“Hey!” she said.
She went to the gate and opened it. She saw a bin there and threw it open. Inside it was another bin that could be removed to dump the garbage.
“Malachi!” she called.
He hurried over to her. “They’d never need to move this,” she said. “They obviously always lift out the inner bin when they have to empty it. Steve must have some of his employees take it to the end of the alley for garbage pickup.”
Malachi walked around behind the giant bin. Planked grating supported the bin and stretched about two feet behind it. He bent down and raised the wooden planks.
“There’s a hole,” he said. “A big black hole. Shall we?”
12
The hole went straight down. At some point, Malachi thought, the tunnel must have been dug as part of a sewage system. Maybe those dealing with the yellow fever outbreak used it, and for the Underground Railroad any route was better than no route. It was good to think that there’d been those willing to risk everything to help others, just as it was chilling to think about the fear escaping slaves must have felt when they slipped into the tunnels. He could imagine them praying that they’d reach a ship, and that the ship would take them north without being stopped and searched.
The tunnel smelled dank. Malachi thought about death and disease and human misery as he crawled down the treacherous earth ladder that led to the floor below. Hitting the ground, he dug in his pocket for his flashlight, then shone the light over the length of the tunnel. Like the others, this one appeared to head straight for the river.
“Careful,” he told Abby. “The grips are old and weak.” He set his flashlight on the ground and reached up to help her make her way down.
“Plus wet and nasty,” Abby murmured.
“Yeah. But let’s see where this goes.”
“Should we have called it in?” Abby asked.
“No. The killer could well have seen all the commotion going on at the Wulf and Whistle. He might be amused now, assuming we had it completely wrong. I don’t want him to know we’ve found this place. If he doesn’t know, he might try to make use of it again.”
Abby nodded. She had a small flashlight herself and she waved it before them, letting the light fall over the earth walls.
As they moved along the length of the tunnel, it began to narrow. Halfway down, they came across a break in one of the walls.
The fork and the main tunnel stretched ahead, both stygian in their darkness. They looked at each other in the eerie glow of the flashlights. “No splitting up,” Malachi said.
“I wasn’t about to suggest it. Good agents trust in their partners and their backup.”
“Then I say we go right.”
Abby considered where she was for a moment. “I’m trying to figure out where we are—where we’d be if we were on street level. We’d be heading back to the Dragonslayer.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Let’s go.”
The tunnel was narrow; in places, dirt was falling in. They walked for what Abby estimated was at least a block.
After that, they walked for the equivalent of another block. As they did, she heard their feet scraping on the rough ground. Malachi stopped and touched the walls.
“Are these tunnels solid?” she asked.
“They seem to be. They were dug properly, support beams were set in...we’re safe. They seem to be in better shape than half the new housing you’ll see,” Malachi remarked.
They kept walking, their flashlights illuminating the way. And then they came to a solid wall of earth.
“Well, this is great,” Abby complained.
“Actually, it is,” Malachi said, stepping back.
“Why do you say that?”
“You know about where we are?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “We’re almost at the Dragonslayer.”
“Start at the very end, then back up. Feel the walls. Feel them, tap them...tell me when you feel something different. Let’s put the lights down and shine them on the walls.”
They did so, one light facing left, the other pointed toward the right.
Abby moved along the walls, testing them. They seemed to be earth, but the long-gone architects of the tunnels had given them support beams and arches. Dampness had damaged some of the wood that shored up the walls, but she assumed they would have used a hardwood that didn’t easily decompose. After all, they’d lasted this long.
She was so intent on her work that she was startled when she heard Malachi shout, “Aha!”
She turned around. At first, all she saw was darkness and the glare of the light—but then she realized that the light was creating shades of darkness. Malachi had found another fork in the tunnel.
“How... There was wall there before!” Abby said.