Difficulty using Direct Selection tool to select a single vertex

I'm using Illustrator (CS2) and am having some trouble with the Direct Section tool.
Is there a way to select a single vertex of an object, if all the vertices of that object are selected?
For example, let's say I want to distort a rectangle by stretching one corner. if I select a rectangle by clicking on it, all four corners are selected. If I move the cursor (the Direct Selection white arrow) over one vertex, a small square appears immediately below the white arrow, suggesting that only the one corner will be selected. However, when I click, nothing happens - all four corners remain selected, and if I drag, the rectangle moves rather than distorts.
I can select a single corner if I click onto blank space on my drawing (thereby deselecting the rectangle) and then use the Direct Selection tool to click directly on the one corner in question. Alternatively, I can coose Object>Selection Handles from the Select Menu, or use Shift+Click to deselect the other three corners (leaving only the corner I want to move selected). However, those are awkward solutions.
Is there any better way to select a single vertex of an object that is already selected?

Joe & Jacob,
Thanks for your responses.
I thought, based on what I read in the Illustrator help files, that the technique Joe describes would work. However, it doesn't seem to. If I have the object selected and then use the Direct Selection Tool (either by holding down CTRL or by selecting the white pointer tool from the palette) to click on a single vertex, all the vertices remain selected. I tried both click-and-release and click-and-hold but the behavior is the same either way.
But clicking on the path with the Direct Selection tool does seem to work (provided that the object hasn't already been selected). In this case all the vertices appear but are hollow (unselected) and I can then select one of them.
Thanks again for the information, and if you or anyone else has any additional hints about the first technique, I would be interested to learn them!
- Eric

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