“If he’s thinking of going out that way, he’s in for a disappointment,” Phinny said.
We heard a creak. Then another creak.
“He’s opening the plywood privacy doors,” Phinny said.
And then a clink.
“And throwing the cell door key outside,” I said. “Pretty pointless.”
“I think it’s intended as a gesture,” he said. “To unnerve us.”
Hamish was whistling, rather off-key, as he passed by the cell door on his way to some other part of the basement.
The idea of waiting until Hamish finished his preparations and set the basement on fire didn’t appeal. I studied the old lock.
“Do you have a screwdriver?” I asked.
“A screwdriver?”
“Or anything like a screwdriver. Something I can use to pick the lock.”
His face looked blank for a second.
“I don’t have a screwdriver unless—well, I do have this.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Swiss army knife. One of the really large, complicated ones with at least a dozen various implements on it.
“Fantastic.” I knelt in front of the door and began testing all the knife’s attachments.
“Are you a skilled lock picker?” he asked.
“I’ve had lessons,” I said.
I didn’t look up to see if he found that explanation reassuring. I suspected he didn’t. If I hadn’t been trying to concentrate so hard on the lock, I’d have told him about the long-ago summer when Dad had become obsessed with lock picking, and I’d been the only one of his three children who really put my heart into what Mother called “your father’s little burgling project.”
I’d been the star pupil—better than Dad, even. But while my skill had proven useful a few times since, when I’d lost my keys, my successes had been on the cheap locks of rental apartments in my salad days. Who knew if the ancient cell door lock was harder or easier?
Hamish reappeared with an axe. He glared at us, and I was suddenly very glad we had a locked door between us.
He whirled and smashed Phinny’s computer with a few savage whacks. Phinny flinched with each blow.
He picked up the telephone, and I was expecting him to throw it on the floor and give it the same treatment, but instead he dialed a number.
“It’s me,” he said. “Don’t give me that. You’re the one who really knows all this explosive stuff.”
Explosive stuff? I looked at all the kerosene glistening on the papers. I’d been starting to worry about the effect a match could have on the paper-packed basement. If someone was planning to set off explosives …
“Besides,” Hamish went on, “I’ve been doing something even better—I’ve got the paper and Denton. Yeah, it was him running around in the gorilla suit all day, not the policeman. I was hiding in my uncle’s office and overheard that they were going to take him over to the basement to hunt for the paper, and I found a chance to jump him and steal the suit.”
He’d probably done it when I’d made my quick trip to the bathroom. Too bad we hadn’t thought to search that locked inner office.
“And you’ll never guess where I’m calling from,” Hamish went on. “Bingo … And I’ve doused the whole place with kerosene. It’ll burn like a grill with too much lighter fluid on it when we blow up the rest of the courthouse.”
Maybe it was that phrase “blow up the rest of the courthouse” that gave me new energy. Suddenly, I felt the tumblers inside the lock moving, and—
Click!
“You did it!” Phinny whispered.
I tried to look blasé about my accomplishment, as if I organized jailbreaks on a regular basis.
Of course, now all we had to do was overpower a man with a gun.
“I’ve taken down the plywood,” Hamish was saying. “So those bombs you put just outside the barricade will do as much damage as possible. Yes, I saw them just now, and laid a trail of kerosene from there back into the room. So I’m taking off in a few minutes, and I can just lay the paper on top of … well, yeah, if you like. And we can burn it together.”
He removed the contents of the thicker of the two folders—the one that contained not only the real contract but also the forged one. He folded up the papers and stuck them inside the jacket of his track suit, and then stuck the other copy of the real contract in his pants pocket.
“See if you can call him over,” I whispered into Phinny’s ear. “And we’ll knock him down with the door.”
He nodded.
“Listen,” Hamish was saying, “Denton’s in the janitor’s closet on the third floor. I whacked him on the head and tied him up. Might be a good idea to leave him somewhere near one of your bombs, so there’s no chance he survives to tell tales.”