No matter; I walked on down the hallway to the stairs and climbed two flights of carpeted steps to Crystal Sheldrake’s apartment. I rang her bell and listened to two-tone chimes within, then knocked a couple of times, all in the name of insurance. Then I put my ear to the door and listened for a moment, and then I retrieved my ear and went to work.

Crystal Sheldrake’s door had not one but two new locks, both of them Rabsons. The Rabson’s a good lock to begin with, and one of these was equipped with their new pickproof cylinder. It’s not as pickproof as they’d like you to think but it’s not a plate of chopped liver either, and the damn thing took me a while to get past. It would have taken even longer except that I have a pair of locks just like it at home. One’s in my living room, where I can practice picking it with my eyes closed while I listen to records. The other’s on my own door, keeping out burglars less industrious than I.

I picked my way in, albeit with my eyes open, and before I even locked the door behind me I took a quick tour of the apartment. Once upon a time I didn’t bother to do this, and it later turned out that there was a dead person in the apartment, and the situation proved an embarrassment of the rankest order. Experience is as effective a teacher as she is because one does tend to remember her lessons.

No dead bodies. No live bodies except my own. I went back and locked both locks, plopped my attaché case upon a Victorian rosewood love seat, slipped my hands into a pair of skintight sheer rubber gloves, and went to work.

The name of the game I was playing was Treasure Hunt. “I’d like to see you strip the place to the four walls,” Craig had said, and I was going to do my best to oblige him.