His light showed another gray duct, a little larger, coming out of that side wall, very low and almost to the front. The duct emerged, made a left turn to go downward, then another left and headed off toward the door they’d come in.

Kelp called, “Tiny! You see that duct? I’m shining the light on it.”

“I got it.”

“Find where it goes, I’ll be right down.”

Dortmunder said, “And what am I doing?”

“Same as last time. Comere.”

They went over to the impregnable door, and Kelp withdrew from one of the rear pockets of his jacket the stethoscope and earphone gizmo. As Dortmunder watched, he bent to the door, listening here, listening there, then saying, “Hah.”

“You got it.”

“We know the thing has to be alarmed,” Kelp said, “and here it is. Only this time I want it to stop.”

“Okay.”

“Give me a couple minutes to get set,” Kelp said, “then you listen, and you tell me when it switches off.” He tapped a fingertip on the appropriate spot on the door. “Right there.”

“Done.”

Kelp went away down the ladder, and Dortmunder experimentally listened to the door’s faint hum for a minute, then, tiring of that, walked around in this blank, supremely uninteresting area until Kelp, from far away at the ground floor rear, yelled, “John!”

“Yar!”

“Start listening!”

“You got it.”

Bending to his work, Dortmunder listened through the gizmo to the humming of the door. It was a very soothing kind of hum, really, especially when you positioned yourself so your back could be comfortable. It was a non-threatening hum, an encouraging hum, faint but unending, assuring you that everything was going to be all right, all your troubles were over, you’d just sail along now on the calm sea of this hum, no nasty sur—

“JOHN! WHAT THE HELL’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?”

The scream, about an inch from his non-gizmo ear, was so loud and unexpected he drove his head into the door to get away from it, and the door bounced his head back into the scream with a new ache in it. Staring upward, he saw what appeared to be Kelp’s evil twin, face twisted into a Kabuki mask of rage. “What? What?”

“Can’t you hear anything?”

“The hum.” Dortmunder straightened, pulled the earphone out of his unassaulted ear, assembled the tatters of his dignity about himself, and said, “You wanted me to listen to the hum, I listened to the hum.”

Now Kelp frowned at the door. “It never stopped.”

“Never. It was gonna stop, I’d tell you.”

“I shouted up from downstairs,” Kelp said. He was growing a bit calmer.

“I,” Dortmunder said, self-respect now totally intact, “was listening to the hum.”

Again Kelp frowned at the door. His rage with Dortmunder seemed to be forgotten. “I did everything,” he said. “I shut down everything, I bypassed everything.”

“Hum,” Dortmunder said.

Kelp stood frowning, thinking. From downstairs voices were raised, full of questions for Kelp, but he continued to frown at the door.

“They’re calling you,” Dortmunder said. “Pretty soon they’ll come up and yell in your face.”

Slowly, Kelp was roused from his studies, and called down, “I’ll be right there!” Then, to Dortmunder, he said, “I didn’t yell in your face, I yelled in your ear.”

“Very similar.”

Kelp nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Accepted,” Dortmunder said.

“I was upset,” Kelp explained.

“I am remaining calm,” Dortmunder said. “You wanted to go down the ladder?”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do here,” Kelp said. “We are not gonna get through that door.”

“Not tonight, anyway,” Dortmunder said, and Kelp didn’t say anything.

So they went down the ladder, Kelp first, to find the others at their ease in the hansom cab. Tiny pretty thoroughly occupied the rear-facing front seat, with Stan and the kid opposite. The seats were well-cushioned, to accommodate the needs and expectations of tourists.

Kelp clambered up to the driver’s perch, above and behind the others, not quite so padded, but not bad. Dortmunder stood there, and then the kid said to him, “Grab something and sit.”

“Sure.”

Dortmunder looked around. A motorcycle with a sidecar stood alertly nearby. He rolled it over next to the hansom cab, settled himself into the surprisingly comfortable sidecar, and said, “It looks as though Kelp doesn’t know how to get past that door.” He might be remaining calm, but that didn’t mean he’d forgiven or forgotten.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Kelp said, too absorbed with the problem to take offense. “The only thing I can figure, they’ve gone wireless. And why wouldn’t they? They’ve got TV and the Internet and all that, so why not go wireless?”

The kid said, “Andy? What do we do about it?”

“Nothing,” Kelp said. “If it’s wireless, we’re screwed.”

“Well, that isn’t the only possibility,” Dortmunder said. “We haven’t tried out back yet.”

“I don’t know,” Kelp said. “It’s lookin tight.”

“If this thing isn’t gonna happen,” Tiny said, “it’s time for us to start packing tents.”

“It’s going to happen,” the kid said, suddenly energized. Clambering over the other passengers, he climbed out of the hansom cab and said, “Bring the ladder out back, I’ll climb up it and see what the windows do.”

“They won’t open,” Tiny told him.

But the kid refused to be daunted. “Come on,” he insisted. “Let’s go see what’s what.”

“If we’re gonna keep on with this,” Tiny said, rising from the hansom’s front seat, causing a smallish tremor that rattled Stan around on the backseat like a lone die in a padded cup, “I’ll carry your ladder, kid.”

“Thank you, Tiny.”

First Tiny retracted the ladder, getting more help than he needed along the way, and then he held it up horizontally over his head and set out across the valley of vehicles. If the world wore a propeller beanie, this is what it would look like.

They all made their way diagonally across the interior of the building, to the rear door Kelp had earlier tamed. He opened it again now, and everybody got out of the way as Tiny carried the ladder outside. He extended it, all by himself, then leaned it against the wall next to the leftmost second-floor window, which was smaller than the other windows at that level, and said, “Okay, kid, do your thing.”

“Right.”

The kid scrambled up the ladder, took his flashlight out of his jacket pocket, and shone it in through the window. “It’s a bathroom,” he reported.

Stan said, “We already figured that. All the johns are in the back corner there.”

“This is a very nice one,” the kid said. “Big walk-in shower, a painting of some castle on the wall, and one of those things girls use.”

The others all looked at one another, baffled. Stan hazarded, “A hair dryer?”

“No, no,” the kid said, rattling the ladder a little. “One of those things that’s like a toilet but isn’t.”

“Oh,” Kelp said, “a bidet,” pronouncing the T.

Dortmunder said, “Is that how you say that?”

“How would I know?” Kelp asked. “I never had to ask for one.”

Tiny said, “Kid, come down, move the ladder, see what else is up there.”

“Right.”

The kid came down, over, and up, and shone his light in the next window. “It’s a kitchen,” he said.

Dortmunder, unbelieving, said, “A kitchen?”

“A really nice one,” the kid said. “Big refrigerator, microwave, all kinds of stuff.”

Dortmunder said, “In Combined Tool? This is getting weirder.”

The kid said, “It’s big, too. It looks like it goes almost all the way across the back.”

Tiny said, “Go to the last window, see what’s in there.”

So the kid did, and said, “It’s a pantry. Big one, lots of nice shelves, but not much in there. Some pots and pans, some dishes. No food.”

“Let me see this,” Kelp said, and suddenly hurried up the ladder.

The kid, feeling the tremors in the ladder and looking down to see the top of Kelp’s head getting nearer, said, “Hey. You think this is a good idea?”