across.

This proved neatly that the criminal was not a very good lock-pick, and
did not know where to get duplicate keys.

Query: why work so hard on the doors, and not work at all on the
ignition?

That was the first place. The second place was just what had been
bothering Malone all along. There didn't seem to be any purpose to the
car thefts. They hadn't been sold, or used as getaway cars. True,
teenage delinquents sometimes stole cars just to use them joyriding, or
as some sort of prank.

But a car or two every night? How many joyrides can one gang take?
Malone thought. And how long does it take to get tired of the same
prank?

And why, Malone asked himself wearily for what was beginning to feel
like the ten thousandth time, why only red Cadillacs?

Burris, he told himself, must have been right all along. The red
Cadillacs were only a smoke screen for something else. Perhaps it was
the robot car, perhaps not--but whatever it was, Burris' general answer
was the only one that made any sense at all.

That should have been a comforting thought, Malone reflected. Somehow,
though it wasn't.

After they'd finished with the files and personnel at Sixty-ninth
Street, Malone and Boyd started downtown on what turned out to be a sort
of unguided tour of the New York Police Department. They spoke to some
of the eyewitnesses, and ended up in Centre Street asking a lot of
reasonably useless questions in the Motor Vehicle Bureau. In general,
they spent nearly six hours on the Affair of the Self-Propelled
Cadillac, picking up a whole bundle of facts. Some of the facts they had
already known. Some were new, but unhelpful.

Somehow, nobody felt much like going out for a night on the town.
Instead, both agents climbed wearily into bed thinking morose and
disillusioned thoughts.

And, after that, a week passed. It was filled with ennui.

Only one thing became clear. In spite of the almost identical _modus
operandi_, used in all the car thefts, they were obviously the work of a
gang rather than a single person. This required the assumption that
there was not one insane man at work, but a crew of them, all
identically unbalanced.

"But the jobs are just too scattered to be the work of one man," Malone
said. "To steal a car in Connecticut and drive it to the Bronx, and then
steal another car in Westfield, New Jersey fifteen minutes later takes
more than talent. It takes an outright for-sure magician."

This conclusion, w