Chauncey followed Dortmunder inside, shutting the door behind himself and gestured at the staircase, saying, “We’ll go up to the sitting room.” He had one of those Midlantic accents that Americans think of as English and Englishmen think American. Dortmunder thought he sounded like a phony.
They went up to the sitting room, which turned out to be a living room without a television set, where Chauncey urged Dortmunder into a comfortable velvet-covered wing chair and asked him what he’d like to drink. “Bourbon,” Dortmunder told him. “With ice.”
“Good,” Chauncey said. “I’ll join you.”
The bar – complete with small refrigerator – was in the cabinetry in the far wall, beneath an expanse of a well filled bookcase. While Chauncey poured, Dortmunder looked at the rest of the room, the Persian rug and the antique-looking tables and chairs, the large ornate lamps, and the paintings on the walls. There were several of these, mostly small, except for one big one – about three feet wide, maybe not quite so high – which showed a medieval scene; a skinny fellow with a round belly, wearing varicolored jester’s clothes and a cap and bells, was dancing along a road, playing a small flute. The road led down in darkness to the right. Following the jester along the road were a whole bunch of people, all of them with tense staring faces. They were apparently supposed to represent a great variety of human types: a fat monk, a tall knight in armor, a short fat woman with a market basket, and so on.
Chauncey brought Dortmunder’s drink, saying, “You like that picture?”
Dortmunder neither liked nor disliked pictures. “Sure,” he said.
“It’s a Veenbes,” Chauncey said, and he stood beside Dortmunder’s chair, smiling thoughtfully at the painting, as though reconsidering its position on the wall, or his attitude toward it, or even the fact of his ownership of the thing. “You’ve heard of Veenbes?”
“No.” The bourbon was delicious, a very smooth brand. Dortmunder hadn’t recognized the shape of the bottle when Chauncey was pouring.
“An early Flemish master,” Chauncey said. “A contemporary of Brueghel, possibly an influence, nobody’s quite sure. This is Folly Leads Man to Ruin.” Chauncey sipped bourbon, and chuckled, nodding at the painting. “Woman, too, of course.”
“Sure,” Dortmunder said.
“The painting has been valued at four hundred thousand dollars,” Chauncey said, the way a man might say the weather was good, or that he’d just bought a pair of snow tires.
Dortmunder looked up at Chauncey’s profile – tanned face, sharp nose, long yellow hair – and then he frowned again at the painting. Four hundred thousand dollars? For a picture to cover a water stain on the wall? There were parts of life, Dortmunder knew, that he would never understand, and most of those parts of life had something to do with people being cuckoo.
“I want you to steal it,” Chauncey said.
Dortmunder looked up again. “Oh, yeah?”
Chauncey laughed, and moved off to seat himself in another chair, putting his glass on the drum table at his right hand. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “Stonewiler told you my instructions to him.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Good; he wasn’t supposed to.” Chauncey glanced at the picture of Folly again, then said, “Three months ago, I told him I wanted a crook.” His bright eyes flickered toward Dortmunder’s face. “I hope you don’t object to that term.”
Dortmunder shrugged. “It covers a lot of people.”
Chauncey smiled. “Of course. But there was a very specific kind of crook I wanted. A professional thief, not too young, successful at his profession but not wealthy, who had served at least one term in prison, but had never been convicted or even charged with anything other than larceny. No mugging, murder, arson, kidnapping. Only theft. It took three months to find the man I wanted, and he turned out to be you.” Chauncey stopped – for dramatic effect, probably – and sipped more bourbon, watching Dortmunder over the rim of his glass.
Dortmunder also sipped bourbon, watching Chauncey over the rim of his glass. They studied one another over the rims of their glasses for a while – Dortmunder was getting a bit cross-eyed – and then Chauncey put his glass back on the drum table, Dortmunder lowered his own glass into his lap, and Chauncey shrugged as though embarrassed, saying, “I need money.”
Dortmunder said, “Who owns the painting?”
That surprised Chauncey. “I do, of course.”
“That was legit? You want me to steal it?”
“Let me explain,” Chauncey said. “I have a rather good collection of art, fifteenth and sixteenth century mostly, here and in my other places, and of course everything is completely insured.”
“Ah,” Dortmunder said.
Chauncey’s smile now had lost that brief touch of embarrassment. “You see the plot already,” he said. “Since I truly love paintings, it isn’t necessary for me to display my possessions in public. If I arrange to have a painting ‘stolen’ from me, at some point when I am very short of cash, then I can collect from the insurance company, hang the painting in some private place, and enjoy both the picture and the cash.”
“You don’t need a thief,” Dortmunder told him. “Put the thing away in a closet and say a burglar got in.”
“Yes, of course,” Chauncey said. “But there are problems.”
Again the trace of embarrassment appeared in his smile, but this time Dortmunder could see the embarrassment was tempered by self-satisfaction, self-indulgence. Chauncey was like a boy who’s just been caught making an obscene drawing in the school lavatory; he’s embarrassed, but he’s also pleased with the skill and the cleverness of the drawing.
Dortmunder said, “What problems?”
“I am very extravagant,” Chauncey said. “I needn’t give you my autobiography, but I inherited money and I’m afraid I never learned to be a good manager. My accountants are usually furious with me.”
Dortmunder didn’t even have one accountant. “Is that right,” he said.
“The fact is,” Chauncey said, “I’ve already done it twice.”
“Done it? Faked a theft?”
“Twice,” Chauncey said. “The second time, the insurance company made their suspicions very plain, but they didn’t really push the matter. However, if I do it a third time, I can see them becoming cross.”
“They might,” agreed Dortmunder.
“I imagine,” Chauncey said, “they would do their level best to prove it was a fake theft.”
“They might.”
“So it has to be a real theft,” Chauncey said. “Professional thieves actually do have to break into the house and steal the painting.”
“While you’re out of town.”
“Good Lord, no.” Chauncey shook his head, and then laughed again, saying, “That’s the worst thing I could do.”
Dortmunder drank bourbon. “So what’s your idea?”
“I will give a dinner party,” Chauncey said. “In this house. I will have two couples staying with me at the time, in rooms on the top floor. Very well-to-do people. There should be a lot of valuables in their rooms while they are down to dinner. Because my house guests, and the other guests invited for the dinner, will all be wealthy people, most of the women wearing jewelry and so on, I will have hired private guards for the evening. During dinner, with me very much in the house, and with private guards hired by me in the house, thieves will break in from the roof, rifle the guest bedrooms, rifle my own rooms – carefully, please – steal the Veenbes from this room, and make their getaway.”
“With private guards in the house,” Dortmunder said.
“Whose attention will be on the persons and jewelry of my guests, downstairs.” Chauncey shrugged, smiling in a relaxed and self-approving way. “No insurance company in the world could suggest a fake robbery under the circumstances.”
“Will your guests be in on it?”
“Of course not. Nor will the guards.”
“What do we do with their stuff?”
“Keep it. Returning mine, of course. And giving me back the painting.”
“You mean selling you back the painting,” Dortmunder said.
Chauncey nodded, his self-satisfied smile now spreading to include Dortmunder; Chauncey thought they were both terrifically witty and clever. “Of course,” he said. “You’ll want your own profit out of the transaction.”
“That’s right.”
“You’ll get to keep whatever items you find in the guest bedrooms, of course,” Chauncey said.
“That stuff doesn’t matter.”
“No, you’re perfectly right. Very well; I told you the insurance valuation, and believe me I’m being accurate. The newspapers will carry the story of the theft, and they’ll surely give the valuation themselves.”
“Four hundred thousand,” Dortmunder said.
“I’ll give you twenty-five per cent.”
“A hundred thousand.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When I collect from the insurance company, of course. If I had a hundred thousand dollars, I wouldn’t need to get into an operation like this.”
Dortmunder said, “Then you’d get the painting back when you paid us.”
Chauncey looked startled. “But – My dear Mr. Dortmunder, I am a respectable citizen, very well established, I have this house, other properties, I’m not going to simply up and disappear. You can trust me for the money.”