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The intruder stood quietly in the dark, carefully
closing the leaded glass doors behind her, gently sliding their double latches into place so that no untoward sound might
give away her presence in the sleeping house. She took a deep breath; all was still except for the faint but steady tick-tock
of the grandfather clock in the upstairs hallway. For the next few seconds, she allowed her eyes to accustom themselves to
the elongated shadows and darkened objects crowding the interior of the cluttered parlor.
She had never liked
Maude Pinkerton's pretentious antique furniture in the daylight; she liked it even less now covered with the solemn hood of
night. But she had been in this room on enough occasions to know its placement: the small round rosewood table that held
Miss Pinkerton's silver tea service and lace doilies to the left, the two gaudy salmon colored rococo revival chairs to the
right and, just in front of her, the ornately carved coffee table on its long spindly legs with the matching rococo settee
just beyond.
With care, she stepped to the rosewood table and slid her fingers along the intricate curve of the
silver teapot's handle. The silver felt cool and remote, distant, an icy reflection of the tiny bands of moonlight that had
wedged in between the shuttered windows. The interloper's heart began to race inside the cage of her chest. This euphoric
tension, this combustible melange of danger and power, made her heady, almost faint, with anticipation. She studied her surroundings,
squinting into the shadows and darkened corners, looking for just the right object to quell this all-consuming desire of hers.
And then she saw it - on the coffee table beside a large crystal vase of pallid roses and drooping chrysanthemums.
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She moved silently to the table and closed her fingers
around the diminutive enamel box. She had seen this box before. It was a hand painted snuffbox decorated like an ancient
Chinese scroll with tiny flowers and birds. It had been in Miss Pinkerton's family for some time. The box felt weightless
in her hand; its disappearance, she knew, would not be weightless upon Miss Pinkerton's heart.
The thief carefully
walked back to the leaded glass doors, tiptoeing around the shadows of relic furniture, gently sliding her fingers along the
silver teapot's handle once more as she passed by. Then with a last look at the dark and sleeping house, she lifted the door
latch and stepped outside.
A misty fog encircled her as she stole down the porch steps, ducked under Miss Pinkerton's
rose-covered trellis and then wedged her way out through the large hydrangea bushes on the far edge of the Pinkerton property.
She stopped on the other side to look at the tiny treasure held tightly in her palm. The box was beaded with her perspiration
and in the moon's faint shimmery light the little painted birds glistened like jewels. She closed her hand around her prize
and smiled. And as she walked home, the fog opened up a thin silver slip that quickly closed about her, erasing her steps
and presence in the ghostly night air.
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