Uh-uh. True, he didn't have the stash on him, but the identity papers he carried were in case of routine stops, not for anything serious. These documents were like vampires, they crumbled when exposed to light.

Dortmunder extended the tray, "Have a shrimp?"

"We're on duty," one of the women cops said, and the other cops looked faintly embarrassed.

"Maybe later," Dortmunder suggested, and he closed the door on all those official eyes before they got the idea to dry-run their little gauntlet on the help.

What now? Eventually, this party, like all good things, must end. Until then, he was probably more or less safe, but as things stood, there was absolutely no way for him to get out of this apartment. Until they got their hands on the burglar, the police would not relax their vigilance for a second.

Until they got their hands on the burglar. Until they got their hands on somebody.

Play the hand. Dortmunder slipped sideways into the bedroom, balancing the tray one-handed as he opened the dresser drawer where he'd stashed the stash. He was careful about his selection; a proper Christmas gift should be something you'd like to receive yourself, so he resisted the impulse to keep the best swag for himself, instead choosing to sacrifice two brooches and a bracelet that were definitely cream of the crop. These went into his pants pocket and back out of the bedroom he eased, on the alert.

And here came Larry and Sheila down the hall away from the party, he still assuring her that she was the one making all the decisions, while she wore the expression of someone who can't figure out what it is that keeps biting her on the ass. They would all meet at the midpoint of the hall, with just enough room for everybody to get by.

Well, it could have been anybody, but, in fact, Dortmunder had been thinking about Larry a bit, anyway. The guy was a smart-aleck, which was good; he'd be more likely to think he could bullshit the cops the way he was doing Sheila, more likely to rub them the wrong way and attract their attention. And now this business of sidestepping past one another in the hall just made it easier.

"I don't want to go if you don't want to go," Sheila was saying, her eyes phosphorescent with tears that hadn't yet started to fall, and at that point in the middle of Larry's long-suffering sigh, darned if the server didn't almost dump his whole tray of shrimp and red sauce all over Larry's shirt. "Hey! Watch it!"

"Oops! Here, let me-"

"That's all right, that's all right, no harm done, everything's fine, if you don't mind," Larry said with an aggressive, splay-fingered brushing down of his front, where nothing had actually spilled but where the server had been apologetically pawing and patting.

Timing is all. Dortmunder made his way back to the party, distributed the rest of his shrimp among the needy, and when he

saw the harried woman, empty-trayed, heading for the kitchen, he followed her.

Now she was putting little sausages on the tray, each with its own yellow toothpick. Dortmunder reached into his pocket for the one prize he hadn't given Larry: an extremely nice gold brooch shaped like a feather. "Hold it," he said, walking over behind her, and tucked it into the raveled bun of her hair.

"What? What? What's that?" She didn't know what was happening but was afraid to turn her head.

"When you get home," Dortmunder advised, "have your guy fish that out of there. Not before."

"But what is it?"

"A feather," he said accurately, and disrobed himself of the dish towel he'd been hiding behind. Too bad that jacket wasn't around anymore. "Well," he said, "up the chimney I speed."

She laughed, a happier person than when they'd met, and picked up her refilled tray. "Say hello to the elves."

"I will."

They both left the kitchen, she to continue her good works and he moving briskly but without unseemly haste down the hall toward the apartment door, through which, as he neared it, came the muffled sound of voices raised in dispute, among them the high tones of the perhaps unnecessarily loyal Sheila.

"Just who do you think you are?" And that was Larry, bless him.

Eventually, of course, Larry's innocence-at least in this context-would be established, and the manhunt would resume. But by then the wily perpetrator would be long gone. Flexing into the bedroom, the wily perpetrator found his pea-coat at the bottom of the pile again and refilled it quickly and silently with his tools and the evening's profits. Before leaving, he paused briefly to pick up the bedside phone and dial his faithful companion, May, waiting for him at home, who answered by saying "Wrong number," which was her form of preemptive strike against possible breathers and objectionable conversationalists.

"I'm a little bit late, May," Dortmunder said.

"You certainly are," May agreed. "Where are you, the precinct?"

"Well, I'm at a party," Dortmunder said, "but I'll be leaving in a minute." Leaving, to be specific, to continue his interrupted descent of the fire escape. "There was a complication," he explained, "but it's OK now."

"Is it a nice party?"

"The food's good," Dortmunder said. "See you soon."

IT WAS HARD TO RUN, DORTMUNDER WAS DISCOVERING, WITH your pockets full of bronze Roman coins. The long skirt flapping around his ankles didn't help, either. This hotel is either too damn big, he told himself, huffing and puffing and trying to keep his pants up under this bulky white dress, or it's too small.

Okay, the dress isn't really a dress, it's an aba, but it gets in the way of running legs just as much as any dress in the world. How did Lawrence of Arabia do it, in that movie that time? Probably trick photography.

Also, the sheet on his head, called a keffiyeh, held on by this outsize cigar band circlet called an akal, is fine and dandy if you're just walking around looking at things, but when you run it keeps sliding over your eyes, particularly when you have to go around a corner and not run straight into the wall, like now.

Dortmunder turned the corner, and here came a half dozen of his fellow conventioneers, Arabian numismatists jabbering away at each other and kicking their skirts out ahead of them as they walked. How did they do that?

Dortmunder braked hard to a walk, to a stroll, and fixed a brotherly smile on his face as he approached the approaching sheiks, or whatever they were. "Sawami," he said, using the one word he'd found that seemed to work. "Sawami, sawami."

They all smiled back, and nodded, and said some stuff, and proceeded on around the corner. With any luck, the cops would arrest one of them.

Here's the thing. If you happen to hear that in a big hotel in midtown Manhattan there's going to be a sale of ancient coins, where most of the dealers and most of the customers are going to be rich Arabs, what can you possibly do but dress yourself up like a rich Arab, go to the hotel, mingle a little, and see what falls into your pockets? If the dealer with the heavy beard and the loud voice hadn't also happened to see what was falling into Dortmunder's pocket, everything would have been okay. As it was, he'd eluded pursuit so far, but if he were to try to leave the hotel by any of its known exits he was pretty sure he'd suddenly feel a lot of unfriendly hands clutching at his elbows.

What to do, what to do? Getting out of this OPEC drag wouldn't help much, since his pursuers had no doubt already figured out he was a goof in sheik's clothing. In fact, wearing it helped him blend in with the hotel's regular guests, so long as he didn't have to engage in conversation more complicated than, "Sawami sawami. Sawami? Ho, ho, sawami!"

And at least he wasn't up in Santa Claus rig. Every year around this time, with shiny toys in the store windows and wet snow inside your shoes, wherever there might happen to be any kind of . a robbery in a public setting, the cops immediately would nick the nearest Saint Nick, because it is well known that Santa Claus is every second-rate second story guy's idea of a really terrific disguise.