Certainly Rocky impressed Larry and the reader with his strength, his predisposition to act, to do something about whatever situation arose, even if he did not often take the time to consider whether what he was doing was in every respect, in all its ramifications, right. More surprising, however, and, for me at least, more welcome, was the fact that Rocky was continually impressed by qualities of Larry’s that the reader may not have thought impressive, qualities that many readers—this one, certainly—may have possessed themselves but counted as nearly worthless since their playmates and schoolmates considered them of little value, may even have counted them as shortcomings before they saw that Rocky admired them in Larry. Among these was Larry’s indecisiveness, which Rocky took as laudable evidence not merely of Larry’s ability to see all sides of a question and all the consequences of an action, but also of his feeling that he had an intellectual obligation to do so.
“We’ll go in through the French doors,” said Rocky, “get the will out of the safe, make our getaway through the topiary garden, and then call your father from the pay phone back at that godforsaken gas station and beanery we passed out there in the middle of nowhere.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best plan, Rocky,” said Larry, his eyelids lowered in an attitude of thought. “What if the will isn’t in the safe? Or suppose there are two safes in the house? We know that these people are quite rich, and if I were quite rich and had a big house like this, I’d have two safes: one for jewels and one for cash and valuable papers. Now the obvious thing to do would be to put the one for jewels in a bedroom, or in a dressing room, and put the one for valuable papers in the library. But if I’ve learned one thing about Kurt Politzer, it’s that he’s too smart to do the obvious thing. The safe in the library here probably doesn’t have any valuable papers in it at all. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the papers were in the safe in the dressing room.”
Suddenly Larry’s face lit up, and he began shaking his head in an attitude of grudging admiration for their adversary.
“No,” he said. “No. There are three safes. Of course. The safe in the library has nothing valuable in it at all. There is a third safe, and it’s probably tucked away somewhere where no one would expect a safe to be. In the kitchen, maybe. Or in the nursery. Or in a bathroom. I’ll bet that’s it! The safe we want is in a bathroom. I’ll bet I even know which bathroom it is: it’s the guest bathroom, the powder room, and I’ll bet it’s on the ground floor. Perfect, perfect. All the most valuable papers are in a place that most people, certainly most thieves, would think wasn’t safe at all: behind the mirror in the powder room. Oh, there are probably some papers in the safe in the library, some nonnegotiable stock certificates, passports, things like that, so that a thief who broke into that safe wouldn’t look for another one, would just figure that the jewels and other valuables were in a safe-deposit box. Wait! A safe-deposit box!”
Larry snapped his fingers, and a group of dogs began barking.
“Of course, Rocky!” he shouted.
Suddenly, floodlights lit the grounds of the Politzer mansion.
“The will isn’t in the house at all!” said Larry. “It’s in a safe-deposit boxsomewhere!”
“Come on!” chuckled Rocky, with a barely perceptible note of urgency. “Let’s get out of here before those dogs tear us apart.”
Rocky also admired Larry’s academic talents. He never ceased to be amazed at how quick and clever Larry was, not that Rocky was less quick or less clever, but Rocky’s talents and knowledge were more restricted to practical areas: he could overhaul the engine in the Jeep with only a nail file and a can opener as tools, and he could find the best place to get a cheap and decent meal in most of the world’s ports; yet Rocky, although he was older than Larry, seemed to know a lot less about the things one might be expected to learn in school than Larry did. This shortcoming of Rocky’s wasn’t explained, but I decided that it must have to do with that past of Rocky’s about which we knew so little. I supposed that in his past there had been a reform school, from which Rocky had run away before he’d had a chance to pick up much long division or world history. Rocky’s ignorance of what one learned in school gave Larry the opportunity, frequently, to explain something to Rocky that would impress the heck out of him and would make the reader, who was likely already to know what Larry explained, feel all the more like Larry and to think of himself as in some ways a leader or even a protector of big, friendly, uneducated lugs like Rocky.
In Topical Guide 189, Mark Dorset considers Traits, of Personality: Decisiveness, Boldness, Recklessness; School, Attitudes Toward; Teachers, Attitudes Toward; andKnowledge: Practical and Experiential versus Academic and Postulatory from this episode.
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