ght man over there. He feeds her."

I go around to Twenty-first Street and case Forty-six, which is a pretty
fair-looking building with a striped awning and a doorman who saunters out
front and looks around every few minutes.

While I'm watching, a grocery boy comes along pushing his cart and goes
down some stairs into the basement with his carton of groceries. This
gives me an idea. I'll give the boy time to get started up in the
elevator, and then I'll go down in the basement and hunt for Cat. If
someone comes along and gets sore, I can always play dumb.

I go down, and the coast is clear. The elevator's gone up, and I walk
softly past and through a big room where the tenants leave their baby
carriages and bicycles. After this the cellar stretches off into several
corridors, lit by twenty-watt bulbs dangling from the ceiling. You can
hardly see anything. The corridors go between wire storage cages, where
the tenants keep stuff like trunks and old cribs and parakeet cages.
They're all locked.

"Me-ow, meow, me-ow!" Unmistakably Cat, and angry.

The sound comes from the end of one corridor, and I fumble along, peering
into each cage to try to see a tiger cat in a shadowy hole. Fortunately
his eyes glow and he opens his mouth for another meow, and I see him
locked inside one of the cages before I come to the end of the corridor. I
don't know how he got in or how I'm going to get him out.

While I'm thinking, Cat's eyes flick away from me to the right, then back
to me. Cat's not making any noise, and neither am I, but something is.
It's just a tiny rustle, or a breath, but I have a creepy feeling someone
is standing near us. Way down at the end of the cellar a shadow moves a
little, and I can see it has a white splotch--a face. It's a man, and he
comes toward me.

I don't know why any of the building men would be way back there, but
that's who I figure it is, so I start explaining.

"I was just hunting for my cat ... I mean, he's got locked in one of these
cages. I just want to get him out."

The guy lets his breath out, slow, as if he's been holding it quite a
while. I realize he doesn't belong in that cellar either, and he's been
scared of me.

He moves forward, saying "Sh-h-h" very quietly. He's taller than I am, and
I can't see what he really looks like, but I'm sure he's sort of a kid,
maybe eighteen or so.

He looks at the padlock on the cage and says, "Huh, cheap!" He takes a
paper clip out of his pock