“And the book stayed behind.”

“That’s my guess.”

“Why, Bern? Wouldn’t Hammett take it with him?”

“He might,” I said, “if he thought of it. By the time he left Cuttleford House, he was probably too drunk to remember or too hungover to care.” I held out my hands. “Look, I can’t prove any of this. Maybe he took it home with him, read a couple of chapters, and tossed it in the trash. Maybe he lent it to somebody who passed it on to somebody else who gave it to the church rummage sale. Maybe it’s rotting away in somebody’s basement or attic even as we speak.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No, I don’t. I think he left it on a table in Cuttleford House, accidentally or on purpose, and I think one of the maids stuck it on a shelf in the library. They’ve got a classic formal library-there’s a photograph of it in the brochure. Shelves clear up to the twelve-foot ceiling.”

“And that’s where you think it is.”

“I think it might be. Oh, a lot of people have been in that house since then. Monks, drunks, workmen, guests. Any one of them could have picked up The Big Sleep and walked off with it.”

“Bernie, it’s over fifty years.”

“I know.”

“I don’t suppose any of them are still alive, are they? I know Hammett and Chandler aren’t, or Lillian Hellman. What about Coxe and Ross?”

“Gone.”

“And Fontenoy and his wife?”

“Long gone, and I don’t know what became of their children.”

“Over fifty years. How could the book still be there?”

“The house is still there. And so’s the library. I saw the photo in the brochure, and those shelves are chock-full of books, and I don’t think the Eglantines trucked them in by the pound to make a decorating statement. I think they’ve been there forever.”

“And somewhere, tucked away on some high shelf-”

“The Big Sleep,” I said. “Signed by Raymond Chandler, and inscribed to Dashiell Hammett. Sitting there, just waiting to be found.”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, a few hours later at the Bum Rap. “About that book.”

“I can understand that. I’ve been thinking about it myself for months now.”

“Suppose it’s actually there,” she said, “and suppose you actually find it, which would take another miracle all by itself.”

“So?”

“So is it worth it? Aside from the fact that you’re obsessed, and it’s hard to put a dollar value on an obsession. But in terms of actual dollars and cents-”

“What’s it worth?”

“Right.”

I didn’t have to think. I’d worked it out often enough over the months.

“The Big Sleep is Chandler ’s scarcest book,” I said. “A first-edition copy in very fine condition is legitimately rare. With a dust jacket, the jacket also in top condition, you’ve got something worth in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars.”

“That much, huh?”

“But this one’s signed,” I said. “With most modern novels, an author’s signature will boost the price by ten or twenty percent. But it’s different with Chandler.”

“It is?”

I nodded. “He didn’t sign a lot of books. Actually, nobody did back then, not the way they do now. Nowadays just about everybody with a book out goes traipsing around the country, sitting in bookstores and signing copies for all comers.”

“Ed McBain signed his new book for me,” she said. “I told you about that, didn’t I?”

“Repeatedly.”

“Well, it was an exciting day for me, Bern. He’s one of my favorite writers.”

“One of mine, too.”

“Whenever I read one of his Eighty-seventh Precinct books,” she said, “I wind up looking at cops in a new light. I see them as real human beings, sensitive and vulnerable and, well, human.”

“That’s how he portrays them.”

“Right. And then Ray Kirschmann walks in the door and drives me right straight back to reality. I’ll tell you, I like Ed McBain’s fantasy world a whole lot better, and it was a thrill to meet him in person. That book’s one of my proudest possessions.”

“I know that, but you’re not the only person he signed a book for. He’s signed thousands of books, and so have most of the writers around today. Back in Hammett and Chandler ’s time, authors just signed books for their friends. And Chandler didn’t even do that.”

“He didn’t?”

“Not often. If you were a friend of his he might give you a book, but he wouldn’t sign it unless you made a point of asking him. So a genuine Raymond Chandler signature is valuable in its own right. On one of the later, more common books, it might increase the value from a few hundred dollars to a couple of thousand. On The Big Sleep, it could double the value.”

“So we’re up to ten grand.”

“And we’re not done yet. If Ross is telling the truth, Chandler didn’t just sign his name on Hammett’s copy. He inscribed it personally to Hammett.”

“That makes a difference?”

“It’s a funny thing with inscriptions,” I said. “If the person it’s inscribed to is just Joe Schmo, the book tends to be a little less desirable than if it’s just signed.”

“Why’s that, Bern?”

“Well, think about it,” I said. “If you were a collector, would you want a book personally inscribed to somebody that nobody ever heard of? Or would you be happier with a simple signature?”

“I don’t think I’d care one way or the other.”

“You’re not a collector. Collectors care.” I thought of some of my more idiosyncratic customers. “About everything,” I said. “Believe me.”

“I believe you, Bern. How about a copy that’s inscribed to Sid Schmo? That’s Joe’s famous brother.”

“Now you’re talking. As soon as the person named in the inscription is prominent, the book becomes an association copy.”

“And that’s good?”

“It’s not bad,” I said. “Just how good it is depends on who the person is, and the nature of his or her relationship to the author. A book inscribed by Raymond Chandler to Dashiell Hammett would have to be the ultimate association copy in American crime fiction.”

“Bottom-line it for me, Bern.”

“Assuming near-mint condition, for the book and dust jacket, and assuming the handwriting is verifiably Chandler ’s-”

“Assume everything, Bern. Let’s hear a number.”

“This is just a ballpark figure, remember. We’re talking about a unique item, so who can say what it would bring?”

“Bernie-”

“Say twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five?”

“That’s ballpark.”

“Twenty-five thousand.”

I nodded.

“Dollars.”

I nodded again.

“And what percentage of that could you fence it for?”

“You wouldn’t need a fence,” I said. “Because no one would have reported it stolen, because who even knows it exists? You could walk up to any of the top dealers and put it on the table.”

“And when they asked where you got it?”

“You picked it up at a garage sale or found it on the two-for-a-quarter shelf at a thrift shop. Hell, I’m a book dealer. I could say it came in at the bottom of a carton of junk, and I assumed it was a book club reprint until I took a good look at it. You wouldn’t even have to say how it came into your hands. You could just smile wisely and keep your mouth shut.”

“So you could wind up with the whole twenty-five thousand.”

“Or more, if you stuck it in a Sotheby’s auction and two fanatics both decided they had to have it.”

“Wow.”

“But there’s no guarantee it ever existed in the first place,” I said, “and even if it did it probably disappeared long ago. Or it is still there, for all the good it does us, because it’s hidden away and you could go through the house from top to bottom and never find it.”

“We’ve got to look, Bern.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“Twenty-five grand.”

“It could be a lot less, you know. Maybe the dust jacket’s gone. Maybe the spine is faded. Maybe the pages are dog-eared. Maybe there’s insect damage.”

“Maybe a kid came along and colored in all the O’s,” she said. “Maybe a mad botanist pressed leaves between the pages. The hell with all that. We’ve got to take a shot at it, Bern.” She looked at me. “We’d never forgive ourselves if we didn’t.”