moment after that, the three of them got into the cab and the noisy vehicle drove away.

I sat on the bench, scarcely breathing. The face beneath the veil had been incredibly beautiful, with indigo eyes. Inside my chest, my heart was pounding frantically.

•

Who could appreciate the significance of these events? I hadn't an inkling then of what the future held.

Mrs. Breen lived in a garrison Colonial house, on the lawn of which there stood a jovial concrete elf who was painted orange from head to toe. Even his bulging eyeballs were orange.

Dolores herself was a squat woman with a low forehead and yellowish hair like unraveled shredded wheat.

"How much do you want for them?" I asked her directly.

"A thousand dollars," she replied through tight lips.

The statues were displayed on a round walnut table in the dining room. They were absolutely terrific.

"Not all of them are ivory," I said depreciatingly. "Those fish are soapstone and the dancing girls are wood."

Mrs. Breen gave me a gorgon stare.

"The two elephants are wood, also," I went on. "Only their tusks are ivory. And those three filigree balls--they're carved from peach pits."

She leaned against a bulky Victorian sideboard, as if seeking additional support for the impending struggle. "My husband paid more than a thousand for them, Mr. Hopkins," she said pugnaciously. "They're genuine artistic antiques. If you don't want the ones that aren't ivory, I'll put them away again--but I still have to get a thousand dollars for those that are left."

Assuming a doubtful expression, I circled the table. "If they were all ivory--the rest of them, I mean--they might be worth what you're asking," I said. "The trouble is, Mrs. Breen, at least a third of this collection is made of bone."

"Bone?"

"Yes, You can see for yourself a lot of the pieces are dark. Ivory never gets that brown. Those pieces are bone."

"My husband said they got dark from age."

I smiled tolerantly and shrugged. "Not as dark as that. He probably heard that story from some sharp Chinaman. Over here, I know, it's a common sales gimmick unscrupulous dealers use. I don't have to tell you ivory is a scarce and expensive material, but bone is plentiful and cheap--which is why they palm it off on the unsuspecting." Covertly, I glanced at her, to see what effect my lies were producing. She appeared confused. Encouraged, I continued glibly. "And bone is easier to carve, of course. It's softer than some woods. That's why it's so fragile and why it discolors so rapidly."

"He never mentioned bone," she said, wrinkling her brow. "What kind of bone is it?" she asked in a voice that lacked resolution.

"Oh, the Japanese used horses and water buffalo, chiefly," I answered, sounding to my own ears as authoritative as Bernard Berenson or Kenneth Clark. "They've been known to work with human bones, too," I added casually.

"Human bones," she echoed, wiping her hand on her flowered apron.

I nodded and took another stroll around the exhibition, inspecting a piece here and a piece there. Finally, I said, "The best I can offer for the lot is seven hundred. If they were Chinese, I could pay more, because their stuff is rarer."

"I couldn't let them go for that," she replied. "Seven hundred? No, no. To be perfectly honest. Mr. Hopkins, a man offered me eight hundred yesterday and I turned him down."

I studied her face. "He actually made you a firm offer of eight hundred dollars?"

"Yes, he did. He was here in the afternoon--about three."

The squat woman's eyes avoided mine. Far from being perfectly honest, she was feeding me a little con. I laughed easily. "That was a good price, Mrs. Breen. You should have accepted. Was he a reputable dealer?"

"Oh, yes. He has a big store ... near Harvard Square."

"Big stores don't always mean reliability. Some of these characters will quote high figures, but when it's time to pay, they have second thoughts. Sometimes their checks bounce, too."

"I think I should get at least nine hundred," she said, looking dejected.

"I wish I could give it to you," I answered sadly, "but I can't. It wouldn't leave me with any margin. Let's be frank, (continued on page 200) Bric-a-Brac Man (continued from page 104) Mrs. Breen--statues like these have limited appeal. The average person considers them ugly. I might have to hold them for years before finding a buyer--and with bank interest rates what they are, I simply can't afford to tie up too much money for lengthy periods."

At last, she said, "Well, I suppose I'd settle for eight hundred and fifty."

"Mrs. Breen," I responded, oozing patience and magnanimity, "you're a friend of Mrs. Dunlap, a lady I've known and respected for many years. I honestly want to do the best I can for you, but eight-fifty is still too much. However, even though it's against my better judgment. I'll match the other man's bid. I'll give you eight hundred. And that's absolutely as high as I can go. If you want more, you'll have to call somebody else."

Turning my back on the table. I buttoned my jacket as if preparing to be on my way.

"I'll take it, Mr. Hopkins," the woman said hastily.

I was pleased, naturally, yet I was careful not to show it. Sitting down to write the check. I caught sight of my face in a mirror, and Jesus on the cross had a happier expression. A few minutes later, I carried the two cartons of ivories out to the station wagon. Only then did I grin.

•

It might be appropriate here for me to explain my banking arrangements. Several years back. I had difficulty opening an account locally, because my old bank had stuck my name on some sort of black list. I admit it had reasons. I'd clipped it for a couple of hundred dollars by cashing checks at its various branches, when I well knew my account was as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard--and, since things were dismal at the time, I couldn't find the money to repay them anywhere.

They threatened me with arrest; but after I produced a letter from my physician explaining my memory lapses, the storm subsided. My account was closed, however, and when I tried opening a new one elsewhere, I discovered none of the other financial institutions desired my custom, either. I was compelled to traipse all the way to Nashua, New Hampshire, before I could find an outfit--the Merrimack-Monadnock Merchant Bank--willing to accept me as a client.

But, believe it or not, this peculiar setup worked to my advantage in the end. Nashua, though it's only 40 miles from Boston, was sufficiently distant to discourage people from cashing my checks the same day they got them, which is a definite hazard for an operator like me. Furthermore, because the bank was out of state, any of my checks deposited in Massachusetts usually took a couple of weeks to clear, which meant I could buy merchandise without money. I'd pay with a check, peddle the stuff fast, then scurry up to New Hampshire and replenish my account before the check arrived for collection.

•

So I wrote the check and walked off with the figurines.

It was a beautiful coup. While bolting a cheeseburger and a cup of tea in a Porter Circle diner, I congratulated myself generously. If I got $30 each for the 200 pieces--a reasonable price--my profit would be well over $5000, and that was more money than I had ever owned outright in my life. This was the break I'd been waiting for. With such a sum, I could now buy quality merchandise. I could move up a couple of notches in the antique-trade hierarchy. I might even become respectable.

The man I intended selling the things to was Wilfred Sloan--the biggest Oriental dealer in the city. His shop on Boylston Street was like a wing of the Museum of Fine Arts. If he wanted the carvings, and I was almost certain he would, he'd pay what I asked without hassling.

I called him from an outdoor phone booth, told him I had 200 old Japanese ivory netsukes and arranged to meet him at my place on Bay State Road that afternoon.

•

My domicile isn't exactly Fontainebleau, or even Blenheim; still, I do own a few sticks of fairly decent furniture. Connoisseurs might notice they all have little defects--warped tops, cigarette burns, missing hardware--and this is what's prevented me from selling them; nevertheless, carefully placed, they can be most attractive.

I washed the mirror over the fireplace, dusted everything and rubbed boiled linseed oil on all the stained-wood surfaces. Then I set the ivories out--the grandest pieces on the mantel and bookcase and the remainder on the whatnot, the desk and the pseudo-Sheraton coffee table.

By now it was 3:30, and I was getting nervous. Would Sloan buy or would he not? I got a bottle of sherry that Guilfoyle had given me the previous Christmas and poured some into a goblet. I'm not much of a drinker, but at that moment, the wine tasted delicious.

And what did I want? Well, I wanted to be somebody extraordinary--a big shot. I've always admired successful people--J. P. Morgan, Garibaldi. Hernando Cortes, Stalin, Cecil Rhodes, Cromwell, Napoleon, Meyer Rothschild, Henry Ford. I wanted money and prestige. I didn't want to just live and die; I wanted to be something more than a nobody.

While I was dwelling on these matters and sipping the sherry, the doorbell announced Sloan's arrival. The Englishman was tall and gaunt and had sandy hair and a florid complexion. Guiding him into the parlor, I made it a point to watch his face in the glass above the mantel--a tactic I'd found useful on other occasions. As he crossed the threshold, his blue eyes widened slightly. It wasn't much of a reaction, but it showed me at once that he was impressed by what he saw.

He spent a minute surveying my carefully mounted exhibition from a distance, then sauntered to the bookcase and picked up one of the most striking figures--an elderly farmer with a basket of vegetables on his arm and a shaggy dog by his side. "Interesting," he murmured.

"Interesting? It's superb. Wilfred," I said, my voice overflowing with irrefragable conviction. "Nowadays, you only see netsukes like that in museums."

"Strictly speaking. Arnold, it isn't a netsuke. Netsukes have holes in them, so they can be strung on a cord. This chap hasn't any."

"Does it matter? The thing's a masterpiece."

"Jolly handsome, yes," he admitted graciously, returning the ivory to the shelf. "Are you selling them individually or as a lot?"

"As a lot," I answered promptly.

"What must you get for them?" he inquired.

"Seven thousand," I said without hesitation, whacking him an extra grand for the infinitesimal change in his expression when he entered the room.

"That's a packet of money, Arnold," he said, but there was neither shock nor resentment in his voice.

"For two hundred and three works of art. Wilfred? I'm letting them go for less than thirty-five each."

"Some are relatively new--done in the Twentieth Century."

"A few, sure--but they're not tourist souvenirs."

Sloan smiled. Replacing a clamshell, he took up a monkey playing with a tortoise and said noncommittally, "Seven thousand." After a moment, he said, "I'd like more information about their provenance. Arnold. Can you give me any?"

"Sure," I answered. "I bought the collection from an elderly lady who told me her mother's father compiled it when he was in the Navy. He was a commodore or something."

"A sailor's treasure-trove, eh?"

"Yes. The old guy was with the fleet in the Far East for many years. His granddaughter said he knew Admiral Dewey."

"And are you certain this lady had a clear title to them?"

"Absolutely."

"Good. I can assume, then, she's an honest, law-abiding citizen--a pillar of the community, as they say. All right, Arnold, I'll pay your price. Come to the shop around eleven tomorrow and I'll give you the money in cash."

His words intoxicated me. Until that instant, I hadn't dared believe the $7000 would actually be mine. Nevertheless, I maintained a reserved, businesslike demeanor. "Wilfred, I'd be delighted to take your check."

"Thanks, but the income-tax bloodhounds have been baying at my heels, and I'd just as soon not have a paper record of this. They know enough about my private affairs as it is. Ever dealt with the Internal Revenue Service?"

"No," I said untruthfully.

"They're a hard lot," he said. "Last autumn. I borrowed a bit of money to buy the contents of a town house on River Street--a place crammed with Chinese and Korean porcelains and bronzes. The seller was in a hurry to fly back to the Coast, so to make up the full price, I had to get a quick loan. Instead of going to a bank, therefore, I obtained twenty thousand dollars from a strange Cuban or Mexican a bloke I know introduced me to. I wish I had time to tell you the whole fantastic story--it's a piece of science-fiction--but, suffice it so say that when I sent the wog a check to cover what I had borrowed, he refused to cash it in. Can you imagine? I'm sure he's bonkers. And since I treated these funds as a loan on my tax return, the authorities at Andover have been bothering me. They call it income and refuse to listen to my explanations."

"Do you mean the Cuban still hasn't accepted your money?"

"No, he hasn't. A right mess, it is."

Laughing mirthlessly. Sloan yanked a straight-stemmed pipe from his coat pocket, stuck it in the corner of his mouth and began to produce hollow sucking noises like the gasps of a dying consumptive.

Then he said. "It occurs to me that I'm seeing a chap tonight who might very well be interested in these carvings--or a portion of them, anyway. Would you object to my carting them off with me now?"

Aware that my customer had a spotless reputation. I hesitated only a fraction of a second before replying, "Certainly, Wilfred. That's all right with me. I'll get you a box."

"Seven thousand lovely dollars," I whispered joyfully after Sloan had left, and I poured myself a second glass of Guilfoyle's wine.

•

The next day, I drove to Boylston Street, parked near Prudential Center and went in the Braden Cafeteria to kill the hour or so that remained before my appointment with Wilfred, whose gallery was only a couple of blocks away. Nick Segilli, a Newbury Street used-furniture dealer, was seated in one of the booths and I joined him.

Segilli bent his ursine body over the small table and asked, "You been down Mass. Ave, today, Arnold?"

"No," I said. "Why?"

"Terrific accident," he declared portentously. "Guy drove his Lincoln right through the window of the supermarket next to the National Suffolk Bank. It happened last night, but the car was still there when I went by this morning."

"And the people in the automobile?"

"There was only the driver. He was stone-dead. His head got smashed in and his neck was twisted like a cruller. There must have been a gallon of blood on the upholstery. Anyhow, the guy was probably dead before the crash, because the ambulance doctor seemed pretty sure he had had a heart attack. He could tell on account of the guy's lips were purple."

"The poor man," I said. "Was he very old?"

Segilli shook his head, setting hi jowls in motion. "Fifty, maybe. Wasn't overweight, neither. Funny thing is. I recognized the fellow. A couple of years ago. I sold him a pair of embroidered silk hangings--very classy articles. He was English--had an accent and all. I remember him good, because he paid three bills for those hangings and that creep, Eddie Osborne, only offered me a hundred and a half."

Suddenly, I was apprehensive. "English?" I asked weakly.

"Yeah. His place of business was in the Brunswick Building."

"You mean Wilfred Sloan--the Oriental dealer?"

"Right--he's the one. You know him, too, Arnold?"

As quickly as I could, I escaped from the cafeteria. Segilli must have thought I was crazy. When I reached Wilfred's antique shop, the lights were off and there was no one inside. I peered through the glass of the locked front door, but I couldn't see my netsukes on any of the shelves or in any of the cases.

•

When Sloan went to his reward, I thought for a while I was going to have to join him. In the space of an hour, I plunged from the lofty mountains of the moon down to the dark and freezing bottom of the Marianas Deep.

Nonetheless, that very afternoon, I was at the dead man's house in Needham, mingling with the crowd of mourners. I paid my respects to the widow, a lady I'd never met before, but out of delicacy refrained from broaching the subject uppermost in my teeming brain. She was too distraught, anyway, to have been much help. However, I did prowl around the place to see what I could see, but it was a waste of effort. The netsukes were nowhere in evidence.

What was I to do? I had to get money into the bank to cover Mrs. Breen's check. If I didn't, I'd be in trouble.

Dutifully, I attended both the wake and the funeral. Even Wilfred's wife couldn't have mourned his passing more fervently than I did. On numerous occasions. I stared into the coffin, long and steadfastly, searching his waxy features for the smallest hint of what he might have done with my property. It was a futile endeavor.

•

Immediately after Sloan's interment, which took place on a damp and dismal Monday morning, I drove to Charles Street to ask Hogan Guilfoyle for help. I wasn't in the best of shape. For 72 hours I hadn't slept a wink, and my whole body seemed charged with static electricity.

Guilfoyle conducted his business from the basement of an old brick house. Poorly illuminated and crowded with gleaming objects, his shop invariably reminded me of the thieves' den in Ali Baba. Nor was this a farfetched comparison, since the proprietor--craggy-faced, stubble-jawed, evil-tempered South Boston Irishman--was a very devious fellow.

When I entered the place, Hogan was at his cluttered desk, making a deal on the phone.

Dropping the phone into its cradle, he shook his capped head and growled, "Simple-minded son of a bitch!" Then, whirling around in his swivel chair, he shot me a disagreeable glance. "What do you want?"

I treated him to my boyish grin and asked, "Can you lend me five hundred dollars?"

Guilfoyle sneered. "No, I can't," he replied.

"Hogan, I'm in a terrible predicament," I said earnestly. "I'm in a jam--a real bone cruncher. I wouldn't bother you if I wasn't."

Then I described what had happened to me.

He heard me out and when I was finished, grunted, folded his arms, leaned back in his creaky chair and remarked, "I always knew those lousy checks of yours were no damned good, Arnold Hopkins."

"None of them ever bounced on you, Hogan," I reminded him, "and in three weeks, I'll pay you back six hundred."

"Oh, sure," he said sarcastically. "Not that I'm interested--but how, exactly?"

"You know Manny Robinson in Worcester, don't you?"

"Yeah. What about him?"

"He does the Coliseum show in New York every year. I gave him a crate full of my best stock to sell for me. If Manny only peddles half of what I consigned to him, I'll still clear a thousand dollars."

This story was a fabrication, but I needed a lever if I was going to pry money out of Hogan Guilfoyle.

"There's no hassle, then," he said. "All you got to do is get the crate back, show me the merchandise and we'll negotiate prices."

"I wish I could, only it's impossible. Manny is in Cleveland, Ohio, doing a flea market. And after that, he's traveling to a country fair--near Buffalo. I think. It'll be three weeks before he finally hits New York City."

Guilfoyle leered at me. "I think you're as full of crap as a Christmas goose, Arnold Hopkins," he declared candidly. "Anyhow, it don't matter. I ain't lending you no five bills. My mother never dropped me on my head when I was a baby."

"If I don't locate the five hundred, they'll toss me in the slammer," I said in a voice imbued with sorrow.

"Tough." he answered.

"There's nowhere else I can get it, Hogan."

"Sell your car."

"How can I do that? I'd be out of business."

"You'd also be out of jail," said Guilfoyle.

"You know I'm good for the money," I said, as though this were a firmly established fact throughout the world of finance. "Why won't you lend it to me?"

"All right--you want to know why?" he said. "Because I ain't the Little Sisters of of the Poor, that's why. Besides, you don't do me any favors, do you? A crate full of high-quality items you give to some bum in Worcester. What am I--invisible? Don't I pay fair prices? And that ain't all, Arnold. You get your hands on a couple of hundred netsukes--every one of them ivory, you say--and then you sell the whole damned lot to that limey. Sloan, without giving me so much as a peek at them. Can't I use Oriental goods, same as anybody else? I might've paid you more, too--how do you know? Now you got problems. Too bad. If a guy wants favors, he can't go around treating people lousy. Life's a two-way street."

It was a sound argument, I had to admit. Still, the old bastard was just making excuses. He wouldn't have given me the loan under any circumstances and we both knew it.

"OK, Hogan. Thanks a ton," I said resentfully, as I got to my feet.

Guilfoyle had the glasses up to his eyes. "You want to borrow five hundred dollars?" he said. "Get it from the Devil."

Then he laughed softly, as though the remark were a sparkling witticism.

I muttered an oath and walked out.

•

As I was about to leave my apartment that evening to attend an auction. Mrs. Dunlap phoned to ask me when I was coming to fix the settee. I promised I'd be over in a couple of days and she hung up--leaving me to ruminate on what might occur when my check to dear Dolores bounced off the Merrimack-Monadnock Merchant Bank, like a new golf ball off a flat stone.

My miseries much enhanced by all this, I strode from the apartment, cursing humanity in general and idle widows in particular.

Alas, not much happened at the auction. I stood there for three hours, bid on several cheap things and ended up empty-handed.

Outside the hall, I met Barney Slocum. He invited me across the street to the hotel for a drink and I accepted.

Barney was a picker, like me--picker being the trade designation for a person who buys antiques here and sells them there, operating out of an automobile because he hasn't a store.

Slocum had a full head of blue-black curly hair, a bushy mustache and a beard like a bunch of grapes. His parents had been in show business and he was fond of loud clothing. That night, he was wearing a terra-cotta shirt and a mauve necktie. He had a rich wife--her father owned a fleet of concrete mixers down on the Cape--but she didn't believe in joint accounts, so Barney only received an allowance, and a meager one, at that. He was able to make money in the antique business, though, because he knew a lot of angles and had an army of good customers in the South and out West. These people came to him whenever they were in town--and he always had something to sell them.

"Barney, I've got to find five or six hundred in the next few days or I'll be out of circulation for a while," I declared grimly.

"Sounds like you're in a tight-corner situation, Arnold." He lowered his voice and said, "I'll tell you something. I know how you can raise a fast bank roll, but it's a little unorthodox."

"Let's hear it," I said.

"Well, there ain't much to tell, really. You go to this house, open the front door with a key, go up one flight, open another door with two keys, step into the foyer, turn left into the bedroom, take an article off the wall, and then walk out of the place and go home. Later on, when you give me what you took, I'll compensate you with a thousand dollars."

I swallowed some bourbon, licked my lips and asked, "Didn't you used to have a girl who handled things like that for you, Barney?"

"Yeah--Sharon Doucette. She was good, too. A college kid from Northeastern. Sharon isn't available, though. She's in Framingham."

"That's not far. Can't you call her?"

"No. She's in the joint out there--the women's correctional institution. Sharon won't be receiving calls for a while. She got messed up with a very dubious character from Louisiana--a guy named Tommy Joe. What they did was glom a load of silver from a house on Fairfield Street. She went down the chimney, Arnold--honest to God. Ever meet her? She's built like a snake, so she could perform a stunt of that sort."

Barney sipped his whiskey sour and glanced warily around the dimly lit barroom. "So this Southern guy walks into Mabel Tullock's the next day and sells her a box of sterling flatware. An idiot, he was. Swipes it on Fairfield Street and peddles it on Charles Street--ten blocks away! And the stuff was monogrammed, also! Poor Sharon didn't know a thing about it until the cops came and apprehended her. They found her quick, because Mabel copied Tommy Joe's license-plate number, and it was Sharon's car. Him they grabbed later."

"Burglary is a dangerous occupation," I said.

"Sure--if you act like a moron," Barney replied. "But you're not going to do that, because you've got plenty of intellectual capacity. And this is a dream situation, Arnold. The risks have been eliminated. Nothing detrimental can happen. You'd have to do it on a Thursday morning, and I guarantee the building will be empty. Plus you'll have a set of keys that fit perfectly. Listen--it's a two-family house. One couple lives on the first and second floors and another couple lives on the third. The husbands work in town--regular nine-to-fivers. The wife on the top floor works every Thursday at a Hadassah thrift shop in Malden until one in the afternoon. And the wife from the apartment we're interested in--she goes to the beauty parlor, ten-thirty every Thursday, and never misses. There's no kids, no dogs, no alarm system--nothing."

The proposition didn't appeal to me much, yet I had to get the money somehow. "Suppose one of the occupants doesn't keep to his schedule?" I asked.

"No problem," said Barney complacently. "Leo Greenspan will be sitting in his car in front of the building, to make sure they all leave. If there's a hitch, he'll honk the horn."

Leo was Barney's helper--a chunky kid from Peabody who moved furniture, drove trucks and did other onerous chores.

"If Greenspan's going to be at the scene, why aren't you using him for the larceny?" I inquired, suddenly suspicious.

"Because he hasn't the brains for it. He'd lift the wrong article. Listen--what I'm after is a crucifix, and this guy has a very elaborate collection of them. There's forty, at least, hanging on the walls of that apartment, but only one has genuine merit--a Seventeenth Century Italian ormolu job, encrusted with lapis, carnelians and jargons. So what do you say? Are you agreeable? You could do it this Thursday, Arnold, and have the thousand by dinnertime."

I drank two mouthfuls of bourbon, reflecting cynically that crime was really only business carried on by other means. Then I put my glass down and said, "OK, I'll try it."

•

"He that hasteneth to be rich hath an evil eye." the Book says. Who could deny that? Not Arnold Hopkins.

At a quarter to 11 the following Thursday, I strode down Marlborough Street, got an all-clear gesture from Leo Greenspan, who was seated in his Volvo at the curb, and entered the trim two-family house as confidently as if it were my own. Minutes later. I emerged with the crucifix under my arm in a manila envelope, and by nightfall. I was S1000 wealthier.

The next morning. I drove to Nashua, singing and whistling all the way, and there I deposited S800 in my bank account to cover the widow Breen's check.

So smoothly did this Marlborough Street operation go that I wasn't the least bit averse to accepting a second and similar assignment from Barney when he offered it to me a couple of weeks later. Again he had door keys, again the place was empty and again the adventure went off without a hitch. I walked in carrying a small satchel. stuffed it with old delft pottery from a bow-front china closet and then walked out. For this brief performance I received another S1000.

I found, oddly enough, that this furtive work was rather pleasant. Violating the sanctity of a private home gave me a bizarre sense of power. Stepping boldly into a stranger's personal territory made me feel that I had at last achieved some control over my own destiny--that I was a manipulator, instead of a manipulatee. It was exhilarating.

But life is careful not to be too generous. A cornucopia of blessings it isn't. The third project Barney gave me was as complicated as the other two had been simple. Indeed, the only reason I didn't reject it out of hand was that the payoff was unusually large--3500 American dollars.

However, the object of this theft wasn't as ancient as either of those relics, though it was old enough. Barney was asking me to snatch a 17th Century gold-and-silver-inlaid flintlock pistol that, according to him, had once been the treasured possession of the Sun King, Louis XIV. It was in a glass case on a mantel in the parlor of a fifth-floor suite of rooms in a high-priced condominium in the Longwood area of Brookline. He'd given me a key to the apartment, but it did me little good, because the security arrangements in the building were, to say the least, stringent.

To make things worse, the apartment itself was occupied almost continuously. The tenants, a rich realtor named Ambrose Julian and his wife. Lily, employed an Irish housekeeper-cook who came to work at 11 A.M., before the wife went out, and stayed until eight P.M. or later. And the Julians never seemed to go anywhere or do anything at night or on Sunday, so the place was constantly inhabited.

Barney had a crude map of the suite but no brilliant ideas.

Several times, both in my station wagon and on foot, I reconnoitered the neighborhood. As there were no fire escapes, sun porches or balconies, I would have had to rent a helicopter or sprout wings to gain entrance from that direction. Yet those rear windows were the only vulnerable spots in the fortress.

Next to the condominium, another apartment house stood. It was much less modern and half as tall. Lurking in the park one afternoon, I noticed that the Julian windows were almost on the same level as the roof of the smaller building. What was more, the roof extended farther out in back than the condominium did. Possibilities formed in my mind.

I ambled around to the front, ducked into the second house, forced the lock with a credit card and climbed to the roof unchallenged. Pretending a professional interest in the brickwork of a chimney, I covertly surveyed the scene. The roof was flat, surfaced with tar and gravel and enclosed by a low parapet. From where I was standing at one corner of it. I could actually see into the Julian apartment--even distinguish some old firearms on a wall over a sectional sofa.

The distance separating the edge of the roof from the parlor window was about eight feet. There was another window that was closer--according to my map, it opened into the bathroom--but it had no ledge to speak of and was quite tiny. The ledge outside the parlor window, however, was a broad, deep slab of granite that I could easily stand on--provided I was able to get there.

Eight feet was no great distance, I thought. A man could cover eight feet in a few short strides. If I figured out a way to cross that gap. I could bypass the whole elaborate security system. It was certainly worth a try.

The next morning, I purchased lumber and constructed a crude gangplank. It was light and I was able to assemble and disassemble it in minutes.

To test my bridge, I set one end of it on a stepladder and the other on the seat of a sturdy chair. Then, like a circus funambulist, I climbed up and walked back and forth on it. My gangplank not only held me, it sagged very little--and it showed no tendency to slide or tilt, either.

Delighted. I scampered around on the thing as confidently as if I were performing on the ground. While I was enjoying myself in this manner, the phone rang. By a quirk of chance, the caller was Barney Slocum, who wanted to know how I was progressing. I told him what I had in mind.

"A bridge? Are you serious?" he asked. "But it's on the fifth floor, Arnold--which is a very high altitude. You're liable to fall and end up in the back yard, emulsified. I mean, it ain't like you're an acrobat or a human fly or something. Doing a balancing act up in the air is risky. And when you open that window, suppose it makes a lot of noise and the people hear it?"

"That problem occurred to me," I declared, "and I think I have a solution. Behind the building, there's a trolley-car line--the one that runs out to Chestnut Hill. Every twenty minutes, the trolley goes by. So, Barney, if I synchronize the raising of the window with the passing of the trolley car. the Julians won't hear a sound because of the racket those things make."

Slocum sighed. "It might work," he admitted grudgingly. "I wouldn't want to try it. though. I admire your moxie, Arnold."

With that compliment, my confederate rang off and I went back to gamboling on my catwalk.

•

At a quarter to 11 on a Tuesday night, I parked my wagon in the shadow of a stately elm tree on a side street not far from the condominium. The plywood sections--wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, to make them look more commonplace--were on the back seat. I dragged them out. hoisted them onto my shoulder and resolutely set off. They were heavier than I had expected, and by the time I reached my destination, perspiration was trickling down my face and neck.

In just a couple of minutes, I was safely on the roof. It was a clear and pleasant night. In the inky sky. a crescent moon gleamed like a sliver of gold. By its faint light I unwrapped the package and assembled my gangplank.

Crouching behind a chimney, I commenced my vigil. Both of the Julians were in the parlor, watching a talk program on their 25-inch console color television.

My prospective victims didn't stay up late, however. At 20 after 11, the man roused himself from his chair, switched the set off and left the room--and a moment later, the woman followed him. Mr. Julian returned twice to the parlor, but by 11:45, everything was quiet and the apartment was in complete darkness. I was relieved to see they weren't night owls.

As the streetcars stopped running at one o'clock, I had a limited period in which to accomplish my mission. Still, there was no need to hurry. Husband and wife had to be given adequate time to fall asleep. My safety depended on the depth of their slumber.

I waited almost an hour. The hands on my wrist watch crawled, while the leering moon overhead seemed nailed to the heavens, so little did it move. But at last the moment for action arrived. I got to my feet, lifted my plywood bridge and, as silently as possible, extended it over the wall and toward the parlor window.

Some five minutes later, I spied the headlight of an outward-bound trolley car 100 yards up the track. I took off my watch, which glowed in the dark, and shoved it into my pocket. Then, without hesitating. I climbed onto the gangplank and walked across it. The journey wasn't a difficult one, though I hadn't the courage to look at what lay below me.

Clutching the window frame, I knelt on the broad granite ledge. Over my right shoulder I could see the streetcar wobbling along, its interior lights brilliant in the gloom. The grinding of the wheels was comfortingly loud. While the clamor was at its peak. I slid my fingers under the window sash and raised it as far as it would go. It offered no resistance and produced no audible sounds. In half a second, I was over the sill and into the parlor.

On the mantel, the glass case gleamed eerily. I reached up and ran my gloved fingers over its top, finding hinges though no catch of any kind. I opened it slowly and put my hand inside. The pistol was resting on a stand. I clutched it by the barrel and it came away easily.

At this point, however, things went wrong. Hastening to slip the gun into my belt. I almost dropped it--and in preventing this from happening. I was obliged to release the lid of the box, which promptly closed with a noise like a clap of thunder. I froze.

For the next few moments, all I could hear was the rapid beating of my heart. Except for that, the apartment was as still as a tomb. I became frightened. Whoever had been snoring wasn't snoring now. Was one of them awake? Somehow, the hush that hung about me wasn't natural. It was vibrant with menace.

Suddenly, like the screech of an owl in the night, a raucous voice cried out, "There's somebody in there. Ambrose! Wake up! There's somebody in there!"

Discarding any attempts at stealth, I dashed for the window, but I didn't get far. The hassock I'd taken such pains to avoid a minute earlier I now failed to notice at all. It tripped me neatly and I fell flat on my face. Only the deep-piled rug saved me from a broken nose. Shaken by this tumble, I was a few seconds getting back on my feet. In the meantime, lights were flashing on all over the place. Suddenly, Mr. Julian appeared under an archway at the end of the room. He was a portly middle-aged man, dressed in purple pajamas.

"Hey. buster! What the hell you think you're doing?" he shouted bellicosely. "Is that my flintlock you got there?"

Making fists of his hands, he then started toward me.

I leaped out the window, got onto the gangplank and steadied myself before taking a step--but the irate householder was so close behind that he was able to grasp me by the ankle. I nearly lost my balance. Only by dropping to one knee and clamping my hands to the edges of the plywood did I manage to keep from falling.

"Let go, you fool!" I croaked in terror.

"Like hell I will," answered Mr. Julian defiantly. "Give me back my French pistol. That thing is irreplaceable--and they'll jack up my insurance premiums, you bastard!"

No sooner had he spoken than the bathroom window off to my left flew open and in it I saw a thin-lipped apparition in a gold hair net--Mrs. Julian, the other member of the team. She glared at me like a basilisk and screamed, "Throw him in the alley, Ambrose! Push him over!"

Galvanized by these bloodthirsty utterances. I jerked my leg forward with such violence that my captor was pulled halfway out the window. He released my ankle hastily and just as hastily I started to scamper across the bridge on all fours.

Suddenly, from out of the blue, something whizzed past my nose. I hesitated and looked around. The source of the flying object. I discovered to my dismay, was the lady in the lavatory. Taking advantage of my helplessness, this gorgon was throwing bottles of cosmetics and rolls of toilet paper at me. And before I could reconcile myself to this new peril. I was faced with yet another. The bridge had begun to buck and quiver. Mr. Julian, ever ingenious, was doing his best to dislodge it from the ledge.

Yet safety was just a few feet away. A single swift lunge and I might be out of danger. But to perform that sort of maneuver. I would have to stand, and with so much apprehension in my mind and nervous system. I wasn't sure my legs would support me.

While I was busy with these critical speculations, a heavy article of some kind bounced off my rib cage. It felt like a two-pound jar of cold cream. Jolted and in agony, I swayed and almost lost my grip.

"You're lunatics!" I bellowed. "You're both crazy--homicidal maniacs. You want to kill me for a knickknack."

Then, having vented my anger in this forthright fashion, I straightened up and jumped for the roof--and, as I did, the gangplank slued away beneath my feet and disappeared.

My right elbow was over the parapet and I hung on for dear life.

I dangled there for a second or two, but then, recalling what lay below. I quickly dug my sneakered feet into the wall and clambered over the top. Moaning and gasping, I collapsed on the tarred surface of the roof.

Springing to my feet, I fled. Down the stairs I raced, covering four or five steps at a bound. I gained the street in excellent time. There was still no one around. As I buttoned my jacket over the pistol, it occurred to me that, in addition to everything else, I'd be charged with carrying a concealed weapon if I were caught.

•

Between the discomfort of my bruised ribs and the spasmodic twinging of my frayed nerves. I slept badly that night. Heavy-eyed, I got up at eight o'clock, took a shower and made my breakfast. While I ate. I inspected the fancy flintlock of Louis XIV. It truly was a work of art--gold and nacre inlay, delicately etched sheet-silver ornamentation, finely chiseled steel fittings. I wondered what such an elegant item would fetch at Sotheby's or Parke-Bernet.

Wrapping the pistol in a paper bag, I then dropped it into my coat pocket and drove to Barney Slocum's home on Joy Street. He opened the door before I could even press the buzzer.

"Jesus--I been reading about your exploits in the Globe," he said in a low voice, guiding me into the dining room. "You're a lucky guy, Arnold. You could be in the mortuary with a tag on your toe."

"Nobody knows that better than I do." I answered. "They tried to murder me--they actually did. Nice friends you have, Barn, But I got it, anyway. Here."

I handed him the bag and he peeped in.

"Quite a pistol, isn't it?" I said.

"Yeah." he agreed, "only don't talk so loud. You'll wake up my wife. She was at the opera last night and that always puts her in an antagonistic mood. Wait here. I'll bring you the money in a minute."

He hurried from the room and I sat down in an armchair at the head of the table and cast some admiring glances at the furniture.

He returned in a few moments. "Here's the money. Thirty-five hundred, like I promised."

He passed me a roll of bills, which I stuck in my pocket uncounted. "Do you have any other projects?" I asked.

"Right now? Nah. Hopefully, later--but not right now, Arnold. If I was you, I'd want a little vacation, after last night. What happened?"

I told him the whole hair-raising story.

"Jesus!" he exclaimed when I finished. "You must have a guardian angel. Anybody else would've been dead. I told you it was an irrational plan. But, anyhow, you got away with it--which is the primary consideration. Moneywise, you should be OK now. Lately, you've been doing sensational."

"I think I'll open a store." I said.

"Yeah? Where?"

"I've been looking at places in Cambridge--around Harvard Square."

"Well, I wish you all the success in the world, Arnold. You're a nice guy. I want you to know that. But from now on, stay the hell away from those high-altitude jobs, will you?"

He laughed, though not loudly, because of his wife.

•

Shortly thereafter, Maurice Fitzjames telephoned me. He had heard I'd been doing "confidential work" for Barney Slocum, he said, and wondered if I would undertake a similar enterprise for him. I wasn't pleased to learn that my activities had become the subject of other people's conversations, and I told him so. To pacify me, my cousin declared that Barney gave him the information only because he knew he had a very lucrative proposition hanging fire--one that I'd surely be interested in.

"Barney knows I'm trustworthy--and you should, too." he said.

"Should I? What about the three-hundred-dollar swindle you pulled on me?" I asked. "Do you think I've forgotten that?"

"Come on, Arnold--be reasonable. There was no swindle. I only collected money you owed me. I had to do it that way. You seemed determined not to pay me--I don't know why."

What had happened was this: When I failed to show up at Maurice's shop in Brookline to work off my debt, he started calling me every other night to complain. It got so I hesitated to pick up my own telephone. Perhaps I should have paid him--I had plenty of cash--but I really hated to do it, because over the years Maurice had tricked me out of all kinds of money. Had I settled the debt, I would have; felt like a chump.

In any case, one evening when he was more vociferous than usual. I calmed him down by saying that Hogan Guilfoyle owed me $290 and that I would collect it the following afternoon and send it off to him in a money order. Part of this tale was perfectly true. The Irishman did owe me that sum and I did plan to get it the next day--but I hadn't the least intention of mailing it to Maurice Fitzjames.

Now, what Maurice did was this: The following morning, without his wraparound sunglasses and dressed in old clothes, he strode into Hogan's shop and, brazen as a Chinese gong, pretended he was me!

"I came early, Hogan, because I have to drive to Marlboro this afternoon," he had declared, as convincingly as Stanislavsky himself. "Can you give me my money?"

And the Irishman, hoodwinked completely, passed him my S290 without a moment's hesitation.

When I arrived later that day and discovered what had happened. I nearly had a seizure. There wasn't a thing I could do, however. Guilfoyle flatly refused to pay the debt twice, mistake or no mistake.

The episode left me bitter. No one likes being made a fool of. Nevertheless, I wasn't so bitter that I wouldn't listen to Maurice's proposition. Besides, I thought it might afford me a chance at revenge. I agreed to meet him at Larry's, a smart saloon on Newbury Street, later that day.

•

"Last week, a fellow who peddles me tips and information came to the shop and told me an intriguing story," Maurice began, when our drinks were in front of us and the waiter had gone. "He's an electrician, this guy, and he had just spent the morning working in a Back Bay house that was crammed with antiques--the finest stuff he had ever seen, he said. Fabulous was the adjective he kept repeating. I asked him some questions and found out he was returning to the place after lunch, to finish the job--which happened to be the rewiring of a lot of girandoles. Posing as his assistant, I went along with him.

"The place is a big brownstone and everything the fellow said about the furnishings is true. Hey, Arnold, believe me--it's a treasure house. It's full of the kind of gorgeous objects you used to see at the best auctions twenty years ago but never see anywhere now. On a credenza I noticed a pair of Queen Anne silver chambersticks, and in an ebonized cabinet, a collection of snuff bottles, the likes of which you'll never see outside a museum. There was a George III punch bowl, an elaborate tantalus, a silver inkstand, a fantastic music box--but why go on? In twenty minutes of talking, I couldn't catalog everything I saw. Have you ever dreamed of being drowned in precious articles? That's how I felt. The paintings and bronzes alone would give you a heart attack, and many of them are small enough to fit in a duffel bag or a pillowcase. If I were asked to appraise the contents of the four rooms I got a look at, I wouldn't hesitate to quote a figure of half a million bucks. What do you say, Arnold? Would you like to take a crack at this palace of opulence?"

I hid my eagerness under a scowl and said, "Sounds too good to be true. What about the alarm system?"

"There isn't any," he answered promptly. "But I have to admit it isn't going to be easy to get into, because the lower windows are barred and the doors aren't the type you can spring with a hunk of plastic--but there may be possibilities up on the roof."

"The roof is out. I'm not an acrobat," I objected, my stomach writhing at the idea. "Who lives in the place?"

"Three women--sisters, named Ramsay."

"When is it usually empty?"

"Well, that's a sticky point," said Maurice. "I've been making a few discreet inquiries, and it seems a couple of these ladies hardly go out at all. I thought you might work at night, after everybody's safely tucked in bed."

"Nothing doing," I replied vehemently. "No, thanks. At the moment, I'm only interested in unpeopled domiciles. Crowds inhibit me. And women are the worst, Maurice. They're light sleepers. A single creak from a loose floor board and they wake up screaming."

My cousin fingered the neat triangular knot of his silk necktie and gave me a winning smile. "I appreciate that, Arnold, but if we insist on perfect conditions, it could take months."

"It sounds rich enough," I conceded. "How much do you think we could make?"

He shrugged. "If you choose the right objects and fill a couple of fair-sized bags. I wouldn't be surprised if we cleared twenty thousand dollars--ten for you and ten for me. The small paintings and the silver and the snuff bottles--they're the important items. But you know prices, so you'll know what to take."

"Ten thousand," I murmured thoughtfully. "All right, Maurice, I'll have a look at it. Where is this El Dorado?"

"Five forty-eight Commonwealth Avenue, near Gloucester Street."

"Five forty-eight? That's interesting."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I know the owner of five forty-six--a woman named Dunlap. She runs a boardinghouse for old people."

"Great, A lucky coincidence. That would be right next door. You can probably work something from that angle--a fire escape, maybe, or a balcony," he said. Then he gulped down his drink and added, "Look--I got to run along, because I have a karate class in town. You check the thing out and give me a call when you're ready to make your move--OK?"

"OK," I answered.

After he left, I sat for a while, daydreaming about S10,000. Number 548 would be the house that the three veiled women had emerged from, the day I was sitting on the bench. I remembered the face of the beautiful girl--remembered it with a vague longing. It was odd, the way things happened.

•

By 9:30 the next morning. I was in my station wagon, cruising the alley that runs parallel to the south side of Commonwealth Avenue between Gloucester and Hereford streets. As Maurice had mentioned, the lower-floor windows of the Ramsay house were protected by bars--decorative ones but very sturdy, nonetheless. The first-floor windows--those above the ground floor--weren't covered by these grilles; yet, since they were well out of reach, it hardly mattered. To get to any of them. I'd have had to borrow a hook and ladder from the fire department.

The building's rear was curved like the spine of a book and, except for a single stringcourse, free of architectural adornment. Not even the most intrepid thief--and after my experience at the Julians', I was far from being that--could have found footholds on its surface. At the level of the pavement, there was a heavy wooden basement door. Intuitively, I knew it was bolted on the other side by a piece of hardware as thick as a broom handle. The whole setup looked definitely unpromising. I decided to call on Mrs. Dunlap.

"I didn't realize you were coming today," she greeted me. "How nice!"

"Just happened to be in the neighborhood," I said, following her into the foyer, "so I thought I'd drop by."

"Oh. I'm glad you did, Mr. Hopkins. Miss Herzenthal has been having trouble with her knob. Keeps falling off."

"Her knob?"

"Yes, yes--her doorknob. She's deathly afraid of fires, you see--and if she couldn't open her door, she'd be trapped and burned alive. Do you suppose you could put a new washer in the hot-water faucet on the top floor? The drip is driving everybody crazy, and with oil prices what they are, it's wasting a bit of money, I should think, I'd also like you to look at Mrs. Farnham's iron. She claims it gave her a shock. And I have two gate-leg tables I want to sell you. Rather nice, they are."

In her circuitous way, she gave me the locations of these household calamities and was about to reel off a few more when a woman who was 80 or 90 years old and bent over like a question mark tottered into the foyer and said in an aggrieved voice that nobody had brought her the hot milk she always had at ten o'clock. Mrs. Dunlap rushed away and I went to the basement for the box of doorknobs and some tools.

The dripping-faucet job I left till last, because it was on the top floor. When I had finished replacing the washer, I went up onto the roof. All the buildings on that block are roughly the same height and they're built in a row. I only had to scale a three-foot wall to get to the Ramsay house. Their roof, like Mrs. Dunlap's, had a trap door and two small skylights. On tiptoes, I went to the door and tried to raise it. The thing wouldn't budge a millimeter. It felt, in fact, as if it were nailed down. Crossing to the skylights, I found that both were fastened securely and paned with thick green glass, heavily reinforced with chicken wire. Chagrined, I went back the way I had come.

After eating a quick lunch at the doughnut shop on Boylston Street, I phoned Maurice and told him the task we'd set ourselves wasn't going to be easy. Then I tried to get him to advance me a couple of hundred dollars for the expenses I'd have to incur--hoping to regain some of the money he had conned Guilfoyle out of--but he refused flatly. I wasn't too surprised.

•

During this period, I was hyperactive. In addition to everything else, I had signed a two-year lease with a Thracian Greek called Miltiades Poso for a store in Cambridge that was 360 square feet in area and had a fair-sized window.

This Poso was a cheerful man, but since he owned half of Harvard Square, there was no reason for him not to be. The rent was $500 a month.

My new shop was a wellspring of satisfaction to me. Having spent years and years as an itinerant peddler, I now believed my star was in the ascendant. How I dreamed and schemed! Already, I had a dozen great ideas for window displays. Already, I could visualize the way the place would look and see in my mind's eye the crowds of customers milling about.

To make all this a reality, I had to buy a lot of stock--and, being busy with these transactions, I had little time for bookkeeping. Thus, one melancholy morning. I received a notice from the Merrimack-Monadnock Merchant Bank that my account was $36 overdrawn

I was shocked. Only a few weeks earlier, it had contained five grand. Incredible as it seemed, however, when I checked my figures, I found that the bank was correct down to the last penny. I really had spent the money--and I was broke again.

The situation wouldn't have been too awful if I could have thrown open the doors of my emporium and commenced doing business; but, unfortunately, this wasn't possible. I still didn't have enough stock. The store was half empty.

Once more I attempted to wring money out of Maurice Fitzjames and once more I failed. Nor could Barney Slocum offer me any help. Disgusted, I went to see Guilfoyle on Charles Street.

"Hogan," I said with a show of amiable confidence, "lend me six hundred, will you?"

"Six hundred what?" he asked, glaring up at me from his swivel chair.

"Dollars. What else--bottle caps?"

"Whether it's dollars or bottle caps, the answer is no."

"Don't be that way, Hogan," I said feelingly. "I'm on the verge of opening my shop, but I need a few more items. First impressions are important, so the store has got to look prosperous. Isn't that right? With six hundred in cash, I could buy another thousand dollars' worth of merchandise--and then I'll never have to bother you for money again. How about it?"

"The answer is no."

"Why?"

"Because I'm afraid I'll never see it again--that's why," he replied frankly. "You could get the money from the Devil. He wouldn't expect it back. There's an idea for you, Arnold."

I glanced at him, wondering what he was babbling about.

"You'd have to give me ten percent," he went on, lowering the glasses. "As a finder's fee. But if you handle it smart, you ought to shake the son of a bitch for two or three thousand--maybe more."

"What is this?" I inquired warily. "Some kind of extortion deal?"

"Nah, it ain't nothing like that. I wouldn't put you up to something illegal. I'll explain. You pay me ten percent of whatever you work him for, though. OK?"

"Sure--ten percent," I said, going along with the charade. "I give you my word. Now tell me what I agreed to."

"I should ask twenty percent," he grumbled, "but I'm too softhearted." Then he leered at me for a moment, pushed the peak of his baseball cap up with the binoculars and lumbered back to his swivel chair. "You know that fairy on Huntington Avenue--the guy who sells those soapstone monkeys and tells the customers they're mutton-fat jade? He put me wise to this crazy spick who thinks he's the Devil. Told me that if I signed a contract with this nut case, he'd pay me real money."

"What sort of contract?"

"A contract for your soul. The Devil is always in the market for souls. Don't you know nothing about religion? I figured the fairy was kidding me--but I went there, anyway, just to make sure. And I met this simple-minded son of a bitch, fed him a sad story about how I needed three thousand for a stomach operation, and so on, signed a piece of paper and came home with a wad of money."

"The man sprang for three grand?"

"Nah. I only got two thousand--on account of him beating me down. But I didn't argue. What the hell--it was for nothing."

"It's a weird story," I said. "It doesn't make sense."

"Of course it doesn't, because the guy don't have no sense. He's soft as oleomargarine. You'll see when you meet him. He lives in that big luxury apartment house there on Park Drive. Nine-ninety is the number and his name is Merendaro."

The Irishman scribbled the information on a scrap of paper for me and said, "Ten percent, Arnold Hopkins--and no lying about how much he gives you, either."

On the brass plate in black-enamel letters was the name Felix Jeronimo Prodriguez Diego de Merendaro Y Alcala. It occupied three lines. I pressed the buzzer and a chubby, round-shouldered man in a white servant's coat, complete with frogs and piping of gold braid, opened the door.

"Yes. señor?" he asked.

"Mr. Merendaro," I said. autocratically.

The fellow, whose sleek face was nutmeg brown, smiled slyly and showed me into a huge living room. Then he vanished through a side door without uttering another word.

The apartment was furnished in an ultramodern style--all molded plastics, teak-wood, chrome, wrought iron, leather and fiberglass. Sitting in a chair shaped like a soup ladle, I began composing a supplicatory speech in my mind. The room distracted me, however. On the eggshell-white walls, a multitude of brightly colored pictures hung, each one framed in ebony. They were identical in size and appeared to be made of fabric. While I was casting a curious eye on these curious representations, a small man with an oval face and a button nose walked in.

"You appreciate my pictorial tea towels?" he inquired politely.

"Tea towels? Is that what they are?" I replied.

"Yes, yes. Tea towels, tea towels," he said, raising his eyebrows, which were inverted black Vs, and waving a hand no larger than a child's in the direction of the principal wall. "I noticed you were inspecting them."

I got to my feet. "They're very handsome." I said. "Have you lived in England?"

"Indeed, yes. I dwelt in England many years. But these fascinating creations are manufactured in Ireland--of pure linen. Those tea towels that are manufactured of cotton I ignore, because they are woefully insubstantial. My collection of pictorial tea towels is, in the whole wide world, absolutely the finest. But there is one superior tea towel that I lack--a Jonathan Wild. I, alas, have never even seen a Jonathan Wild, because there are only three of them. Who are you?"

Surprised by the sudden question, I said. "Me? Oh. I'm Arnold Hopkins."

"Hello. I am the Devil--Felix Merendaro, as I sometimes call myself. You come to see me for what purpose, exactly?"

"I ... I'm an antique dealer, and Mr. Hogan Guilfoyle is a good friend of mine." I declared, a trifle embarrassed. "He told me you give deserving people financial assistance ... if they will sign a contract with you. My situation is desperate. Unless I can raise five thousand dollars in the next few days, my business will go into receivership, and that will mean the loss of everything I hold dear. My life will be ruined beyond repair."

"Oh, yes?" murmured the Devil, running his fingers over his dark, shiny hair, which was brushed so flat on his head that it looked like a black-vinyl skullcap. Next he drew a pair of silver-framed spectacles from his breast pocket, placed them on his button nose and, for a long while, regarded me in silence. Then, without warning and at the top of his lungs, he shouted. "Xochimilco! Hi, Xochimilco! Hi! Hi! Drinks. Bring drinks. Two Scotches and sodas--with ice included. And hurry, you slothful bastard." Turning to me again, he inquired courteously, "You like Scotch and soda? Splendid. Sit, why don't you?"

My ears still ringing from his maniacal outburst, I resumed sitting in the soupladle chair. Was this crackpot capable of violence? I wondered.

He fixed his dark features in a tight smile and said forthrightly, "You wish to sell your soul, Mr. Hopkins. Jolly good. The question is, how do you feel about original sin? Do you believe people can be guilty, even when they are innocent babies and before they perpetrate any transgressions?"

I adopted a serious mien and considered how best to answer this archaic query. At last, I said, "No, Mr. Merendaro, original sin is a postulate I can't accept. Do you believe in it?"

"I? What have I to do with it, sir? Doctrines and dogma are not for the Devil. He deals only in realities--in pounds and ounces and dollars and cents. The validity of this inherited guiltiness, then, you positively deny. Interesting. And free will? What are your opinions, precisely, with regard to that philosophical question? Would you endorse that people control all the events and episodes of their own little lives?"

I frowned, squinted and replied gravely. "Perhaps I'm too fatalistic, Mr. Merendaro, but I don't believe in the free-will concept, either. Do any of us volunteer to be born? No. none. Therefore, it follows that our every subsequent action is forced upon us also. Free will is a myth, a fantasy, a mirage, a figment of the imagination. The true principle is willy-nilly. Each gesture we make, thought we think, sensation we feel is preordained. Human beings are simply automatons, robots, programed ages ago by a concatenation of dispassionate cosmic accidents."

Beaming at my host. I sat back in my soup-ladle chair. He wrinkled his forehead and lowered his small body onto a shaggy vermilion scatter rug on the floor and, reverting to his normal dulcet tone. said. "'A concatenation of dispassionate cosmic accidents.' Sublime, Mr. Hopkins. I immensely enjoy such orotundity. You have a way with phrases, you really do. Instead of a purveyor of antiques, you should be a politician."

Xochimilco entered with our drinks. "It is about time, you son of a three-peso whore," Merendaro remarked caustically as the round-shouldered servant ambled into the room carrying a silver tray. "To pour a dram of whisky in a tumbler takes you entire eons. Quick, quick--present one to my guest. Now, get out. Return to sleeping in your chair, like a disgusting sow in a wallow."

The chubby retainer bowed obsequiously and moved away--but, once he was out of his employer's line of vision, he turned and winked at me. Then he made a comical grimace, stuck out his tongue, tapped his temple with a swarthy finger, rolled his eyes idiotically, and finally disappeared through the doorway, waggling the empty tray as though it were a tambourine. I took a deep drink of the Scotch and soda.

"Sir, I do not wholly understand," said Satan, oblivious of what had occurred behind him. "If, as you appear to suggest, accidents account for the universe, what function is there for God?"

"None." I said promptly. "In my view, there is no God. God is as much a fantasy as free will."

"Ah-ha! You are an atheist. I see, I see, Yet you believe in the Devil. Very curious. And you desire me to provide you with a sum of money?"

"Yes--if you would be so generous."

He sipped from his glass and scowled. "No, I'm sorry, but it is quite impossible for me to give you anything, Mr. Hopkins."

"Why?" I asked, taken aback.

"Because you are a nonbeliever, and in hell I have a vast superfluity of nonbelievers. Accommodating them is a frightful problem. Let Him up there receive the atheists and agnostics," he stated, directing his dark, cocker-spaniel eyes toward the ceiling, "In heaven, there are plenty of vacancies. It is virtually empty, that place. Also, a nonbeliever is not a genuine sinner. How can you sin, if you have no creed? How can you be faithless, if you profess no faith? How can you be an outlaw, if you are convinced that the universe is devoid of laws?"

"Come, now, Mr. Merendaro," I protested smoothly, hoping to salvage my great expectations. "Is hell such an exclusive community? I've always been under the impression that people didn't want to go there."

"But it isn't important what they want, sir. It is just a question of supply and demand. I must preserve a balance. Even in hell there are distinctions. At this instant. Mr. Hopkins, there is a profusion of non believers. They are more abundant than sparks, cinders and puffs of smoke. Now, if you were a churchgoer--if you were a Bible reader and prayer sayer--that would immeasurably improve your chances. And if you were a virgin lady, I would donate the money to you without demur. I am most munificent to virgin ladies. It is like the tea towels: only the scarce examples are of interest to me."

"If I just had three thousand, I could scrape by."

"Three thousand dollars? For three thousand dollars, Mr. Hopkins, I can purchase an altar boy."

"I see. Well, I won't waste any more of your time," I said in disgust, rising to my feet.

The Devil gazed up at me wistfully. "I might be prepared to offer you a thousand dollars," he murmured.

"That's very kind," I countered, happy to discover that the game wasn't yet over but concealing my happiness behind a dejected countenance. "A thousand won't solve my problem, though. Could you make it two thousand, Mr. Merendaro?"

"'A concatenation of dispassionate cosmic accidents,"' he recited, the words flowing mellilluously from his mouth. "Truly eloqueut, sir. You should have been a rhetorician. Two thousand? Jolly good. Two thousand it is. The Devil has his faults, but he is not niggardly. I will fetch a contract."

I breathed a silent sigh of relief. The little man got up from the floor, straightened the skirt of his blazer and went to a severe teakwood cabinet that stood against the far wall beneath a picture of Queen Victoria. When he returned, he held a thick bundle of currency in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other.

"Sign at the bottom, sir."

I examined the contract and found it a very peculiar document. Though it began in English, it lapsed after the opening lines into a polyglot jumble. There were words in German, Spanish, Arabic, Greek, French, Hebrew and many other languages impossible to identify.

Any qualms I might have felt were swiftly dissipated by the sight of the money in his small hand. I wrote my name and stepped back.

"Excellent," said Merendaro, peeling four $500 bills from the thick green wad and presenting them to me with a flourish.

We exchanged a couple of pleasantries, and then I managed to escape. On the street, I examined the money closely. It seemed real. I went to a bank on Massachusetts Avenue, where a teller unhesitatingly gave me ten $50s for one of the bills.

Returning to Charles Street, I paid Guilfoyle his $200 commission and described my adventure.

"I should've got twenty percent," he complained after I finished. "A lousy two hundred! I should've charged more, Arnold Hopkins, but I'm just a bighearted, easygoing slob."

•

Three days after hustling the money from the lunatic on Park Drive, I opened my store. It was a Saturday and the sun was shining. I had sent off 200 printed announcements to the betterclass dealers throughout New England. The furniture, statuary, paintings and bric-a-brac were all arranged in elegant combination. The lamps were lit and the wall-to-wall, pearl-gray broadloom freshly vacuumed. Across the gleaming front window in gold-leaf letters were the words:

Arnold Hopkins Antiquities

and on my late-Victorian oak pedestal desk, next to the blue telephone, the sales book was expectantly agape at page one. I even wore a necktie.

That day, 12 people came into the shop, including Claude Siegfried and a couple of other dealers, and no one bought anything. I was there from ten in the morning till six in the evening, without making a single sale. Oh, well, I thought, with the weather so nice, everybody must have gone away for the weekend.

But Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday weren't much of an improvement on Saturday--and, while I sold a ladderback chair and some kickshaws on Thursday, the next couple of days brought me only tight fisted browsers. For the entire week. I did $63.50. Since my expenses for the period were three or four times that amount. I didn't have to be a certified public accountant to recognize I was on the bumpy boulevard to bankruptcy.

Fortunately, I had a chance to do a $1200 job for Barney Slocum on Sunday and that lifted my spirits some.

I was visiting Guilfoyle the following day when I had to answer his phone as he tended to customers. A woman's tremulous voice came over the receiver, "Is this Guilfoyle's Antique Shop on Charles Street?"

"Yes," I affirmed cheerfully. "What can we do for you?"

"I'm moving very soon to a smaller place--my sister, Lydia, and I--so it's necessary for us to dispose of some of our choice furniture. There's a set of eight dining-room chairs, beautifully inlaid, and there's a piecrust table, and a spool bed, and two bull's-eye mirrors."

"Quite an assortment." I said, interrupting her inventory, "When would be the best time to come and see the things?"

"This morning. Yes, this morning. I have to go out in the afternoon. The address is one twenty-four Cummington Street. That's near Boston University, Mr. Guilfoyle. Can you make it before eleven o'clock?"

Through the open door, I spied Hogan hobbling back. "Yes, yes," I replied hurriedly. "What's your name, ma'am?"

"Elvira Crabtree--Mrs. I'm on the third floor."

"Wonderful. I'll be there by ten-thirty, Mrs. Crabtree," I said, and swiftly replaced the receiver in its cradle.

Seconds later, the Irishman re-entered the shop, complaining about the customers.

I offered him a word or two of commiseration and then departed.

Now, ordinarily, I wouldn't have practiced treachery on Hogan--at least not treachery on so grand a scale--but recently, he had been a source of annoyance to me. His forking over my $290 to Cousin Maurice, his consistent refusals to advance me quite nominal sums were all prickly thorns in my side. True, he had put me onto the Devil, but even there he had charged me an outrageous fee for the information--so you couldn't rate that an act of charity.

For these reasons, then, I determined to keep the phone call to myself. It was a rare chance to enjoy a little vengeance.

I climbed the stairs of number 124 Cummington Street and was met by a frail elderly woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Crabtree. I guessed her age to be over 70. She had almost transparent skin and curly while hair like the fur on a French poodle. I was shown into a tiny, elegant parlor, where I met the woman's sister, Mrs. Lydia Lambert--a blue-eyed, rouged-cheeked creature who resembled a 19th Century porcelain doll.

Although the apartment wasn't large, it contained many charming things. Mrs. Crabtree went from one piece to the next, quoting prices in her quavering voice, while I recorded them in my notebook. She knew precisely how much she had to get for each item. None of the stuff was dirt-cheap, but neither was it exorbitantly expensive.

On finishing the tour, I added my figures and found that the total came to $1700, I hemmed and hawed for a while, then said I'd be willing to take the entire lot if I could have it for $1400. But Mrs. Crabtree wasn't an easy mark. She wanted $1700 and not a nickel less. I argued, conned, pleaded--and achieved nothing. Still, it was a great bargain, so I agreed to give her the $1700 rather than risk getting laryngitis.

While we were busy with these matters, Mrs. Lambert made some tea and I was invited to sit down and have a cup. It was a good, strong brew--orange pekoe, I think--and piping hot.

"Delicious." I said, after the first sip.

"Do you like tea, Mr. Guilfoyle? How nice!" the Crabtree woman commented, smiling maternally. "These days, everyone drinks coffee--and, as far as I'm concerned, coffee's no better than gin or whiskey. All that caffeine! And they roast coffee, you know, whereas tea is dried naturally by sunlight. My late husband, Michael, drank coffee by the pot, and it gave him a terrible disposition. He caused an awful lot of trouble, my husband." Mrs. Crabtree shook her head sadly. "Even when he died, he caused trouble. Michael fell out a window, you know."

"Really?" I asked, unsure whether sympathy or congratulations was the appropriate response.

"Oh, yes. He plunged six stories and died instantly. That was eight years ago--in Springfield. Then the stupid police accused my son, Tyrone, of being responsible, just because the poor boy was in the apartment at the time it happened. Defenestration, they charged him with--which means pushing a person out a window. Isn't that a funny word--defenestration? Of course, they had to let Tynone go in the end. The whole thing was ridiculous--wasn't it, Lydia?"

"Yes, Elvira. The whole thing was ridiculous."

It seemed to me that lately I was encountering more than my share of cuckoo birds, but, remembering the profit I stood to make on their heirlooms, I grinned benignly at the ladies and swallowed another mouthful of tea.

"When Michael's head hit the sidewalk, it burst open like an overripe beefsteak tomato," said the widow, with apparent satisfaction. "That's how hard he came down. I couldn't recognize him, Mr. Guilfoyle, and we'd been married twenty-six years. Fell headfirst, he did. You could actually see his brains on the pavement. Yes, yes, Mrs. Tillman said the argument was about a cat. She insisted she heard Michael say he was going to buy one, and that would have been impossible, because Michael was very conscious of the fact that Tyrone hates those animals," Mrs. Crabtree declared sedately. "The poor boy can't bear to have cats anywhere near him, and his father knew that perfectly well, so why would he buy a cat? Ridiculous. I explained it all at the trial--how Tyrone can't even stand people who wear fur coats. When those cat-food commercials come on television, he has to close his eyes and put his fingers in his ears. It's a strange idiosyncrasy, isn't it? Believe it or not, just a pussy willow is enough to bother him--and caterpillars give him hysterics."

She set her teacup down, rose, made her way to a rope-leg table in the corner and picked up a gilt-framed photograph. "This is my Tyrone," she said, handing it to me. "He'll be thirty in August. Isn't he handsome?"

Often, in the past, I had heard people described as having "bulletheads," but until that moment, I'd never come across an authentic example of this phenomenon. Tyrone's broad skull really did look like something you could fire from a cannon. It was cylindrical and sloped upward to a point, though the torpedo effect was spoiled a bit by his fringe of wavy hair.

"Oh, yes," I agreed mendaciously. "A very handsome young man. You must be very proud of him, Mrs. Crabtree," I said, returning the photograph to her with a feeling of relief.

"I am. He's the sweetest son a mother could ever have."

We smirked at each other for a while--then, deciding it was time to wrap things up, I pulled out my checkbook and said, "I'll pay you now, but I can't collect the stuff until later, because my van is in Charlestown making deliveries."

"You're going to give me a check?" Mrs. Crabtree inquired.

"Yes--for the full amount."

"But I can't accept a check. I thought you would pay in cash, Mr. Guilfoyle."

"Cash?" I said, as though the word were Pushtu or Croatian. "No one uses cash in this day and age--not for a sum like seventeen hundred dollars, ma'am." I chuckled jovially. "But my check is just as good as cash."

The lady made a face. "I dislike checks," she said. "They're really only pieces of paper, you know."

"Oh, come, now! Everybody accepts checks, Mrs. Crabtree. It's the modern method of conducting business. Without checks, commerce in this grand country of ours would grind to a halt."

I spent the next quarter of an hour pleading with Elvira Crabtree, but I got nowhere. Old as she was, she had a will of iron. At last, sensing hostility in her manner, I capitulated. Whatever happened, I didn't want her to cancel the deal.

"You win," I said resignedly. "I'll pay you cash."

"Lovely," she said.

"I'll bring the money when I come with the van--around three o'clock."

"That late? Dear me! I don't know."

"What's wrong now, Mrs. Crabtree? Surely you don't think I carry seventeen hundred dollars in my hip pocket?"

"No, I don't," she replied, acting flustered. "It's just that another man is coming."

"Somebody else interested in the furnishings?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"Yes--a Mr. MacTavish. He'll be here at one o'clock."

"All right. All right. I'll fetch the money immediately. It won't take me forty-five minutes. By twelve o'clock, you'll have the seventeen hundred in your hands. How will that be?"

"Wonderful," she said. "I guess I'm old-fashioned, but I do worry about things."

It was a stroke of luck for me that I really could produce that much cash so promptly. Of the money I'd received from the Devil and Barney Slocum, I still had close to $2000. I was back on Cummington Street just as the Boston University chapel bells were tolling 12.

The ladies greeted me with kindly simpers. Elvira counted the money twice before finally relinquishing a neat little receipt she had written on her personal mauve stationery.

"I'll come with the truck at three o'clock. OK?"

Mrs. Crabtree assured me she would be there waiting, and her sister, Lydia, corroborated this statement with some vigorous head nodding.

Normally, the transport I used for such deals was a Ford Econoline parcel van that I hired from a man named Norman Lee, whose regular job was delivering clothes for a dry-cleaning firm. As he didn't get home until two o'clock. I had plenty of time to eat my lunch. Downstairs, I noticed a Jewish delicatessen-cafeteria opposite the house, so I ducked into it, bought a Pepsi and a pastrami on onion roll and took a seat near the window. Someone had left a Globe on the table; I read it while I ate. Forty-five minutes later, my meat finished, I grabbed the check and got up--and, as I did, I happened to look out the window.

Across the street, there was a gray U-Haul panel truck, with its back doors wide open. Into it, a burly bulletheaded man was shoving a Victorian single-end chaise longue, upholstered in cobalt-blue shot silk. I cursed under my breath and made for the exit, but to get out of the place, you had to pass through a turnstile in front of the cashier, and there was a line of five or six people waiting at that turnstile. I joined the queue. Everyone ahead of me paid for his lunch with a ten-dollar bill. It was excruciating. From where I stood, I no longer had a view out the window, yet I could clearly envision my art treasures being loaded into that yawning gray truck.

Like a maniac, I rushed through the door--and then I almost collapsed on the sidewalk. The truck had vanished. I think I went into shock. For the space of a couple of minutes, the sole idea in my brain was that I had just spent $1700 for a hot-pastrami sandwich.

I ran across the street and darted up the stairs of number 124. Without bothering to knock, I barged in.

It all looked quite different. The only piece of furniture left in the living room was a small easy chair. Perched on the edge of its seat was Elvira Crabtree.

"Why are you back so early?" she asked in her shaky voice.

"Never mind that!" I exclaimed furiously. "Where's the chaise longue, and the chest of drawers, and the marquetry chairs, and everything else I paid you for?"

She glared at me for a moment, with her mouth slightly open. Then, evidently having decided on the course she was going to take, she folded her skinny arms across her chest and declared with emphasis, "They're gone--and you better be gone, too, before my son comes back."

"What a brazen flimflam artist--and at your age, too!" I said, astonished in spite of myself. "But enough talking. Let me have that seventeen hundred, unless you want to spend your last years in a correctional institution."

Her cheeks flushed. "I'll give you nothing," she snapped defiantly. "If you want that money, you can sue me for it."

"Come on, let's have the money."

"My son is strong as an ox. You'd better get out of here before he comes back," she threatened. "Tyrone will break your neck for you--and blacken both your eyes."

I caught sight of the big lizard handbag on the window sill and moved quickly.

"No! Don't touch that!" Mrs. Crabtree cried.

However, I had already fished out the roll of bills with the red rubber band still around it.

Her face became scarlet. "That's my money," she wailed. "It doesn't belong to you anymore."

Not deigning to answer, I hurried from the apartment and skipped down the stairs.

Incredible! I thought. Who can you trust? Even old ladies are turning to crime. They probably peddle that stuff every time they move--but the buyer never gets to keep it.

•

Now and then, Maurice Fitzjames would ring me up and, in his slightly mocking manner, ask if I had solved the Ramsay puzzle yet. Being a fairly vain man, I wasn't going to admit to a lack of cunning. All the same, I couldn't formulate a workable modus operandi. It was one thing to ransack an empty house and quite another to rob a house full of women.

To further complicate matters, all my calculations were haunted by the delicate face of the girl with the indigo eyes. Wasn't it beneath contempt to steal from anyone so beautiful? Would it cause her grief? Suppose, during the theft, I encountered her. What would I do? These notions truly bothered me.

One night, I jumped into the wagon and drove to the scene of my contemplated crime, hoping another close-up view of the building's rear would give me a brain storm. Caught in the glare of the head lamps, the vaguest features stood out vividly--more so than they would have in broad daylight. The iron-studded door was revealed as a very solid barrier, much as I had suspected. Made of thick planking, it fit the jamb as snugly as a door on a Chippendale cabinet. No one was going to budge a thing like that with a jimmy and some body leverage.

As for the massive bars on the two windows, they were an equally hopeless proposition. Turning my attention to the wall on the opposite side of the door, I discerned that it was constructed of red brick.

More than satisfied with my discoveries, I emerged from the alley, drove around for a while, pondering what I had observed, and then returned home.

•

The students at last came back from their summer vacations, and for a few days it was almost busy in my little shop. I sold a mission chest of drawers, a love seat, a pair of German wood carvings, a punch bowl, a rococo chair and a limedoak Bible box. Immediately afterward, however, it got quiet again.

Running my own place, I found, was neither as profitable nor as pleasurable as I had anticipated. There just weren't enough customers. I couldn't begin to understand it. My stock wasn't garbage. It was first-class, authentic, top-quality, choice merchandise--and the prices were ludicrously low.

I fell to brooding. Hour upon hour, I would sit alone at my late-Victorian oak pedestal desk, gawking out the window like a victim of paretic catatonia. I had for years longed to own an antique store, but now that my dream had come true, I was finding it a nightmare.

Had I been a sedentary type to begin with, it might not have been so bad--but I was accustomed to hectic activity. This enforced idleness was disturbing my cerebral balance.

I was desperate for action--and for money, too. My capital had dwindled alarmingly. Occasionally. I'd meet Barney Slocum at an antique show or an auction, but he never seemed to have any acts of light-fingered larceny for me to perform.

So, with things tight and getting tighter, I had to do some hard thinking about the Ramsay deal.

At lunchtime on a Friday. I went to see Mrs. Dunlap. "Sorry to bother you. Mrs. D., but I was wondering if that furnished apartment in the basement is still vacant. I'm thinking of renting a small place for a while, because my sister, her husband and their two-year-old daughter are staying with me until they can find their own place."

"Yes, indeed, the apartment is vacant. Would you like to see it?"

"Yes," I said, delighted.

We left the lounge and descended to the cellar, she continuing to ask questions about my fictitious relatives and I continuing to answer them with the sort of specious sincerity that only a truly dedicated liar can ever hope to command. At the end of a whitewashed corridor she opened a door, saying, "It's tiny but cozy."

I glanced around and decided that was a fair description. There was a kitchen, a parlor and a bedroom--all so small, I'm sure I could have broad-jumped from one end of the place to the other without straining myself. Even a Cistercian or a Trappist might have found the dimensions a trifle claustrophobic.

"Looks very comfortable," I said heartily, wondering what I was letting myself in for.

"Eighty a month, Mr. Hopkins." my companion said, cheerfully. "I charged the Harbachs a hundred, but they were strangers. Of course, any jobs you do. I'll deduct your fees from the rent--which will make it even cheaper, won't it? And things always need mending." Mrs. Dunlap paused, batted her eyes, then added, "It's what's called an efficiency apartment. You'll have complete privacy."

"I usually do repairwork at home--fixing small pieces of furniture, and so forth. Would I be able to do that here?" I asked.

"Oh, I guess that would be all right."

"It will involve some hamnering and drilling, but I'll try to keep the noise down--and I won't work after eight in the evening."

"I see." Mrs. Dunlap gazed pensively at the end of her feather duster. "Well, Elaine Alexander, who's an awful fussbudget, is liable to complain, but I suppose I can do a little shifting and shunting. She's in the room above, you understand. Elaine wouldn't mind being relocated to number three, though, because she's often mentioned she would like a view of the elms on the avenue. But what will I do with Mrs. Farnham? Mrs. Farnham can't stand noise, either--which is why she won't object to leaving number three. The morning traffic gives her migraine for the rest of the day. Oh, I know--Lucy! Lucy Tomberg. She's the answer to our problem. Mr. Hopkins. Why in the world didn't I think of her before? I'll install Lucy in Elaine's room and transfer Mrs. Farnham to Lucy's room on the second floor. Miss Tomberg will be pleased as punch. She's always hated climbing those stairs."

Striving to keep pace with the landlady's swift and complex peregrinations, I inquired. "But won't Lucy Tomberg be bothered by my banging and sawing?"

She laughed lightly. "Lucy? Heavens, no! Lucy's stone-deaf, the poor dear. We have to write everything down for her on a memo pad that she carries in her pocketbook."

"Ah," I murmured. "There's no difficulty, then. Would it be OK if I moved in tomorrow?"

"Certainly. The sooner the better. Having you here will be very convenient. So much gets broken--toasters, door locks, phonographs, electric fans, sewing machines--and the ladies become unbelievably cross."

"I'll do what I can to keep things in good repair," I said gallantly.

In Lenny Miller's Western Avenue junk yard. I found a four-pound short-handled sledge, a brick hammer, a crowbar, five good tungsten-carbide masonry drill bits and a couple of hardly used claw chisels. I then drove downtown to Guilfoyle's to borrow his heavy-duty electric hand drill.

"Hogan, can you lend me the drill? I need it for a job I'm doing."

"What kind of job? Opening a strongbox?"

"No, nothing that romantic, Hogan. I have to hang a huge barbola mirror in a ranch house out in Sudbury and the wall is brick."

Guilfoyle sighed, fiddled with the peak of his rumpled baseball cap, scowled, pushed himself away from the desk and reluctantly got to his feet. "The Yellow Pages has long lists of guys who rent power tools." he informed me. "Every time you come in here, you're looking for something. I ain't the Public Works Department. If you're going to tackle them kind of jobs, loosen up and buy the equipment."

He hobbled back to his disordered workbench and began rummaging noisily among the broken objects and grimy hardware. After a minute, he found the drill and gave it to me.

"Don't make holes in the bricks. Drill in the mortar," he cautioned. "This things is old. You work it too hard and the motor will burn out. If that happens. I'll have to buy another one, so you can stay in business."

"Thanks, Hogan. I appreciate your kindness and magnanimity. Don't worry. I'll treat it like it was my own."

"Might as well. You use it more than I do, anyway," he retorted.

•

With a small suitcase and a large tool chest. I moved into Mrs. Dunlap's subterranean efficiency apartment the following day. The strategy prompting this relocation was neither subtle nor complicated. I meant to punch a fair-sized hole in the wall of my new residence and thereby create a handy route into the cellar of the Ramsay house next door.

Loath to waste a moment. I commenced operations that very afternoon. I resolved to use the bed as a screen for my burrowing, since its headboard was big and solid. I dragged it into the middle of the floor. On that side of the room, there was a wainscoting. I attacked it with a heavy screwdriver and a crowbar. The molding, eight matchboard slats and a section of the baseboard all came away quite easily. Beneath the wainscoting I found a water-stained layer of rough plaster, and under that, some wooden laths. The plaster was no problem, but the laths, because they were tacked to studs well inside the wall, had to be severed one at a time with a backsaw.

Once I had these eliminated, I was face to face with the brickwork--an expanse of it some three feet by 30 inches. After studying its dusty surface for a few minutes, I decided to quit for the day. If the deaf woman hadn't yet moved in upstairs, the electric drill might perturb Elaine what's-her-name. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

Brick walls, I soon learned, are not easily dismantled. Ancient as the one in my basement bedroom was, it put up a fierce resistance.

Actually, there were two walls, one for each building, with a cavity between them. The next afternoon, I knocked a foot-square hole in the first of these. It was hard work, made even more so by the necessity to labor in relative quiet. Though Lucy Tomberg was deaf, other people in the house weren't. By five o'clock, when I laid down my hammer, chisel, drill and crowbar, I was exhausted.

•

I devoted most of the afternoon to hacking away at the obdurate cellar wall, managing in this time to dislodge about 30 bricks and an enormous quantity of mortar dust.

I was feeling gloomy and I couldn't face Mrs. Dunlap's dungeon--so I decided to sleep at Bay State Road. Three seconds after I entered the apartment, the telephone started ringing frantically. It was as though it had been waiting for me to arrive. Maurice was the caller.

"Hey, where the hell have you been?" he asked in a resentful tone. "I've been trying to contact you for two days. What's going on?"

"I've been busy," I said.

"How about the treasure house, Arnold? Have you solved the problem yet?"

"I think so."

"Great! Terrific! When's it going to be?"

"I'm not sure, Maurice--a few days."

"Fine. What's the plan? The roof? Or are you going to use a cane on the front door?"

"Never mind how I'm going to handle it," I said, knowing that if I revealed I was constructing a tunnel into the cellar, he wouldn't be satisfied with just a duffel bag of bric-a-brac. "That's my concern, not yours."

"You can't be serious," he replied, sounding astonished. "I'm your partner, the one who found the setup in the first place--remember? Come on, be reasonable."

"As long as the result is good, what difference does it make how I go about it? I'm taking the risks, so I'll take the precautions."

My cousin sighed like a martyr under the scourge and declared, "Very well, if that's how you want it--but you've got to tell me what night you're doing the job, Arnold. That's absolutely essential."

"Why--so you can establish a nice, cast-iron alibi? I suppose you'll be at a house party with a bunch of solid citizens, while I'm sweating it out."

"Is that wrong? You take your precautions, why the hell shouldn't I take mine? Besides, if you bungle the thing, I can help you a lot more if I'm out walking around than I can from an adjoining cell. Give me a couple of days' notice, at least."

He then said goodbye and the conversation ended.

I was taking off my shoes when the door buzzer sounded. Answering it, I found Barney Slocum on the landing. Perspiration dotted his brow and he was wheezing like a Saint Bernard in July.

"Those stairs ... they could give you an infarction," he gasped. "How come there ain't an elevator, Arnold? Isn't there a city ordinance that mandates elevators in a structure this high?"

"It's only five stories," I said. "Come on in and rest yourself. Want a glass of sherry?" I asked, while he strove to regain his breath.

"Nah ... I just had a whiskey sour over in the motel. I been to ... to Saint Elizabeth's. You know who's there ... in the emergency ward ... in extremely critical condition?"

"No. Who?"

Barney's black-bearded visage became funereal. "Guilfoyle," he said.

"Guilfoyle? Did he have an accident?"

"You could call it that, maybe. Some punk mugged him in a hallway on Westland Avenue. During the scuffle, Hogan fell out a window ... four floors, into a parking lot. He's busted up bad--lacerations, multicontusions and acute brain damage."

Taken aback by this grim news, I murmured, "That's awful. The poor old bastard."

"Yeah ... it's a shame." Barney pulled a handkerchief from his pepper-and-salt sports jacket and swabbed his forehead. "Between you and I, Hogan isn't going to make it. His injuries are too massive. They had to give him four units of blood, just to keep him breathing."

"I can't believe it."

"This thing occurred around five P.M. He got a call to come and look at some Mettlach steins--regimentals--so the went there and this guy grabbed him. It must've been a terrific altercation. Anyhow, Guilfoyle lost his balance, I guess, and catapulted over the edge of the window sill. Those junkies--they're all psychopathologically insane." Barney wiped the back of his neck. "The one clue the detectives have is that Guilfoyle said the mugger looked like Frankenstein."

He then expatiated on the Irishman's injuries--ruptured organs, fractured limbs, shattered bones--until I was getting sick to my stomach. All I could think of was that the same thing might well have happened to me, the night I was walking the plank outside Ambrose Julian's window.

At last, my visitor got up and departed, leaving me awfully depressed. Guilfoyle and I had our differences, but I knew I was going to miss the man very much. Violence seemed to be everywhere. The Englishman, Wilfred Sloan--he had died only a few blocks away from Westland Avenue. Life was a fragile ornament.

Early the next morning. I phoned the hospital, but as soon as I mentioned Hogan's name, I was told he had died during the night.

Barney went with me to the wake. We bought a $20 wreath--one composed of dark-red roses. Staring down into the coffin at the old man's wrinkled face, I experienced a spooky sensation. I imagined he was still alive. I imagined he was conscious but unable to move. I imagined he was trying to speak, trying to tell me something vitally important. Chilled by these fancies. I hurried abruptly to my seat.

Twelve hours later, on a crisp fall day, they buried him at Mount Hope Cemetery.

•

My assault on the brickwork was gathering momentum. I toiled like a quarry slave--chiseling, drilling, pounding. As each little brick came loose, I carried it out to the kitchen and stacked it in the cupboard. The pile grew steadily. By the evening of the day of Hogan's funeral, I had finished with the first wall and started on the second.

Saturday, while I was polishing a Persian repoussé brass bowl at the sink in the rear of my store, two tall men came in. Both had fair hair, blue-agate eyes and florid faces. Cops, I thought, as my heartbeat accelerated.

"You Arnold Hopkins?" the burlier of the pair asked.

"Yes, sir," I replied, affecting a bonhomie I didn't really feel. "What can I do for you?"

"Detective Graham--Cambridge Police Department," he said, flashing a badge. "This is Detective Boyce. Could we see your license to sell secondhand goods?"

I almost sighed with relief. Compared with a burglary charge, a license violation was a mere fribble.

Smiling broadly, I answered, "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I can't show it to you because I haven't received it yet. My application went in two months ago. I can't understand the delay."

Detective Graham's pink features manifested annoyance. "Mr. Hopkins," he said, "if you don't have a license, you're not supposed to open up. Without a license, you're not allowed to do business. You're breaking the law."

"But I applied--"

"That don't mean a thing. The license hasn't been granted you. The city hasn't given you permission to sell secondhand goods, and everything here is secondhand--right? So where the hell did you get the idea you could start operating?"

"Since I have impeccable references, I didn't anticipate problems. Everybody in the trade knows I'm an honest man. I figured getting an OK was just a bureaucratic formality."

"Yeah? Well, I got bad news for you. The bureaucrats rejected your application. The board ain't going to issue you a license."

I lifted my eyebrows in disbelief. "Why would they do that? There must be a mistake."

"I don't know why they did it," the detective growled irritably. "You have to close this store down."

"I don't understand. I included a check with my application. Can it be a matter of money, gentlemen?"

"Don't get cute," Graham snapped.

"What do you mean?" I asked innocently.

The other detective, who till then hadn't spoken a word, said in a contemptuous voice. "He means that if you offer bribes to police officers, you can be put in jail."

"Bribes? Who mentioned bribes? I was talking about the license fee, that's all. I don't offer bribes--never!"

"Yeah, yeah," retorted Graham wearily. "You're an honest man. we know. Goodbye. Mr. Hopkins. Lock your door tight and keep it that way--because every time we find it ain't locked, you're going to be served a summons."

With this explicit threat, the two of them marched out, leaving me rather shaken. I bolted the door, switched off the light and sat down to consider my latest misfortune.

How could they discriminate against me? How could they refuse my application? What grounds did they have? Half an hour later, after a telephone call to city hall, I had the answers to these questions--though they didn't ease my anxiety.

According to the ordinance, as I understood it, any adult who is not a convicted criminal can obtain a secondhand-goods license simply by filling out a form and paying a fee. However, in my case, the board chose to ignore the limitations of this law and, instead, arrogantly arrogated powers to which it had no right whatsoever. It turned me down because of two youthful escapades--neither of which ever got as far as a courtroom, let alone a conviction.

I realized I was in a perilous position, because with a two-year lease at five bills a month, plus an additional $1500 tied up in deposits, I just couldn't afford to close down. It would be a calamity--particularly since this Miltiades Poso wasn't the sort of man who would tear up a contract on account of a tenant's bad luck.

•

Money, money, money. Recognizing that I absolutely had to acquire a bundle of it. I worked harder than ever on the cellar wall. It was essential at this stage for me to be extra quiet, since I was not into the second of the two bulkheads. After all my drudgery, I certainly didn't want the Ramsay sisters to detect strange noises in their basement and call the police.

Here, luck came along to lend me a helping hand. Saturday afternoon, a team of tree surgeons appeared in the alley and, barely ten yards from my kitchen window, felled and dismembered a huge dead elm. The racket of their chain saws enabled me to drill for two hours with no fear of being heard by anyone. That night. I wrenched out the last few bricks. All that stood between me and my Golconda was a piece of half-inch plywood, the paneling in the other cellar. Weary from my hours of laboring. I quit at that point and pushed the bed back in place.

The following day, I easily detached the plywood section--a sheet 40 inches from top to bottom and more than two feet wide. Working fast, I converted this panel into a crude door by securing it to a wall stud with three small butterfly hinges. I pushed my newly finished portal open and entered the Ramsay residence almost as casually as one of the family.

The next thing I knew, I was in the Ramsay basement. The floor, like the wall, was composed of rough brick. I was pleased to note that my sneakers left no discernible footprints.

For the next five minutes. I wandered around the place, doing my best to etch the layout on my memory. If I had to decamp in a hurry, it wouldn't help to take a wrong turn or stumble over a fuel-oil connection. Cautiously. I climbed the wooden staircase to the ground floor, but I made no attempt to go farther than the landing. A close examination of the door convinced me it was neither locked with a key nor bolted on the opposite side. I retraced my steps, crept back into the tunnel and shut and hooked the piece of plywood. Then I tacked an old Army blanket over it, so that light from my bedroom wouldn't seep through any cracks.

Throughout this reconnaissance, the house above me had been as still as a mausoleum.

The exciting conclusion of "The Bric-a-Brac Man" will appear in the November issue.