Free Palm for Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman Page A

call them? I shall say nothing at all of tonight’s events, and nothing of your—uh—career so long as I hear sometime tomorrow that Lady Palisbury has found her missing diamond.”
    “Those are your only terms?” He looked taken aback.
    “Almost. Have you robbed any other people here as well?”
    He shook his head. “It’s not my technique. I never commit myself until just before I’m ready to leave a place—it’s too dangerous—but by that time I know precisely who to rob and how. I do my rehearsing ahead of time,” he admitted. “Like tonight. As a matter of fact I’ve spent the last three nights out on the roofs—”
    “Roofs!” she exclaimed.
    “Yes, testing exits and entrances and generally getting the lay of the land. If you must know,” he went on, “I overheard you telling the night porter a few hours ago that you had emeralds to put in the safe. Your voice carried, and I was in the solarium. I decided I’d better pay a visit ahead of schedule and see what you have. Most peopledon’t bother with safes, they never believe anything will happen to their jewels.”
    This had the ring of truth. “And Lady Palisbury?”
    He sighed. “No sense of property, that woman. She left her diamond out on her balcony two nights ago. Simply left it on the table.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “Not even sporting of her. I ask you, what was a man to do?”
    “Yes, I can see the temptation,” said Mrs. Pollifax, nodding. “Tell me, how did you happen to choose this particular profession?”
    “Is this part of the deal?” he asked darkly.
    “No, but I’m terribly curious,” she confided. “I’d feel so much more satisfied knowing.”
    He made a face. “There’s no point in going into it, it’s an extremely dull and vulgar story.”
    “But I enjoy dull and vulgar stories,” she told him.
    He shrugged distastefully. “If you insist, then. To be perfectly blunt about it, my name is not only
not
Burke-Jones but my father was a locksmith. Soho in London. Oh, very low caste,” he said with a scowl. “As the eldest of six children—I can’t possibly describe the accent I spoke with, the English very properly say that speech is breeding—my father taught me his trade so that by the time I was fifteen I could pick a mean lock.” He sighed. “He went crooked just once, my father. For the sake of the money and God knows he needed it. Somebody offered him a small fortune to open a safe and—well, he was caught and died in jail. Of grief, I think. And that, dear lady, stirred in me a hatred of all ‘systems’—that an honest trade brought debts and one fall from grace brought death and ruin.”
    “Life isn’t fair, no,” she agreed. “So it’s anger that motivated you?”
    “A very typical juvenile anger,” he admitted, “but serving its purpose. I left school, totted up my assets—negligible—and decided to change myself. Went to actingschool. No Oxford or Eton for me. No Hamlet, either. Acting school trimmed off the rough edges, put the h’s back in my speech and removed the accent. Then I went off to the Riviera in borrowed clothes and made my first heist. But you see by the time the anger wore off I was too damned good at my trade to do anything else. There’s nothing else I
can
do.”
    “Overspecialization,” said Mrs. Pollifax, nodding sympathetically.
    “A certain amount of hedonism, too,” he admitted.
    “I have often thought,” she said idly, “that police and criminals have a great deal in common, the only difference being that they’re on opposite sides of the law.”
    “Rather a large difference,” he pointed out dryly.
    She shook her head. “Purely one of intention, I’m sure. Both live by wit and deduction, don’t they, and share a common isolation? It’s always struck me that Sherlock Holmes took far more pleasure in talking to Professor Moriarty than to Doctor Watson.”
    He gave her a quizzical glance. “You’ve rather an unusual way of looking at