The Dark Lady

reason, that you wanted to keep me here.”
    Heath chuckled. “You're free to go anywhere you want.” He paused. “On the other hand, I'm afraid I'll have to take advantage of your hospitality until nightfall.”
    “I don't understand.”
    “It's quite simple, really,” he said. “The police are looking for me.”
    “You are a fugitive?” I exclaimed, my fears returning.
    “No, just a suspect.”
    “Then why do you hide from the police?” I asked. “Surely the best course of action is to make yourself available to them and answer their questions truthfully.”
    “That's only the best course of action if you're innocent,” he replied with a smile. “I happen to have done exactly what they think I did.” He paused. “I really hate to inconvenience you like this, Leonardo, but it's only for a few more hours. Once it's dark out, I'll have no difficulty eluding them.”
    “Did you kill someone?” I asked, backing away from him.
    “Certainly not! I'm an opportunist, not a murderer.”
    Suddenly a thought occurred to me. “The painting— is it stolen?”
    “I'd never steal anything so mundane,” he replied. “The brush strokes are really quite trite, you know.”
    “But you do steal paintings?”
    He took a sip of his drink, then looked up with an amused expression on his face. “You make me sound like an art thief, Leonardo.”
    “Are you?”
    “No.”
    “For a moment,” I said, relaxing somewhat but still ready to retreat again, “I thought you might be responsible for the closing of the art museum.”
    “I am,” he replied calmly.
    “But you just said you aren't an art thief!”
    “'Art thief’ is too limited a description. I also steal jewelry and a number of other beautiful things.” He paused. “I prefer to think of myself as a master criminal. It sounds so much more professional.”
    “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
    “Because I'm imposing on your hospitality,” he said. “And because an alien can't testify against a human being on Charlemagne.”
    “But I can tell the police what I know.”
    He shrugged. “They already know what I've done. Proving it is another matter altogether.” He smiled at me. “Besides, we're going to be friends, and that would be a decidedly unfriendly thing to do.”
    “I cannot be friends with a thief,” I said adamantly.
    “Of course you can. I'm actually a very likable fellow. In point of fact, it's my stock in trade. Without it, I'd have a much harder time in my chosen profession.”
    “But why be a thief at all?”
    “It's my parents’ fault. I personally view myself as a victim rather than a thief.”
    “What have your parents to do with it?”
    “They spent too much money.” He finished his drink and leaned forward in his chair. “You see, the Heaths have been a monied family for more generations than you can imagine, and of course, no Heath would ever stoop to working for a living. My own education prepared me to do nothing but squander the family fortune— so you can imagine my disappointment when I found out that Father's taste in women and Mother's passion for gambling had left me precious little to squander.” He paused. “I was totally unqualified for even the most menial position— but I do have a cultivated and exquisitely developed sense of taste, if I say so myself... and since I had been raised to expect certain of life's amenities, it was only natural that I should drift into the one profession for which I am temperamentally suited.”
    “What makes you temperamentally suited to be a criminal?” I asked.
    “Like all spoiled children, I was raised to care about no one except myself, of course,” he replied. “If I respected other people's rights, I would undergo enormous moral conflicts every time I plied my vocation. Fortunately, I suffer no such qualms, and of course, if it weren't for people like myself, the insurance industry would soon undergo a serious recession, so in my own way I'm actually benefiting the economy.”
    “I knew there were thieves in some alien societies,” I said, “but I never thought to meet one who took such pride in his work.”
    “Why not be proud of what I do? It's an art form, and I'm certainly a better thief than Sergio Mallachi is a painter.”
    “I feel I must point out to you that I am carrying no currency with me,” I said.
    “I'd never steal currency,” he said disdainfully. “It's much too easy to trace the serial numbers.”
    “It is even easier to