As we rode down in the elevator, I called Rose Noire.
“Is the coast clear?” I asked. “Or can you make it clear?”
“Students coming and going, but if you need a moment, I’m sure we can find one,” she said. “It’s pretty much all hands onstage whenever there’s a battle scene.”
We hurried across the entrance hall, waving at Aida, and loped down the courthouse steps. We had to dodge mimes, the deputies who were hauling them down to the fleet of patrol cars, and the scattered groups of people sitting on the steps, getting good places for both the current show and the fireworks to come, no doubt.
I half walked, half ran, with Denton trailing behind me. He was winded by the time we got to the tent.
“Damn,” I said. “It’s one of the quiet parts.”
“They’re signing the Declaration of Independence,” Rose Noire said. “But don’t worry—the Shiffleys finished their work during the Sousa ballet.”
“Awesome!” I said. “Come on,” I added, motioning to Denton, who was still leaning over, hands on his knees, wheezing. “You’re about to find out what you’ve been seeking for so long.”
Denton muttered something unintelligible, straightened up, and stumbled behind us as Rose Noire led the way to the crawl space.
The old trapdoor had stuck up several inches out of the ground. The new one was a lot more unobtrusive. All you could see was what looked like a large storm-drain grate flush with the ground. Rose Noire lifted that up, revealing the trapdoor.
Then she leaned down and grabbed the trapdoor handle. I winced instinctively as she pulled, but the door came up with only a faint swishing noise from the brand-new, well-oiled hinges.
Denton looked down and made a sort of strangled noise.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s perfectly safe. As long as you’re not claustrophobic, you’ll be fine. And if you are claustrophobic—well, just stay here and help Rose Noire guard the trapdoor.”
I heard Denton swallow, and then he straightened his spine.
“Right,” he muttered.
“’I’ll go down first,” I said. If he was claustrophobic, like Horace, maybe he’d buck up after seeing me do it. And if he froze in the tunnel, I could let Rose Noire talk him back out of it while I accomplished my mission.
“Okay,” I said to Denton. “Ever seen the World War II movie The Great Escape?” He nodded. “Remember the little carts they had so they could ride through the tunnels instead of crawling?” Another nod. “Down the ladder. Take the first cart. Pull yourself hand over hand to the end of the line. Transfer to the second cart. Same thing until you get to the courthouse basement. Wait up here till you see the cart reappear.”
With that I scrambled down the ladder.
Chapter 41
You didn’t have to be claustrophobic to hate the tunnel, I decided. You just had to have a reasonably good imagination. As soon as I entered the tunnel, I could think of all kinds of things that could go wrong. What if a water main broke and flooded the tunnel? What if another earthquake broke all the wooden supports again? Or what if termites had been slowly and insidiously working on them? What if the recent work had severed a power line that I could run over with the metal-wheeled cart? What if some joker dropped a bottle rocket down the tunnel?
When I got back to the world, I was going to ask if the Shiffleys in charge of tunnel maintenance ever just sat in it thinking of all the various things that could go wrong and then doing everything they could to prevent them.
Back to the world. As if this wasn’t the real world. It didn’t feel that way when I crawled out of the tunnel into the tiny little cell.
I wanted to lie there and recover, but the sooner I finished my errand, the sooner I could go back and rejoin Michael and the boys. So I got up and knocked on the door.
“I didn’t know anyone was coming over.” Mr. Throckmorton appeared flustered, but not displeased. “Come in,” he said. “If you can pardon the mess.”
“There’s someone else coming over,” I said. “The private investigator who used to work for the Evil Lender. He’s helping us now.”
“I’ll leave the cell door open, then.” As he walked down the path to the main room, he was tidying things—moving a paper from one stack to another, pushing a file cabinet drawer shut, picking up a fallen paper clip. More than ever I had a sense that beneath the outer chaos there was an inner order that mattered deeply to Mr. Throckmorton. Every horizontal space might be piled with papers, but they were tidy piles, their edges neatly aligned. He placed the paper clip he’d picked up in a small glass jar on his desk, and I could see that he had three identical glass jars—one each for large, small, and colored plastic paper clips.