Burglar ethics

    Though it had been nearly eight when they entered the restaurant, it was something after cleven before Lanyard called for his bill.

    "We've plenty of time," he had explained. "It'll be midnight before we can move. The gentle art of house-breaking has its technique, you know, its professional ethics: we can't well violate the privacy of Madame Omber's strong-box before the caretakers on the premises are sound asleep. It isn't done, you know, it isn't class, to go burglarizing when decent, law-abiding folk are wide-awake. Meantime we're better off here than trapezing the streets.

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)