Read The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling for Free Online Page B

elbow patches, a tobacco-brown sweater vest, a tan oxford-cloth shirt with a button-down collar, a chocolate-brown knit tie. His trousers were fawn cavalry twill, his shoes brown wing tips. He had a long narrow nose, a graying guardsman’s mustache. His eyebrows were untamed tangles of briar; beneath them his eyes (brown, to match his outfit) were keen and cool and just a trifle bloodshot.
    He asked if Mr. Litzauer was expected, and I explained about the change in ownership. “Ah,” he said. “No wonder he hasn’t been in touch. I’m a collector, you see, and he always lets me know when he runs across an item I might fancy.”
    “What do you collect?”
    “Victorian poets, for the most part, but I follow my taste, you know. I’m partial to artful rhymers. Thomas Hood. Algernon Charles Swinburne. William Mackworth Praed. Kipling, of course, is my keenest enthusiasm.”
    I told him whatever I had was on the shelves. He went to look for himself and I got Parker out from beneath the counter and returned to vicarious crime. Two of Parker’s henchpersons were just getting ready to set up a doublecross when my tweedy customer presented himself once again at the counter, a small clothbound volume in hand. It contained the collected lyric poems of Austin Dobson and I had it priced at six or seven dollars, something like that. He paid in cash and I wrapped it for him.
    “If you happen on anything you think I might like,” he said, “you might want to ring me up.”
    He handed me his card. It bore his name, an address in the East Thirties, and a phone number with a MUrray Hill 8 exchange. The card conveyed no suggestion of what the man did for a living.
    I looked from it to him. “You collect Kipling,” I said.
    “Among others, yes.”
    “Is there a family connection?”
    He smiled broadly. “Because of the name, you mean? Natural guess, of course. But no, I’m no relative of Kipling’s. Rudyard’s not a family name, you see. It’s the name of a lake.”
    “Oh?”
    “In Staffordshire. Kipling’s parents first met on a picnic at Lake Rudyard. When in due course their son was born he was given the lake’s name as a middle name. His first name was Joseph, actually, although he never did use it and was known as Ruddy from earliest childhood.”
    “And your first name—”
    “Is James, as it happens, and I don’t use it either. James Rudyard Whelkin. I was eight years old when Kipling died and I remember the day very well. That was in 1936, just two days after George V preceded him to the grave. A day of mourning in our household, as you can well imagine. My father admired Kipling enormously. He’d have to have done, to name his only son after him, wouldn’t he? Because I was named for Kipling, of course, not for a lake in Staffordshire. ‘First the old king and now the Bard of Empire,’ my father said. ‘Mark my words, Ruddy. There’ll be war in Europe within the next two years.’ He was off by a year of course, and I don’t suppose Kipling’s demise had much to do with Hitler’s invading Poland, but it all linked up in the old fellow’s mind, you see.” He smiled fiercely and his great eyebrows shook. “Are you interested in Kipling, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”
    “I read him when I was a kid.”
    “You might try him again. He’s returning to fashion, you know, after altogether too many years of neglect. Have you had a look at Kim lately? Or The Light That Failed ? Or—But reading must be a bit of a busman’s holiday for you, eh? Must grow sick and tired of the printed word by the end of a long day.”
    “Oh, I still enjoy reading. And maybe I will try Kipling again.”
    “Do. There’s books on your own shelves, for a starter.” An appraising glance from his alert brown eyes. “I say, sir. Do you suppose you could possibly lunch with me this afternoon? I might have something to say that would interest you.”
    “I’d like that.”
    “My club, then. Do you know the Martingale? And how’s half