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paper, didn’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “I was pleased, but surprised that you never wrote anything.”
    “I could never find a fact to hang it on.”
    “Would a fact or two now help things along?”
    “It might.”
    Procane shifted his gaze from me to the fire. Then he smiled slightly and said, “You’re quite right, Mr. St. Ives; I am a thief.”

5
    A CCORDING TO ABNER PROCANE, he never stole anything in his life until he was twenty-five years old. He was in the army then and he stole a truckload of American cigarettes and sold them on the Marseilles black market. He sold them to a man called Marcel Comegys, and if it hadn’t been for Comegys, Procane would be in jail today. At least that’s what Procane thought.
    “He was a master thief and he taught me how to steal, what to steal, and whom to steal it from,” Procane said.
    Comegys taught Procane to steal only money and to steal it only from those who were in no position to complain about their losses to the police.
    “That may be the reason that I’ve never had any professional dealings with you before, Mr. St. Ives,” he said. “One doesn’t ransom money.”
    The rest of what Procane told me rounded out the story that I had already put together. He stole but once or twice a year, and then only after the most meticulous planning. He had a high overhead, because he had to pay and pay well for information about his potential victims. And, not surprisingly, he enjoyed his work.
    “I like to steal,” Procane said as he rose, picked up a brass poker, and stirred up the logs in the fireplace. “It’s not a compulsion, but from the first there was something about theft that intrigued and excited me. I don’t think there’s anything sexual about it either—not much, at any rate. The nearest thing that I can compare it to is painting, if there were more action in painting. Stealing gives me the same sense of—well, of achievement, except that it’s much more intensified.”
    “You seem to have thought about it a lot,” I said.
    “Too much probably.” He turned to look at a painting of a much weathered barn that was shaded by trees.
    “Yours?” I said.
    He nodded. I looked at the painting more carefully. The trees were beeches, I decided. It was a summer scene and I thought he had caught the sunlight rather well.
    “Those diaries of yours must be hot stuff,” I said.
    “They are more of a journal than a diary,” Procane said. “When I hear the word diary I always think of the wistful hopes of terribly inexperienced young girls. After a little experience, they stop keeping them.”
    “What did you keep your journal in?” I said.
    “You mean what do they look like?”
    “Yes.”
    “In ordinary one-hundred-page ledgers, approximately eight and a half by fourteen inches. They’re black with fake red-leather triangles to protect the right-hand corners. You can buy them at any office-supply store. I did.”
    “How many of them are there?”
    “Five, and they cover twenty-five years.”
    “How’d it happen?”
    Procane smiled a little. “I suppose it’s a little like the cobbler whose children have no shoes. I have this small farm in Connecticut.” He gestured toward the paintings. “They were all done there. I was at the farm last weekend and when I returned I discovered I’d been burglarized. By an expert.”
    “Where did you keep them?”
    “In an old safe that came with the house. I’ve been intending to replace it for years, but—” He shrugged.
    “Was it punched, peeled or what?” I said.
    “Peeled.”
    “How’d they get in?”
    “Through the front door. They walked in.”
    “Your locks look pretty good.”
    “They didn’t bother the thief. Or thieves. Neither did my burglar-alarm systems, which are supposed to be the best.”
    “When did they call you? I don’t know why I keep saying ‘they.’ ”
    “I do it, too,” Procane said. “A man called Wednesday morning and told me he wanted a hundred thousand dollars to