The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep Read Free Page B

Orientals and actors and harlots, six classes of people who get little in the way of mail. Bills from Con Ed and the telephone company, slingers from the supermarkets, quarterly messages from their congressman, little else. I, on the other hand, burden my mailman with a sack of paper garbage every day.
    My bell rang. I pressed a buzzer to admit my caller into the building. He climbed four flights of stairs and hesitated in the hallway. I waited, and he knocked, and I opened the door.
    "Tanner?"
    "Yes."
    "I'm Brian Cudahy. I called you last night—"
    "Oh, yes," I said. "Come in." He seated himself in the rocking chair. "Coffee?"
    "If it's no trouble."
    I made instant coffee in the kitchen and brought back two cups. He was looking all over the apartment. I suppose it's a little unusual. People have said that it looks more like a library than an apartment. There are four rooms besides the kitchen and the bath, and in each room the walls are done in floor-to-ceiling bookcases, almost all of which are full. Beyond that, there's rather little in the way of furniture. I've a large bed in one room, a very large writing desk in another, a few chairs scattered here and there, and a small dresser in still another room, and that's about all. I don't find the place unusual at all, myself. When one is a compulsive reader and researcher and when one has a full twenty-four hours a day at his disposal, not having to allot eight for sleep and eight for work, one certainly ought to have plenty of books on hand.
    "Is the coffee all right?"
    "Oh!" He looked up, startled. "Yes, of course. I . . . uh . . . I'm going to need your help. Mr. Tanner."
    He was about twenty-four, I guessed. Clean-cut, bright-faced, short-haired, with an air of incipient success about him. He looked like a student but not at all like a scholar. An increasing number of such persons pursue graduate degrees these days. Industry considers a bachelor's degree indispensable and, by a curious extension, regards master's degrees and doctorates as a way of separating the men from the boys. I don't understand this. Why should a Ph.D. awarded for an extended essay on color symbolism in the poetry of Pushkin have anything to do with a man's competence to develop a sales promotion campaign for a manufacturer of ladies' underwear?
    "My thesis is due the middle of next month," Cudahy was saying. "I can't seem to get anywhere on it. And I heard that you . . . you were recommended as—"
    "As one who writes theses?"
    He nodded.
    "What's your field?" I asked.
    "History."
    "You've a topic already assigned, of course."
    "Yes."
    "What is it?"
    He swallowed. "Sort of offbeat, I'm afraid."
    "Good."
    "Excuse me?"
    "Offbeat topics are the best. What's yours?"
    "The Turkish persecutions of Armenians during the late nineteenth century and immediately before and after the First World War." He grinned. "Don't ask me how I got saddled with that one. I can't figure it out, myself. Do you know anything about the subject, Mr. Tanner?"
    "Yes."
    "You do?" He was incredulous. "Honestly?"
    "I know a great deal about it," I said.
    "Then can you . . . uh . . . write the thesis?"
    "Probably. Have you done anything on it to date?"
    "I have notes here—"
    "Notes that you've shown an instructor or just your own work?"
    "No one's seen anything yet. I've had some oral conferences with my instructor but nothing very important."
    I waved his briefcase aside. "Then I'd rather not see your notes," I told him. "I find it easier to start fresh if you don't mind."
    "You'll do it?"
    "For seven hundred fifty dollars."
    His face clouded. "That seems high. I don't—"
    "A master's degree is worth an extra fifteen hundred to industry the first year. That's minimal. I'm charging you half your first year's differential. If you try to haggle, the price goes up, not down."
    "It's a deal."
    "This is for Columbia, you said?"
    "Yes."
    "And your grades have been—"
    "B average."
    "All right. About a hundred-page thesis? And you want