Schemers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels) by Bill Pronzini Page A

collectors. I used to haunt secondhand bookshops until the Internet put so many out of business.”
    “You handle the payments as well?”
    “No, Brenda does that, unless a large bank transfer is necessary.”
    “So she has some knowledge of the collecting market.”
    “Some. But as I told you, she is completely trustworthy.”
    I did some more prowling, looking at the rows of
books. The shelves were all solid, the books on them loosely arranged so as to make for easy removal of any volume. I couldn’t help looking at authors and titles along the way. Many more were familiar, including several who had contributed to pulp magazines as well as written novels: Leigh Brackett. Fredric Brown. Agatha Christie. John Dickson Carr. George Harmon Coxe. Norbert Davis. Erle Stanley Gardner. Ross Macdonald. John D. MacDonald. Frederick Nebel. Ellery Queen. Dorothy Sayers. Mickey Spillane. Rex Stout. Cornell Woolrich. Complete or near complete runs, evidently, of the works of these writers and hundreds more.
    I asked, “Has anyone in this household, or any visitor, ever been in the library when you weren’t here? For any reason?”
    “No, never. I don’t allow it.”
    “And you have the only key?”
    “Yes. Which I keep in my possession at all times.”
    “Even while you sleep?”
    “I put the key ring on my nightstand. And I’m a light sleeper. No one could have slipped in or out of the bedroom with it.”
    “While you shower or bathe, then.”
    “I’m never in the shower for more than five minutes.”
    “It doesn’t take long to make a wax impression of a key.”
    “A possibility, I suppose,” he conceded. “But that would leave a wax residue on the key, wouldn’t it? I would have noticed.”
    “Not necessarily. The house alarm—who knows the code besides you?”
    “My wife, her brother, Brenda, and the housekeeper.”
    “Written down anywhere?”
    “No. I have it changed periodically, and I never forget anything as important as an alarm code.”
    “The alarm has never been breached?”
    “Never.”
    “Then with all of that security and your precautions with the key, it doesn’t seem possible anyone could have gotten in here, does it?”
    Pollexfen’s smile flickered back on, then off again. “The Holmesian dictum. If you eliminate the impossible, then whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
    “So somebody must’ve found a way to use or duplicate your key.”
    “Or some other devilishly clever method. And not somebody, Jeremy Cullrane.”
    “There is one other explanation.”
    The smile flickered on and off again. “That I must have done it myself? Is that what you’re thinking?”
    “I’m not thinking anything yet, Mr. Pollexfen.”
    “I did not steal my own books,” he said. “Why would I? What conceivable reason could I have?”
    “There’s the half million dollars’ insurance.”
    “I don’t need half a million dollars. I have more money than I can ever spend. Check into my finances, you’ll find the absolute truth of that statement. I don’t indulge in stocks or real estate or any other kind of speculation, I don’t gamble, I don’t have any of the usual vices. I collect vintage detective fiction. That’s the one and only passion
in life I have left. I’m the last person on earth who would spirit away eight of my most prized possessions, the cornerstones of a collection it has taken me forty years and quite a lot of money to assemble.”
    “So it would seem.”
    “I don’t care about the insurance money,” Pollexfen said. “I want my first editions back on the shelves where they belong. I wouldn’t have filed the claim at all if the police had shown any real interest in finding them and my attorney hadn’t insisted.”
    “What’s your attorney’s name?”
    “Paul DiSantis. Wainright and Simmons.”
    I’d heard of the firm. High-powered corporate lawyers and ultrarespectable. “I’ll want to talk to your wife, your brother-in-law, and