Or maybe a dungeon where they kept assumed whores too curious for their own good.

The air became cooler as she reached the bottom of the stairs, and she guessed she was somewhere at the level of the Ritz cellars. Here, the light from above was losing its battle against the shadows. The scent of newly cut lumber was as strong as it had been above, mingled with the oily, metallic aroma of machinery. Someone had recently been working down here, though she could see nothing in the space beyond. She lifted her hand over her head and was not at all surprised to find a light cord identical to the one in the closet. The Germans were nothing if not predictably efficient.

She wrapped her fingers around the cord and tugged, flooding the room with a bright glare.

The space down here was far bigger than the closet above and closer to the size of her bedroom at home. Fresh lumber had been used to construct a heavy bench that ran the length of the room. On it, at the far end, sat a machine that looked like a bulky typewriter. Next to it, close to the center of the table, was an empty space, save for an array of disconnected cords coiled and resting at the rear. Closest to Estelle, stacks of what looked like rolls of paper ribbon were lined up in neat rows, and bundles of plain paper and boxes of pens and ink were set out in ordered groupings. Beside that, small canisters of what might have been oil were gathered next to a toolbox. Four wooden chairs were tucked in under the bench, waiting, presumably, for operators.

Not a hidden room for stolen art at all, Estelle understood. This looked like a radio communications station of some sort. The familiar, twisting collection of wires that she’d first seen secured in the closet above ran down the side of the room here and seemed to end somewhere behind the bench. Estelle had never seen a teleprinter before but she guessed that the machine that looked like a typewriter was exactly that. Waiting idly beside an empty space for the sophisticated encryption device that Meyer was expecting, though there was nothing on the bench that suggested what that device might look like.

A file cabinet stood just to her right inside the door. She crept forward and pulled the handle on the top drawer. Locked. As were the next two drawers. She knew she did not have the time to try to open them.

Instead she looked hard at the room one more time, trying to memorize its contents, and then snapped off the light. Hustling quietly up the stairs in her bare feet, she heard pounding on the door above.

“Is all to your satisfaction, Mademoiselle?” the aide’s muffled, mocking voice filtered down.

She closed the hidden door, the click of the latch sounding overly loud.

“Mademoiselle?”