“Then what is it?”

“An employee,” she said. “A working cat. A companion animal by day, a solitary night watchman when you’re gone. A loyal, faithful, hardworking servant.”

“Miaow,” the cat said.

We both glanced at the cat carrier, and Carolyn bent down to unfasten its clasps. “He’s cooped up in there,” she said.

“Don’t let him out.”

“Oh, come on,” she said, doing just that. “We’re not talking Pandora’s Box here, Bern. I’m just letting him get some air.”

“That’s what the air holes are for.”

“He needs to stretch his legs,” she said, and the cat emerged and did just that, extending his front legs and stretching, then doing the same for his rear legs. You know how cats do, like they’re warming up for a dance class.

“He,” I said. “It’s a male? Well, at least it won’t be having kittens all the time.”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “He’s guaranteed not to have kittens.”

“But won’t he run around peeing on things? Like books, for instance. Don’t male cats make a habit of that sort of thing?”

“He’s post-op, Bern.”

“Poor guy.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s missing. But he won’t have kittens, and he won’t father them, either, or go nuts yowling whenever there’s a female cat in heat somewhere between Thirty-fourth Street and the Battery. No, he’ll just do his job, guarding the store and keeping the mice down.”

“And using the books for a scratching post. What’s the point of getting rid of mice if the books all wind up with claw marks?”

“No claws, Bern.”

“Oh.”

“He doesn’t really need them, since there aren’t a lot of enemies to fend off in here. Or a whole lot of trees to climb.”

“I guess.” I looked at him. There was something strange about him, but it took me a second or two to figure it out. “Carolyn,” I said, “what happened to his tail?”

“He’s a Manx.”

“So he was born tailless. But don’t Manx cats have a sort of hopping gait, almost like a rabbit? This guy just walks around like your ordinary garden-variety cat. He doesn’t look much like any Manx I ever saw.”

“Well, maybe he’s only part Manx.”

“Which part? The tail?”

“Well—”

“What do you figure happened? Did he get it caught in a door, or did the vet get carried away? I’ll tell you, Carolyn, he’s been neutered and declawed and his tail’s no more than a memory. When you come right down to it, there’s not a whole lot of the original cat left, is there? What we’ve got here is the stripped-down economy model. Is there anything else missing that I don’t know about?”

“No.”

“Did they leave the part that knows how to use a litter box? That’s going to be tons of fun, changing the litter every day. Does he at least know how to use a box?”

“Even better, Bern. He uses the toilet.”

“Like Archie and Ubi?” Carolyn had trained her own cats, first by keeping their litter pan on top of the toilet seat, then by cutting a hole in it, gradually enlarging the hole and finally getting rid of the pan altogether. “Well, that’s something,” I said. “I don’t suppose he’s figured out how to flush it.”

“No. And don’t leave the seat up.”

I sighed heavily. The animal was stalking around my store, poking his head into corners. Surgery or no surgery, I kept waiting for him to cock a leg at a shelf full of first editions. I admit it, I didn’t trust the little bastard.

“I don’t know about this,” I said. “There must be a way to mouseproof a store like this. Maybe I should talk it over with an exterminator.”

“Are you kidding? You want some weirdo skulking around the aisles, spraying toxic chemicals all over the place? Bern, you don’t have to call an exterminator. You’ve got a live-in exterminator, your own personal organic rodent control division. He’s had all his shots, he’s free of fleas and ticks, and if he ever needs grooming you’ve got a friend in the business. What more could you ask for?”

I felt myself weakening, and I hated that. “He seems to like it here,” I admitted. “He acts as though he’s right at home.”

“And why not? What could be more natural than a cat in a bookstore?”

“He’s not bad-looking,” I said. “Once you get used to the absence of a tail. And that shouldn’t be too hard, given that I was already perfectly accustomed to the absence of an entire cat. What color would you say he was?”

“Gray tabby.”

“It’s a nice functional look,” I decided. “Nothing flashy about it, but it goes with everything, doesn’t it? Has he got a name?”

“Bern, you can always change it.”

“Oh, I bet it’s a pip.”

“Well, it’s not horrendous, at least I don’t think it is, but he’s like most cats I’ve known. He doesn’t respond to his name. You know how Archie and Ubi are. Calling them by name is a waste of time. If I want them to come, I just run the electric can opener.”

“What’s his name, Carolyn?”

“Raffles,” she said. “But you can change it to anything you want. Feel free.”

“Raffles,” I said.

“If you hate it—”

“Hate it?” I stared at her. “Are you kidding? It’s got to be the perfect name for him.”

“How do you figure that, Bern?”

“Don’t you know who Raffles was? In the books by E. W. Hornung back around the turn of the century, and in the stories Barry Perowne’s been doing recently? Raffles the amateur cracksman? World-class cricket player and gentleman burglar? I can’t believe you never heard of the celebrated A. J. Raffles.”

Her mouth fell open. “I never made the connection,” she said. “All I could think of was like raffling off a car to raise funds for a church. But now that you mention it—”

“Raffles,” I said. “The quintessential burglar of fiction. And here he is, a cat in a bookstore, and the bookstore’s owned by a former burglar. I’ll tell you, if I were looking for a name for the cat I couldn’t possibly do better than the one he came with.”

Her eyes met mine. “Bernie,” she said solemnly, “it was meant to be.”

“Miaow,” said Raffles.

At noon the following day it was my turn to pick up lunch. I stopped at the falafel stand on the way to the Poodle Factory. Carolyn asked how Raffles was doing.

“He’s doing fine,” I said. “He drinks from his water bowl and eats out of his new blue cat dish, and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t use the toilet just the way you said he did. Of course I have to remember to leave the door ajar, but when I forget he reminds me by standing in front of it and yowling.”

“It sounds as though it’s working out.”

“Oh, it’s working out marvelously,” I said. “Tell me something. What was his name before it was Raffles?”

“I don’t follow you, Bern.”

“ ‘I don’t follow you, Bern.’ That was the crowning touch, wasn’t it? You waited until you had me pretty well softened up, and then you tossed in the name as a sort of coup de foie gras. ‘His name’s Raffles, but you can always change it.’ Where did the cat come from?”

“Didn’t I tell you? A customer of mine, he’s a fashion photographer, he has a really gorgeous Irish water spaniel, and he told me about a friend of his who developed asthma and was heartbroken because his allergist insisted he had to get rid of his cat.”

“And then what happened?”

“Then you developed a mouse problem, so I went and picked up the cat, and—”

“No.”

“No?”

I shook my head. “You’re leaving something out. All I had to do was mention the word ‘mouse’ and you were out of here like a cat out of hell. You didn’t even have to think about it. And it couldn’t have taken you more than twenty minutes to go and get the cat and stick it in a carrying case and come back with it. How did you spend those twenty minutes? Let’s see—first you went back to the Poodle Factory to look up the number of your customer the fashion photographer, and then you called him and asked for the name and number of his friend with the allergies. Then I guess you called the friend and introduced yourself and arranged to meet him at his apartment and take a look at the animal, and then—”