We followed the man as he pulled open first the outer wooden door and then the inner metal grate of the plush elevator. Taking a seat on the little cubicle’s velvet-pillowed bench just to tick the old doorman off (successfully), I studied the polished mahogany and brass around me, wondering what poor soul had to spend half his life keeping it in that shape. If it was the old man in front of us, I allowed as he had good reason for his cantankerousness. Closing the grate and then the door again, the man put on a pair of worn, stained leather gloves and then gave a hard tug on the elevator’s greased cable-which came up through the floor and ran on through the ceiling in one corner-to set the thing into motion. We began a gentle glide up to the fifth floor, where Mr. Moore occupied the apartments that faced the park on the building’s north side.

When the grate and door clattered open again, Cyrus and I followed Miss Howard down a beige-painted hall that was interrupted at various points by still more polished wood doors. Arriving at Mr. Moore’s, Miss Howard knocked and then made like she was waiting for Mr. Moore to open up. Turning to the doorman, who was continuing to watch us carefully, she said, “It’s late, Stevenson. We mustn’t keep you up.”

The doorman nodded reluctantly, closed the elevator up again, and headed back down.

As soon as he was gone, Miss Howard put an ear to the door, then looked at me with those green eyes dancing. “All right, Stevie,” she whispered. “You’re on.”

Reformed as I may have become since moving in with Dr. Kreizler two years earlier, I still carried some of the tools of my old trade with me, as they could, on occasion, come in handy. Among these was my little set of picks, with which I proceeded to make short work of the fairly simple tumblers inside the lock in Mr. Moore’s door. With a gentle little click the door popped ajar, and Miss Howard beamed with delight.