“Mostly,” the thief said. “Listen, why don’t we walk while we talk? You’d walk this whole corridor now, wouldn’t you?”
“What?”
“Your rounds. You go down here to the end. Then what do you do?”
Snyder was having trouble thinking straight. He said, “After what?”
Patiently the thief said, “After you finish your rounds on this floor. Where do you go next? Do you check the trucks, one of the other buildings? What do you do?”
“Oh. I go back to . . . I go back to the shed. I do the rest of it at three o’clock. The main building on the half- hour, everything else on the hour.”
“Fine. And do you have to punch a clock anywhere, to show you’ve really done the rounds?”
“No, I just do them,” Snyder said. He was answering questions mechanically, trying to figure out what was happening.
“That’s fine,” the thief said. “An honest man. There aren’t too many left like you.”
Two years ago, when he’d been the winter watchman at Fun Island, Snyder had run afoul of some tough guys who’d for some reason broken in; now, remembering them, it suddenly occurred to him this self-declared thief was all wrong. He didn’t act or talk like a thief at all; in fact, except for the ski mask he didn’t even look like a thief.
A joke? Snyder peered suspiciously at the eyes within the mask, trying to read comedy there. “Just what’s going on?” he said.
“We’re going for a stroll,” the thief said. He touched Snyder’s elbow gently, suggesting that he start to walk.
Snyder obeyed, walking slowly forward but continuing to stare at the other man’s eyes. There was humor in them, but also a glint of something else. No, this wasn’t a joke.
Nevertheless, Snyder was no longer afraid. As they walked he said, “Where are we going?”
“On your rounds,” the thief told him. “Right on down to the end of the corridor.”
Snyder paused by the finance section’s door. “On my rounds,” he said, “I open these doors, check inside.”
The thief laughed. “Go ahead,” he said. “Take a look. My partner won’t mind.”
The idea of a surprise birthday party flashed idiotically through Snyder’s mind. But his birthday was in the spring, and there was no one in any case to do such an elaborate surprise; and besides, this wasn’t a joke. Nevertheless, he was braced for almost any lunatic possibility when he opened the door and shone the flashlight in, and it was almost a relief to see the dark figure hunched over in front of the safe in the far corner. The man turned his head over there, and he too was wearing a ski mask, a black one with green zigzag stripes. He glanced briefly toward Snyder and the light, and then turned back to his work, absorbed and unconcerned. He was doing something obscure in the area of the combination dial.
Behind Snyder, the other man said, gently but firmly, “I think that’s long enough.”
Snyder stepped back, shutting the door. “Now what?”
“We walk down the hall.”
They walked down the hall, approaching the executive offices. Snyder said, “Those checks won’t do you any good in there. They’ll all be made out to the brewery.”
“Absolutely right,” said the thief. He didn’t seem troubled at all. “But there will be a little cash,” he said. “A few hundred, anyway.”
“You’re going through all this for a few hundred dollars?”
Once again the thief laughed; he seemed as easy and untroubled in his mind as if he and Snyder were just strolling along the street somewhere, not involved in grand larceny at all. “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,’” he said, “‘than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’” He declaimed the line, just the way an actor would.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Snyder said, “and I don’t want to know.”
“Very intelligent.” The thief paused and opened a door. “What’s back here?”
“That’s Mr. Kilpatrick’s office. Vice-president in charge of marketing.”
“Fine,” the thief said. “Let’s go look.”
Snyder stepped through the doorway, flashing the light ahead of himself, and from back down the corridor came the sound of an explosion: a sudden flat
Snyder looked over his shoulder, startled, but the thief was directly behind him, urging him forward. Moving, walking across the secretary’s office toward the inner suite, Snyder said, “Was that the safe?”
“Definitely. Do you ever turn the lights on in here?”
“Sometimes.”
They went through another door to the inner suite. The thief patted the wall, found the light switch, and a large rectangular room suddenly blossomed into existence, created by soft indirect lighting. They had entered on one of the short sides, and directly across the way green wall-to-wall draperies covered an expanse of glass giving, by day, a beautiful view of the river. A free-form desk dominated the left side of the room, with a white sofa and several overstuffed chairs forming a conversation area on the right. Down near the green draperies stood a glass-topped dining table flanked by half a dozen chrome-and-black-plastic chairs.
“How mod-dren,” the thief said, with what sounded like mockery in his voice. “Do you suppose there’s a bathroom?”
