Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who Smelled Smoke
(with Lynne Wood Block)
From "The Collected Mystery Stories"
I was gearing up to poke the bell a second time when the door opened. I'd been expecting Karl Bellermann, and instead I found myself facing a woman with soft blonde hair framing an otherwise severe, high-cheek-boned face. She looked as if she'd been repeatedly disappointed in life but was damned if she would let it get to her.
I gave my name and she nodded in recognition. "Yes, Mr. Rhodenbarr," she said. "Karl is expecting you. I can't disturb him now as he's in the library with his books. If you'll come into the sitting room I'll bring you some coffee, and Karl will be with you in-" she consulted her watch "-in just twelve minutes."
In twelve minutes it would be noon, which was when Karl had told me to arrive. I'd taken a train from New York and a cab from the train station, and good connections had got me there twelve minutes early, and evidently I could damn well cool my heels for all twelve of those minutes.
I was faintly miffed, but I wasn't much surprised. Karl Bellermann, arguably the country's leading collector of crime fiction, had taken a cue from one of the genre's greatest creations, Rex Stout's incomparable Nero Wolfe. Wolfe, an orchid fancier, spent an inviolate two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon with his plants, and would brook no disturbance at such times. Bellermann, no more flexible in real life than Wolfe was in fiction, scheduled even longer sessions with his books, and would neither greet visitors nor take phone calls while communing with them.
The sitting room where the blonde woman led me was nicely appointed, and the chair where she planted me was comfortable enough. The coffee she poured was superb, rich and dark and winy. I picked up the latest issue of Ellery Queen and was halfway through a new Peter Lovesey story and just finishing my second cup of coffee when the door opened and Karl Bellermann strode in.
"Bernie," he said. "Bernie Rhodenbarr."
"Karl."
"So good of you to come. You had no trouble finding us?"
"I took a taxi from the train station. The driver knew the house."
He laughed. "I'll bet he did. And I'll bet I know what he called it. 'Bellermann's Folly,' yes?"
"Well," I said.
"Please, don't spare my feelings. That's what all the local rustics call it. They hold in contempt that which they fail to understand. To their eyes, the architecture is overly ornate, and too much a mixture of styles, at once a Rhenish castle and an alpine chalet. And the library dwarfs the rest of the house, like the tail that wags the dog. Your driver is very likely a man who owns a single book, the Bible given to him for Confirmation and unopened ever since. That a man might choose to devote to his books the greater portion of his house-and, indeed, the greater portion of his life-could not fail to strike him as an instance of remarkable eccentricity." His eyes twinkled. "Although he might phrase it differently."
Indeed he had. "The guy's a nut case," the driver had reported confidently. "One look at his house and you'll see for yourself. He's only eating with one chopstick."
A few minutes later I sat down to lunch with Karl Bellermann, and there were no chopsticks in evidence. He ate with a fork, and he was every bit as agile with it as the fictional orchid fancier. Our meal consisted of a crown loin of pork with roasted potatoes and braised cauliflower, and Bellermann put away a second helping of everything.
I don't know where he put it. He was a long lean gentlemen in his mid-fifties, with a full head of iron-gray hair and a mustache a little darker than the hair on his head. He'd dressed rather elaborately for a day at home with his books-a tie, a vest, a Donegal tweed jacket-and I didn't flatter myself that it was on my account. I had a feeling he chose a similar get-up seven days a week, and I wouldn't have been surprised to learn he put on a black tie every night for dinner.
He carried most of the lunchtime conversation, talking about books he'd read, arguing the relative merits of Hammett and Chandler, musing on the likelihood that female private eyes in fiction had come to outnumber their real-life counterparts. I didn't feel called upon to contribute much, and Mrs. Bellermann never uttered a word except to offer dessert (apfelkuchen, lighter than air and sweeter than revenge) and coffee (the mixture as before but a fresh pot of it, and seemingly richer and darker and stronger and winier this time around). Karl and I both turned down a second piece of the cake and said yes to a second cup of coffee, and then Karl turned significantly to his wife and gave her a formal nod.
"Thank you, Eva," he said. And she rose, all but curtseyed, and left the room.
"She leaves us to our brandy and cigars," he said, "but it's too early in the day for spirits, and no one smokes in Schloss Bellermann."
"Schloss Bellermann?"
"A joke of mine. If the world calls it Bellermann's Folly, why shouldn't Bellermann call it his castle? Eh?"
"Why not?"
He looked at his watch. "But let me show you my library," he said, "and then you can show me what you've brought me."
Diagonal mullions divided the library door into a few dozen diamond-shaped sections, each set with a mirrored pane of glass. The effect was unusual, and I asked if they were one-way mirrors.
"Like the ones in police stations?" He raised an eyebrow. "Your past is showing, eh, Bernie? But no, it is even more of a trick than the police play on criminals. On the other side of the mirror-" he clicked a fingernail against a pane "-is solid steel an inch and a half thick. The library walls themselves are reinforced with steel sheeting. The exterior walls are concrete, reinforced with steel rods. And look at this lock."
It was a Poulard, its mechanism intricate beyond description, its key one that not a locksmith in ten thousand could duplicate.
"Pickproof," he said. "They guarantee it."
"So I understand."
He slipped the irreproducible key into the impregnable lock and opened the unbreachable door. Inside was a room two full stories tall, with a system of ladders leading to the upper levels. The library, as tall as the house itself, had an eighteen-foot ceiling paneled in light and dark wood in a sunburst pattern. Wall-to-wall carpet covered the floor, and oriental rugs in turn covered most of the broadloom. The walls, predictably enough, were given over to floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, with the shelves them-selves devoted entirely to books. There were no paintings, no Chinese ginger jars, no bronze animals, no sets of armor, no cigar humidors, no framed photographs of family members, no hand-colored engravings of Victoria Falls, no hunting trophies, no Lalique figurines, no Limoges boxes. Nothing but books, sometimes embraced by bronze bookends, but mostly extending without interruption from one end of a section of shelving to the other.
"Books," he said reverently-and, I thought, unnecessarily. I own a bookstore, I can recognize books when I see them.
"Books," I affirmed.
"I believe they are happy."
"Happy?"
"You are surprised? Why should objects lack feelings, especially objects of such a sensitive nature as books? And, if a book can have feelings, these books ought to be happy. They are owned and tended by a man who cares deeply for them. And they are housed in a room perfectly designed for their safety and comfort."
"It certainly looks that way."
He nodded. "Two windows only, on the north wall, of course, so that no direct sunlight ever enters the room. Sunlight fades book spines, bleaches the ink of a dust jacket. It is a book's enemy, and it cannot gain entry here."
"That's good," I said. "My store faces south, and the building across the street blocks some of the sunlight, but a little gets through. I have to make sure I don't keep any of the better volumes where the light can get at them."
"You should paint
the windows black," he said, "or hang thick curtains. Or both."
"Well, I like to keep an eye on the street," I said. "And my cat likes to sleep in the sunlit window."
He made a face. "A cat? In a room full of books?"
"He'd be safe," I said, "even in a room full of rocking chairs. He's a Manx. And he's an honest working cat. I used to have mice damaging the books, and that stopped the day he moved in."
"No mice can get in here," Bellermann said, "and neither can cats, with their hair and their odor. Mold cannot attack my books, or mildew. You feel the air?"
"The air?"
"A constant sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit," he said. "On the cool side, but perfect for my books. I put on a jacket and I am perfectly comfortable. And, as you can see, most of them are already wearing their jackets. Dust jackets! Ha ha!"
"Ha ha," I agreed.
"The humidity is sixty percent," he went on. "It never varies. Too dry and the glue dries out. Too damp and the pages rot. Neither can happen here."
"That's reassuring."
"I would say so. The air is filtered regularly, with not only air conditioning but special filters to remove pollutants that are truly microscopic. No book could ask for a safer or more comfortable environ-ment."
I sniffed the air. It was cool, and neither too moist nor too dry, and as immaculate as modern science could make it. My nose wrinkled, and I picked up a whiff of something.
"What about fire?" I wondered.
"Steel walls, steel doors, triple-glazed windows with heat-resistant bulletproof glass. Special insulation in the walls and ceiling and floor. The whole house could burn to the ground, Bernie, and this room and its contents would remain unaffected. It is one enormous fire-safe."
"But if the fire broke out in here..."
"How? I don't smoke, or play with matches. There are no cupboards holding piles of oily rags, no bales of moldering hay to burst into spontaneous combustion."
"No, but-"
"And even if there were a fire," he said, "it would be extinguished almost before it had begun." He gestured and I looked up and saw round metal gadgets spotted here and there in the walls and ceiling.
I said, "A sprinkler system? Somebody tried to sell me one at the store once and I threw him out on his ear. Fire's rough on books, but water's sheer disaster. And those things are like smoke alarms, they can go off for no good reason, and then where are you? Karl, I can't believe-"
"Please," he said, holding up a hand. "Do you take me for an idiot?"
"No, but-"
"Do you honestly think I would use water to forestall fire? Credit me with a little sense, my friend."
"I do, but-"
"There will be no fire here, and no flood, either. A book in my library will be, ah, what is the expression? Snug as a slug in a rug."
"A bug," I said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"A bug in a rug," I said. "I think that's the expression."
His response was a shrug, the sort you'd get, I suppose, from a slug in a rug. "But we have no time for language lessons," he said. "From two to six I must be in the library with my books, and it is already one-fifty."
"You're already in the library."
"Alone," he said. "With only my books for company. So. What have you brought me?"
I opened my briefcase, withdrew the padded mailer, reached into that like Little Jack Horner and brought forth a plum indeed. I looked up in time to catch an unguarded glimpse of Bellermann's face, and it was a study. How often do you get to see a man salivate less than an hour after a big lunch?
He extended his hands and I placed the book in them. "Fer-de-Lance," he said reverently. "Nero Wolfe's debut, the rarest and most desirable book in the entire canon. Hardly the best of the novels, I wouldn't say. It took Stout several books fully to refine the character of Wolfe and to hone the narrative edge of Archie Goodwin. But the brilliance was present from the beginning, and the book is a prize."
He turned the volume over in his hands, inspected the dust jacket fore and aft. "Of course I own a copy," he said. "A first edition in dust wrapper. This dust wrapper is nicer than the one I have."
"It's pretty cherry," I said.
"Pristine," he allowed, "or very nearly so. Mine has a couple of chips and an unfortunate tear mended quite expertly with tape. This does look virtually perfect."
"Yes."
"But the jacket's the least of it, is it not? This is a special copy."
"It is."
He opened it, and his large hands could not have been gentler had he been repotting orchids. He found the title page and read, '"For Franklin Roosevelt, with the earnest hope of a brighter tomorrow. Best regards from Rex Todhunter Stout.'" He ran his forefinger over the inscription. "It's Stout's writing," he announced. "He didn't inscribe many books, but I have enough signed copies to know his hand. And this is the ultimate association copy, isn't it?"
"You could say that."
"I just did. Stout was a liberal Democrat, ultimately a World Federalist. FDR, like the present incumbent, was a great fan of detective stories. It always seems to be the Democratic presidents who relish a good mystery. Eisenhower preferred Westerns, Nixon liked history and biography, and I don't know that Reagan read at all."
He sighed and closed the book. "Mr. Gulbenkian must regret the loss of this copy," he said.
"I suppose he must."
"A year ago," he said, "when I learned he'd been burglarized and some of his best volumes stolen, I wondered what sort of burglar could possibly know what books to take. And of course I thought of you."
I didn't say anything.
"Tell me your price again, Bernie. Refresh my memory."
I named a figure.
"It's high," he said.
"The book's unique," I pointed out.
"I know that. I know, too, that I can never show it off. I cannot tell anyone I have it. You and I alone will know that it is in my possession."
"It'll be our little secret, Karl."
"Our little secret. I can't even insure it. At least Gulbenkian was insured, eh? But he can never replace the book. Why didn't you sell it back to him?"
"I might," I said, "if you decide you don't want it."
"But of course I want it!" He might have said more but a glance at his watch reminded him of the time. "Two o'clock," he said, motioning me toward the door. "Eva will have my afternoon coffee ready. And you will excuse me, I am sure, while I spend the afternoon with my books, including this latest specimen."
"Be careful with it," I said.
"Bernie! I'm not going to read it. I have plenty of reading copies, should I care to renew my acquaintance with Fer-de-Lance. I want to hold it, to be with it. And then at six o'clock we will conclude our business, and I will give you a dinner every bit as good as the lunch you just had. And then you can return to the city."
He ushered me out, and moments later he disappeared into the library again, carrying a tray with coffee in one of those silver pots they used to give you on trains. There was a cup on the tray as well, and a sugar bowl and creamer, along with a plate of shortbread cookies. I stood in the hall and watched the library door swing shut, heard the lock turn and the bolt slide home. Then I turned, and there was Karl's wife, Eva.
"I guess he's really going to spend the next four hours in there," I said.
"He always does."
"I'd go for a drive," I said, "but I don't have a car. I suppose I could go for a walk. It's a beautiful day, bright and sunny. Of course your husband doesn't allow sunlight into the library, but I suppose he lets it go where it wants in the rest of the neighborhood."
That drew a smile from her.
"If I'd thought ahead," I said, "I'd have brought something to read. Not that there aren't a few thousand books in the house, but they're all locked away with Karl."
"Not all of them," she said. "My husband's collection is limited to books published before 1975, along with the more recent work of a few of his very favorite autho
rs. But he buys other contemporary crime novels as well, and keeps them here and there around the house. The bookcase in the guest room is well stocked."
"That's good news. As far as that goes, I was in the middle of a magazine story."
"In Ellery Queen, wasn't it? Come with me, Mr. Rhodenbarr, and I'll-"
"Bernie."
"Bernie," she said, and colored slightly, those dangerous cheekbones turning from ivory to the pink you find inside a seashell. "I'll show you where the guest room is, Bernie, and then I'll bring you your magazine."
The guest room was on the second floor, and its glassed-in bookcase was indeed jam-packed with recent crime fiction. I was just getting drawn into the opening of one of Jeremiah Healy's Cuddy novels when Eva Bellermann knocked on the half-open door and came in with a tray quite like the one she'd brought her husband. Coffee in a silver pot, a gold-rimmed bone china cup and saucer, a matching plate holding shortbread cookies. And, keeping them company, the issue of EQMM I'd been reading earlier.