The box was locked and the key was right there next to it in the drawer. Go figure some people. I unlocked the box with its little key-I could have opened it almost as quickly without the key, but why show off when there’s no one around to ooh and ahh? I was going to leave the jewelry, although it did look awfully nice, but a pair of ruby earrings proved irresistible, and into my pocket they went. Would she miss one pair of earrings out of a whole box full of jewelry? And, if she did, wouldn’t she think she’d misplaced them? What kind of burglar, after all, would take a couple of earrings and leave everything else?

A cagey one. A burglar whose presence in the Charlemagne that night was a matter of record, and who thus had to avoid stealing anything that would be conspicuous by its absence. I did take the ruby earrings-my profession, after all, can never be 100 percent risk-free-but when I came upon a sheaf of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills in J. C. Appling’s dresser drawer, I left them there.

Not without effort, let me admit. There wasn’t a fortune there, $2,800 at a rough count, but money is money and you just can’t beat cash. When you steal things you have to fence them, but with cash you just keep it and spend the stuff at leisure.

But he might notice that it was gone. It might in fact be the first thing he checked upon returning to the apartment, and if it was missing he’d know immediately that he hadn’t misplaced it, that it hadn’t walked off of its own accord.

I thought of taking a couple of bills, figuring they wouldn’t be missed, but how much is too much? It’s more trouble making such nice distinctions than the cash warranted. Easier to leave the money where it was.

I hit paydirt in the den.

There was a bookcase there, but nothing like Onderdonk’s library. Some reference works, a shelf full of stamp catalogs, a few books on guns, and a cheap set of reprint editions of the novels of Zane Grey. Bargain-table stuff at Barnegat Books, forty cents each, three for a buck.