Admittedly, it’s not the most closely held secret in the world. I have, after all, what they call a criminal record, and if it weren’t a matter of record they’d call it something else. I haven’t been convicted of anything in a long time, but every now and then I get arrested, and a couple of times in recent years I’ve had my name in the papers, and not as a seller of rare volumes.

I told myself, like Scarlett (another fine name for a cat), that I’d think about it later, and turned my attention to the book he placed on the counter. It was a small volume, bound in blue cloth, containing the selected poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802-39). It had been part of the inventory when I bought the store. I had, at one time or another, read most of the poems in it-Praed was a virtuoso at meter and rhyme, if not terribly profound-and it was the sort of book I liked having around. No one had ever expressed any interest in it, and I’d thought I’d own it forever.

It was not without a pang that I rang up $5.41, made change of ten, and slipped my old friend Praed into a brown paper bag. “I’m kind of sorry to see that book go,” I admitted. “It was here when I bought the store.”

“It must be difficult,” he said. “Parting with cherished volumes.”

“It’s business,” I said. “If I’m not willing to sell them, I shouldn’t have them on the shelves.”

“Even so,” he said, and sighed gently. He had a thin face, hollow in the cheeks, and a white mustache so perfect it looked to have been trimmed one hair at a time. “Mr. Rhodenbarr,” he said, his guileless blue eyes searching mine, “I just want to say two words to you. Abel Crowe.”

If he hadn’t commented on the appropriateness of Raffles’s name, I might have heard those two words not as a name at all but as an adjective and a noun.

“Abel Crowe,” I said. “I haven’t heard that name in years.”

“He was a friend of mine, Mr. Rhodenbarr.”