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sesame that would open the Mapeshouse, I could pop into the garage tonight and see if they might not have a ladder I could borrow. I’d put it back when I was finished, and in the same condition I found it.
    I took a good look, and knew I didn’t have to break into the garage because a ladder wouldn’t do me any good. The windows on the second floor had metallic tape on them. (There was a chance, slim but real, that the tape on the upstairs windows was just for show, just as there’s a chance that a 100-to-1 shot will sweep the Triple Crown. It’s possible, sure, but you wouldn’t want to bet the rent money on it.)
    How about the basement windows? They’re small, and their panes get broken and aren’t always replaced right away, and basements are dirty and cluttered and yucky, home to spiders and centipedes and things that go slither in the night, and you don’t go there unless you have to, so who would even think that a basement window might be a burglar’s way in? Could he even fit through a basement window if he wanted to? And why would he want to?
    The basement windows were all rimmed with the same metallic tape. That was disappointing but not surprising, and at least I hadn’t had to crane my neck to find out I wasn’t going to get in that way.
    And the third-floor windows? I couldn’t tell from where I stood, and I couldn’t see what difference it made. I’m all right with heights, but I’m not crazy enough to climb two stories on a housebreaking expedition. Even if I could find a ladder that would reach that far, and even if I could brace it so that it wouldn’t slip out from under me, I wasn’t willing to spend that much time that exposed to the gaze of anyone who happened to glance my way. There are any number of illegal things you can do that can appear innocent to a casual glance, but climbing into a third-story window is not one of them.
    Okay, forget the windows. Forget the doors, too. What did that leave?
    The house, like all the others on the block, had been built at least three-quarters of a century ago. It was obviously prewar (which will always mean World War II when you’re talking about New York real estate, no matter how many wars have been fought since then,just as antebellum will always refer to the War Between the States, and antediluvian will always indicate Noah’s flood, unless you happen to live in Johnstown) and my guess was that it had been built in the 1920s. I could find out for certain, but it didn’t matter. What was significant was that it had almost certainly been equipped originally with a coal furnace, and that meant a coal cellar, and that meant a chute down which the delivery vehicle could pour the stuff.
    That in turn meant a wooden cellar door, probably built to lean against the rear of the house at an angle of somewhere between forty-five and sixty degrees. Remember the song “Playmate”? Oh, sure you do, and it’s got nothing to do with magazine centerfolds. Playmate, come out and play with me/And with my dollies three/Climb up my apple tree/Shout down my rain barrel/Slide down my cellar door/ And we’ll be jolly friends/Forevermore.
    They don’t write ’em like that anymore, but then neither do they make cellar doors you can slide down. They did when they built the Mapes house, however. People kept them locked, generally securing them with a padlock, but how the hell did you tie a padlocked wooden cellar door into a burglar alarm system?
    There may be a way, but the whole thing became academic when I went around to the back of the house and tried to find the entrance to the coal cellar. They’d had one, sure enough, but somewhere along the way it had been removed, with brickwork and concrete filling in where the opening had been. I could get in, all right, but not without a jackhammer, and they tend to draw attention.
    Rats.
    There’s always a way in, I told myself. It makes a nice mantra, but even as I ran it through my mind I found myself beginning to