My heart was racing with excitement. She had claimed she was going to bed early and here she was, slipping out without Cy. I realized I might be on the verge of solving a crime. If only I knew where Darcy was. This street was a quiet backwater, lined with trees planted at intervals along the curb, and Stella’s high heels echoed from the tall buildings. I tried to move quietly, dodging from tree to tree so that she didn’t know I was following her. Then I became aware of something. Light footsteps behind me that paused when I paused. Someone was following me.

I glanced back but saw nobody. And yet I had been in danger often enough in my life to sense a prickle on the back of my neck now. Had Stella worried that I was poking my nose into her business and was I being lured right now into a dark and deserted corner? Was it her accomplice who was following me? I hesitated, trying to decide if I should give up and go back to the safety of the Plaza when Stella turned a corner yet again and came to a halt outside a grand-looking apartment building. She glanced around and I leaped back behind a tree just in time. I watched her studying the row of names in the box beside the front door, then she stood looking up at the windows, frowning.

Was this another place she planned to rob? Was she casing the joint, as they would say? Then a doorman appeared. She exchanged a few words with him, nodded, then turned away, walking back quickly in my direction. I flattened myself against the tree trunk as she hurried past me. As soon as she had passed I went to follow, then let out a little shriek of fear as a dark shape stepped out from a stairwell, blocking my path.

“And just what do you think you are doing, wandering around New York alone at night?” said a very familiar voice with a slight Irish tinge to it.

Darcy’s eyes were shining in the light of the streetlamp.

“Are you going to make a habit of scaring me out of my wits?” I demanded. “I thought someone was following me.”

“I was supposed to be following Stella,” he said. “You got in the way. And terrible shadowing, by the way.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “I thought I was rather good.”

“If that was a real criminal type you were trying to follow, you’d be lying dead by now.”

He was smiling down at me.

“Well, I sensed that you were following me. So the same goes for you. I was rather worried that it might be Stella’s accomplice, luring me to a dark street because I’d chatted about the jewel thief.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I wanted to see if I got a reaction from her.”