To Catch a Thief Read online

  To Catch A Thief

  David Dodge

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1952 by David Dodge

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition February 2015

  ISBN: 978-162681-600-8

  More from David Dodge

  Death and Taxes

  The Last Match

  The Long Escape

  Plunder of the Sun

  This is for Kathryn, Frances, and Marian

  1

  The agents de police came for John Robie sooner than he expected them.

  It was a hot, still summer evening in August. Crickets sawed at their fiddles in the grass, and a bullfrog who lived in a pool at the bottom of the garden boomed an occasional bass note. John was burning letters in the fireplace when first the crickets, then the bullfrog, stopped their music. His setter, sleeping on the rug, woke suddenly and cocked her ears, but he did not need the dog’s help. The crickets were better watchmen.

  He had already changed his clothes and was ready to leave the house. He kicked the ashes in the fireplace, crumbling them, before he went into the kitchen. The setter growled, deep in her throat.

  Germaine, his cook, was making a ragout, peering nearsightedly into the big iron pot on the stove and muttering to herself. She was too old and deaf to hear the dog until it began to bark. She heard John come in, but the ragout was more important at the moment than he was. She did not look up.

  He said, “Germaine.”

  “M’sieu?” She still peered into the pot.

  “I’m going away. Dinner won’t be necessary.”

  She looked up at that, surprised and indignant. He had no time to tell her more. He said, “Au revoir,” and ran up the back stairs. The dog growled again, more loudly.

  He found his passport and billfold in the dark bedroom, buttoned them into the inside pocket of his jacket, and looked out at the rear garden from behind a window curtain.

  It was early evening, not yet full night. A shadow was out of place against the wall at the back of the garden, just inside the gate. He could not be mistaken. He knew every shrub in the garden. Except for the olive trees that were there when he started, he had planted everything himself, down to the endive and the leeks and the fines herbes in the vegetable patch. He had not planted a shadow by the gate.

  The dog began to bark. There was still no sound at the front door. He turned to a side window, saw another misplaced shadow, and went quickly to another window at the far end of the house. They had it watched from all sides.

  The dog was barking steadily by the time the doorbell rang.

  He had one path of escape open to him. It was not the easiest, but it would do. It will leave no doubt in their minds, if there is any doubt, he thought. When he heard Germaine’s loose slippers slap across the floor as she went to answer the doorbell, still grumbling over the wasted dinner, he stepped out on the little terrasse where he slept on hot nights, climbed the low railing, balanced himself for a moment, and jumped.

  The man in the garden below heard feet scrape on the railing of the terrasse. John, in mid-air, saw the white blur of an upturned face, and the dark blotch in it that was the agent’s open mouth. The agent was too startled to shout, at first.

  John had never made the jump before, even in daylight. But he had looked at it many times, subconsciously measuring the distance, estimating the knee-spring that would be necessary and the swing to follow after he caught the branch of the olive tree. He had it all timed and pre-calculated in his arm and leg muscles. He could not see the branch against the dark background of the tree foliage, but it was there when he reached for it, flat out on his face in the air and stretching. As his feet went down he bent at the hips, kicked hard on the upswing, let go of the branch while he was still rising, arched his back, and went over the top of the high garden wall with inches to spare.

  It was a fine jump, one that the agent talked about for a long time afterward, when he was permitted at last to talk. John came down on his toes in the middle of the lane beyond the wall, and was running up the hill through a vineyard toward the shelter of the orchard at the top of the hill before the agent let out his first shout. By the time they came through the garden gate and began to hunt for him, their flashlights bobbing around like little bright balloons in the dusk, he was safe in the orchard.

  There were only four men in all, not enough to search the whole countryside. They gave up soon and went back to the house.

  He was not afraid of what Germaine might tell them. She knew nothing about M’sieu except that he liked her cooking and would not ordinarily abandon a good ragout. She was an old peasant, half blind, nearly deaf, a fine cook. He hoped she would stay on at the villa and keep the garden in shape. She liked green things growing around her. With the olives, the garden patch, a few chickens, and her way of making a little go a long way, she could live there comfortably forever, if nobody told her to leave. He meant to write her a letter after he was safe from pursuit, tell her that the Villa des Bijoux was hers. M’sieu would not need it any more.

  But it was hard to think he would never see the villa again. There were too many things in it he hated to leave behind, too many ties to a good life—the books, the fine guns and fishing rods, the dog he had trained, the garden he had planted, the good wine he had laid down in the cellar, the comfortable chair by the fireplace. It was all finished and done with. He did not have even a photograph of the house.

  It’s just as well, he thought. From the orchard on the top of the hill he turned his back on the Villa of the Jewels and set off for the coast.

  It was full dark by then, but he knew the country well. He knew all of the South of France well, even to the odors. Most of the farmers who were his neighbors cultivated patches of flowers to sell to the perfume factories at Vence or Grasse. All Provence was a flower garden during the summer months, and even at night the perfume was strong. It was not safe for him to go through Vence, where he was well known by sight, so he walked around the town by way of the heady, sweet-smelling flower patches, returned to the road on the other side, and kept on in the direction of Cros de Cagnes and the Route Nationale, where he could catch a bus.

  It was a ten-kilometer walk. To be safe, he stepped off the road into the shadows whenever he heard a car coming, and at the bus station he bought a copy of Nice-Matin to hide his face. There was nothing about him in Nice-Matin. It would be still another twenty-four hours before the French papers picked up the Paris Herald Tribune’s lead and spread it across the front page with headlines and photographs. He thought he would be safely out of the public eye before that happened; or on his way to a French prison. One or the other.

  There was only a single passenger on the bus when he boarded it. He did not have to hide his face from her. She sat in one of the extreme rear corners, so that he could not take a seat out of her line of sight, but after one quick, incurious glance she paid no attention to him. He would not have given her a second thought except that caution made him observant, and she was clearly out of place on a rattletrap Route Nationale bus. She was dressed for the evening; a long gown, fragile, spike-heeled slippers, a fur wrap. He knew enough about furs
to guess that the price of her wrap alone would buy an expensive car and pay the salary of a man to drive her wherever she wanted to go. She was one of a type he knew well, had made it his business to know. Girls of her class did not ride buses.

  Force of habit made him look at her fingers and ear lobes. Afterward he watched her until a movement of her shoulders opened the wrap far enough to let him see her throat. She wore neither rings, necklace, earrings nor, as far as he could see, jewelry of any kind, not even a wrist watch. It was not in keeping with the wrap, any more than the wrap was in keeping with her presence on the bus. The class he knew always wore some ornament, frequently a great deal.

  He wondered if the explanation could be that she had lost her jewelry to a thief. It was incongruous that he might be fleeing from the police on the same bus with one of the women whose losses had set the police on his trail. They would make some kind of a point of it, if they caught him now.

  The bus filled gradually. When it reached the end of its run opposite the big pink stucco casino in Cannes, several other passengers were between him and the girl when she got off. He lost sight of her and did not think of her again.

  He joined the strollers along the promenade of La Croisette, the boulevard skirting the beach. It was a lovely night for strolling; warm, with a quarter moon hanging low over the Mediterranean and a faint breeze blowing in from the water to rustle the leaves of the palms and plane trees along the promenade and make shadows dance on the sidewalk. He kept to the beach side of the promenade, where the lights were dim, and crossed the boulevard only when he was opposite the shabby front of the Hotel Napoleon.

  The Napoleon was a poor, distant cousin to the newer, more fashionable hotels which faced La Croisette farther up the beach near the casino and the yacht harbor. It was not a popular place even with the people who stayed there. No one was in the musty hotel lobby but the concierge and a porter who doubled as elevator operator.

  The faded red carpet had a new patch since his last visit. Bellini’s sign near the elevator still advertised the same services in the same three languages. The English part of the sign read:

  HENRI BELLINI

  Insurance — Sales and Rentals — Tourist Agent

  Imports and Exports — Domestic Help

  Interpreter — Stenographer

  Investments

  MEZZANINE FLOOR

  An arrow pointed up the stairway to the mezzanine.

  He nodded to the porter as he walked by the elevator cage. His nerves were strung tight, but he did not hesitate climbing the stairs. He had complete confidence in Bellini.

  Bellini was reading the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune in the cluttered cubbyhole that served him as an office. He had the paper spread open on his desk under the fan of light from an old-fashioned lamp with a green shade. He did not move when he heard the doorknob turn. The door had a spring lock and could be opened from the outside only with a key, but he always left the key in the outside lock, except when he had confidential business to transact in the room, so that his callers could let themselves in. He did not like to walk to the door unnecessarily.

  John brought the key with him when he entered. He put it on the corner of Bellini’s desk.

  Bellini took off his spectacles and peered at him under the lamp shade, smiling his oily smile of welcome.

  “I was wondering when I would hear from you,” he said, chuckling. “Have you seen this very interesting article in the newspaper?”

  He tapped his stubby finger on the paper. He read, wrote, and spoke seven languages. John spoke French and English almost equally well, but he and Bellini used English with each other because it was John’s native language. One tongue was the same as another to Bellini.

  John said, “I’ve read it.”

  Bellini chuckled again.

  He had not changed in the months since John had seen him. He always looked the same; small, round, oily, and happy. A German soldier had broken his shoulder with a rifle butt during the Occupation. The bones had not been set properly, so the shoulder stayed hunched up around his ear in a permanent half-shrug, and one arm was shorter than the other. He wore heavy, horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like an owl. In the summertime he dressed in cotton trousers, a loose shirt, and slippers, and oozed perspiration. In the wintertime he wore all the clothes he could put on, toasted his feet on an electric heater wedged under his desk, and oozed perspiration just the same. He never stopped smiling, and no one could say anything remotely humorous in his presence without earning an appreciative titter or gurgle or bubble of laughter. His manners were excellent, even too good; he had the smooth graciousness of a professional confidence man. He had never been known to break his word. In addition to his legitimate business activities, he was an importer of smuggled goods, a black-market operator and a dealer in stolen property. He was careful to carry on these activities through intermediaries, and since he commanded the absolute loyalty of everyone who worked for him, he had never been arrested nor had his reputation as an honest businessman challenged publicly. He was John Robie’s best friend.

  “You will ignore the implications, no doubt?” he said, peering at John under the lamp shade. He was still speaking of the newspaper article.

  “The implications are too difficult to ignore,” John said. “I’m leaving the country.”

  “The police?”

  “They came for me tonight.”

  “And you?”

  “Off the terrasse and over the wall.”

  “Like old times.” Bellini giggled. “I would like to have seen the flics’ faces. They never took you but once, did they?”

  “No. I don’t think they will take me again, if you can fix this for me.”

  He took the passport from his pocket. Bellini looked briefly at the passport, then up at him again, still beaming.

  “What do you want done to it?”

  “Change the number and name, set my birthday back ten years, and alter the date on the entry stamp so it won’t be more than three months old when I leave. I’ll dye my hair, pad myself around the middle, and have a new photograph taken. The only pictures they have of me are newspaper prints, and those date back to before the war. They won’t have any reason to look twice at a middle-aged tourist. Once I’m out of the country, I’m safe.”

  “You are not afraid of extradition?”

  “I don’t think they will bother. I’m not that important. When they learn that I’ve left the country, and the thief keeps operating, they’ll see their mistake.”

  “Will the thief keep operating after you leave, John?”

  “There’ll be no reason for him to stop.”

  Bellini chuckled again. He blinked behind the spectacles, looking wise and owlish.

  John said, “Did you think that Le Chat had come back?”

  Bellini lifted his good shoulder to the level of his crippled shoulder, then let it drop again.

  “It’s been a long time since I saw you last. A man might change his mind.”

  “It isn’t Le Chat.”

  Bellini nodded, satisfied. “I was waiting to hear you say it yourself. Now, what can you do about this story in the newspaper?”

  “What I told you. Run. It doesn’t leave me any other choice.”

  He knew how soon the other papers would take up the cry. He had caught their attention before, although not as John Robie. French reporters, who coin a nickname for every public figure, named him Le Chat after his first thefts in 1936, at Nice and Menton. In the months that followed and until his imprisonment in 1939, only the gathering war clouds over Europe received more space in the French press than he did.

  He was a thief who made good newspaper copy. He was never known to employ violence or carry a weapon more dangerous than a glass cutter, never stole anything but cash and jewelry, always operated alone, and was never identified, except by his nickname, until a receiver of stolen property in Paris turned him in to the Sûreté Nationale after an argument over the price to be
paid for a necklace of pigeon-blood rubies. The Sûreté arrested the receiver when they arrested John, so the betrayal helped nobody but the insurance companies. Their losses from the activities of Le Chat in the South of France for three years amounted to the equivalent of three-quarters of a million dollars, in various currencies. The several receivers who bought stolen stones from him never paid more than 40 per cent of insurable value, sometimes less, but he had nearly eight million francs, then worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in several banks under several names when he was arrested.

  The police never learned about the money, and he wasted none of it on expensive lawyers. He had no defense worth presenting. The Sûreté agents who broke into his Paris hotel room had taken him while he was unsetting the stones from the necklace which the receiver had wanted cheaply and which belonged to the wife of a Member of the Chamber of Deputies. Because the theft had taken place on the Côte d’Azur, they brought him back to Nice and tried him there before the cour d’assises.

  The prosecution offered for evidence a notebook which had been found among the prisoner’s effects. It contained odds and ends of useful information about such items as Les Feuilles de Lotus (“good jumbo emerald surrounded by diamond-encrusted leaves, thirteen pear-shaped emerald pendants, earrings to match, all fine stones, easy to break up”) made by Van Cleef & Arpels of Paris for the Maharani of Baroda, or the Pearl of Asia which sold for $50,000 at a Paris auction (“ugly; 76 millimeters long, 19 millimeters wide, 605 carats, silver twig setting, probably too well known to bring a price”), but they could not prove another theft against him. Except for the rubies, the stolen jewelry had long since been broken down to unidentifiable individual stones and sold. His careful maps of certain summer villas and their surrounding gardens, and his sketches of the floor plans of the more popular hotels on the Côte d’Azur were not admitted as evidence, even after the prosecution offered to show that a successful robbery had taken place at several of the localities mapped, and that the technique of robbery in each case was identical with the technique of the thief who had robbed the wife of the Member of the Chamber. The ruby necklace was enough. He received a fair trial and a maximum sentence under the law, twenty years.