"Block, Lawrence - collection - The Collected Mystery Stories - 03 - Bernie Rhodenbarr - The Burglar Who Smelled Smoke - with Lynne Wood (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Block Lawrence)

"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."