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cut across on Fourteenth Street. I was only halfway across the street when I realized I had made a bad decision. With its bell clanging furiously, a trolley car bore down on me, coming at a speed I had thought impossible for trolley cars. I had to pick up my skirts and sprint for it as the trolley swung around the sharp curve. I glimpsed the startled faces of its passengers as it passed me with inches to spare. When I reached the sidewalk and stood catching my breath, I heard laughter and spun around. A group of men was sitting outside Brubacker's Cafe and they were obviously enjoying themselves at my expense.
    “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” I muttered, giving those men a haughty stare.
    “My, but you're fleet of foot, young lady. We were wagering two to one that you wouldn't make it,” one of them called to me, an inane grin on his unshaven face.
    “You must have a death wish, young lady,” another, more sympathetic-looking man said. “Only fools or those who are tired of this life cross at Dead Man's Curve.”
    “Dead Man's Curve?” I wondered if they were pulling my leg.
    “The trolleys have to speed up around the curve because they lose the cable if they don't. I reckon there's a near miss here every day …”
    “And a fatality every week,” the annoying man added.
    “And you sit here making bets on it?” I snapped. “Have you nothing better to do with your lives?” Then I stalked on with my head held high.
    As I turned onto Fifth Avenue and saw it stretching ahead of me with the arch on Washington Square just a mirage in the heat haze, I realized what a task I had set myself. I couldn't possibly check every building for seven or eight blocks. Even if Paddy had a brass plate outside his front door, I didn't know his last name, so that wasn't going to help me much. I walked slowly down the first block, examining the buildings on either side of me. They were big and imposing. If Constable Hanna thought that lower Fifth Avenue had seen better days, then the better days must have been grand indeed. These were still clearly the homes of the well-to-do. There were carriages with uniformed coachmen waiting outside and even a couple of automobiles. Surely Paddy wouldn't be found in one of these houses?
    As I continued southward there were indeed signs that the tone of the area was slipping. Some of the bigger houses had been divided up into flats, to judge from the many plates beside the front door. I began by examining them, one by one, but soon gave it up as impossible. Paddy was an Irish nickname, but the man hadn't sounded Irish. If anything, he had sounded English—so there was no point in searching for an Irish surname.
    Then I came up with a bright idea—I'd ask at the local cafes. He'd have to eat somewhere, wouldn't he? The only problem was that there were no eating houses on Fifth Avenue. It was all respectably residential, with the odd church thrown in. I tried Eleventh Street going west and then east, but with no luck. By this time my feet were tired, I was hot and thirsty and ready to give up. Did I really want to be an investigator so badly?
    I continued along East Eleventh in the hope of finding a soda fountain. With Miss Van Woekem's two dollars in my pocket I could certainly treat myself to a cool soda. There was a drugstore on the corner of University and I was about to go in when I heard the voice.
    “’Ere, watch what you're doing with them clippers! Do you think I want to wind up bald?”
    A barber's pole hung outside a small dark shop beside the drugstore. I peered inside. He was facing away from the street, so I couldn't get a good look, but a brown derby hat was hanging from the hatstand. I moved out of sight and stood on the street, wondering what to do next. I could wait on the street for him to come out, introduce myself and tell him my plan, or I could follow him back to his office so that I could demonstrate that I had aptitude for the job. The latter appealed to me more. I stood