So, after marveling at the business of the season, and remarking on a handful of recent arrivals, Prentice and Michael agreed that Miss Ross was a delightful young woman. But from where and when and how did she arrive? Well, it seems that she arrived by taxicab from the railway with a single red valise. And was she here to see old friends? It was hard to say, for she had placed no phone calls and received no visitors. On her first night, she did entrust two items of jewelry to the hotel safe: a sizable engagement ring and a diamond earring without its pair; although (as Michael noted sotto voce), on the very next morning, she had taken the earring from the safe and returned in the late afternoon with a selection of dresses and three pairs of shoes.

An excellent use of a young woman’s wherewithal, the two gentlemen agreed.

Prentice wondered out loud if she was the same Miss Ross, friend of a friend, who lived on Gramercy Park . . . ?

No, replied Michael, turning the registration card so that Prentice could read.

—Ah, Prentice said. Well. Goodnight, my fine fellow.

Then he ambled down the hall with a smile on his lips. For Miss Evelyn Ross, lately of Manhattan, had apparently resided at 87 East 42nd Street. Or, as it is more commonly known: Grand Central Station.

At room 102 he put his key in the door, eager to cast off his shoes and recline with a square of Spanish chocolate and the pages of Mr. & Mrs. Lamb. But as his door closed behind him, his heart skipped a beat. Across the sitting room, a curtain billowed once before the open terrace door. For a minute Prentice stood stock-still under the grip of his accelerating pulse. He considered backing into the hallway and dialing the house phone for security. But Devlin was on duty tonight, and Prentice had called him not two weeks before, only to suffer the humiliation of having empty closets opened one by one.

Prentice attempted to steel himself to the task.

—Who’s there? he called out.

He moved sideways to spy into the bedroom and then eased open the door to the bath with his cane. After circling once and finding nothing out of place, he locked the terrace door and sat relieved on the edge of his bed. And that is when he saw it: There, beside the turned down sheets and the fresh pillowcase, sat Mr. & Mrs. Lamb with an unfamiliar bookmark. With a tremble of the hand he opened the pages and felt a wave of nausea.

It had been a year since he had purged his room of memorabilia: the gaudy posters with their imperial fonts and faraway gazes; the playbills; the overtly staged studio stills; even the candids—like the shot of him and Garbo addled at Antonio’s. Into boxes they had all been thrown, and sent to the hotel’s cellar.