The door of the Tobacco Mart opened, Cal disappeared inside, and the door closed again.
“Now?” Sandy asked.
“I’ll just take a look around first.” Ken sidled out of the alleyway and stood in the shadows. There were few people on the street. The Chinese Theater across the square was still lighted up, and the library was still open. But the immediate vicinity of the Tobacco Mart was quiet.
“Let’s go,” Ken murmured.
They approached the Tobacco Mart and slipped quickly past it. The front part of the shop was entirely dark, but a dim light seemed to show somewhere in the rear, as if from behind a partition.
Ken stopped at a narrow door just beyond the shop and gave it a tentative push. It moved inward with a slight creak. He pushed it half open and peered inside.
“Come on.” Ken couldn’t keep the triumph out of his voice. He had noticed the door that afternoon, from his post in the library, and had guessed—after his conversation with the delivery boy—that it led to the floors above the Tobacco Mart. Apparently it was left unlocked for the convenience of the third-floor tenant.
On the far side of the door, which they closed carefully after they had slipped through it, they found themselves in a musty hallway. By the street glow which faintly penetrated the grimy pane they could see two mailboxes set into the wall. The door of one hung open on a broken hinge.
Ken risked a quick flash from his pencil flashlight. It revealed a flight of stairs that mounted upward against the left wall. Ken put a cautious foot on the first tread and let it take his weight. There was only a single creak—a faint one. Walking close to the wall, to minimize the possibility of other creaks, Ken led the way to the top.
A door, presumably leading to the empty second-floor apartment above the shop, was to their right. It had no lock. Ken’s flash showed a gaping round hole where the hardware had once been. He turned the flash off.