“Now you will show me?” I asked.
“Aye, I will. But I hope you haven’t too much of a fondness for those clothes upon your back, for they won’t be worth much soon.”
A MAN WHO, LIKE MYSELF, has broken out of the most notorious prison in London will hardly wince at the thought of a nail snagging his breeches or some soot staining his sleeve. My greatest fear was that some secret passage sufficient for boys should prove a sad obstacle for a man, but this was not the case. Luke took me to a small house around the corner from where Cobb had lived. I could see at once it was a boardinghouse, clean and respectable-not the sort of place generally open to rascals like my friend Luke.
“Now listen good, sir, for this is our freak, and I’ll not look kind if you ruin it for us. We have made this work for some months now because the man what owns this house ain’t never heard so much as a squeak from us. So you’ll tread careful?”
“You may depend upon it.”
“And for the clearing of the house?”
“By sundown tomorrow,” I said, “if all goes as I anticipate, Mr. Hammond, Edgar, and anyone else associated with that house will be in hiding, afraid to return. Assuming,” I added, “they do not get in my way tonight.”
“What if all don’t go as you anticipate?” Luke asked.
“Then I will make conditions more to my liking. It will only take a word or two whispered about their secret nature to destroy them.”
“You mean their being French spies?” Luke said.
I stared at him. “How could you know?”
“I’ve been in the house, you might remember, and I’ve heard and seen things. I have me letters, you know.”
The boardinghouse had a door leading to the basement. I should have been able to pick the lock, but it was old and easily manipulated, and I let Luke work it for me as a means of showing I respected his command of the terrain. With that, Luke gave me surprisingly clear and concise directions. Once it was open, he bid me farewell, and the boys fled.
Inside the basement. I shut the door and, in accordance with Luke’s preference, I locked it again, lest the owners happen upon it. Then I sat upon the stairs, and remained there for ten minutes waiting for my eyes to adjust as well as I could hope. There was little light that came in through the door, but there was enough to give me a fair concept of the layout of the space, and I could find the markers Luke had so well described.
I therefore descended the stairs and carefully moved along the dirt floor of the cellar. In the far corner of the room I found, as I was told I would, an old and decrepit bookshelf with nothing upon it but some equally old and decrepit masonry jars. I removed the jars and slowly slid the bookshelf forward as instructed. Behind it was the hole in the wall Luke had spoken of, covered by a soft sheet of wood.
I had been in fear of a tiny crawl space, but what I found was a smooth cool tunnel, tall enough to walk in with only a slight slouch, wide enough that I would have been able to avoid the walls entirely if I had a light, which I lacked. I could not imagine how such a passage came to be, and it was not until many years later, while entertaining a group of friends with the tale, that a gentleman who was something of a historian of the city’s geography was able to inform me. It would seem that the large house that Hammond and Cobb leased had been built by a man whose wife’s jealousy and ill temper were matched only by her rudeness in having her separate property settled upon her. This gentleman set up his mistress in the house that now served as the boardinghouse, and the two moved about freely in the late hours of the night, when the wife was asleep. She would ask the servants if her husband had left the house, and in all innocence they could say that he had not.
I was certain that when this gentleman traveled through the tunnel he had the good sense to bring a light, but I had not. In those originary days, too, I could only suspect the walls were still somewhat clean, and perhaps even regularly cleaned. Now they had suffered much neglect, and Luke had been quite right in warning me of my clothes. Every time I bumped against the wall, I felt some new filth splatter me. I heard the scattering of rats, and I felt the sticky tangle of spiderwebs. But it was only filth, and one does not live in so great a city without growing accustomed to such things. I was determined not to let it bother me.
It took some ten minutes to travel the passage, though I don’t doubt it would have taken but a minute or two with light. I walked with one hand forward, and at last I came upon another piece of soft wood which, in accordance with Luke’s directions, I slid sideways, for this one was on a rail and moved quite easily. I then stepped forward and slid it back. I could not see how it fit, but I heard a satisfying click and had no doubt that Luke’s words were true; if you did not know it was a door, you should never suspect it.
My guides had informed me that I would be emerging within the pantry. And so, even more careful to avoid upsetting anything, I made my way to the door, opened it, and stepped out into a poorly lit kitchen.
It was a peculiarity of the house that the kitchen was in the cellar, but it fit the original owner’s needs. It hardly mattered to me. I oriented myself, and-after taking a moment to dust some of the more disturbing filth from my clothes-I began to climb the stairs.
Prior to entering the tunnel, I’d heard the watchman call the eleventh hour, so it was indeed reasonable to suppose that most of the house was asleep. But I could not even suspect what most of the house might consist of. How, after all, could Hammond and Edgar keep Mr. Franco against his will? On the other hand, I knew perfectly well it might not be physical bonds that held my friend. I, after all, had been made to do Cobb’s bidding without any palpable threat that a stranger might observe. That was, indeed, what I hoped to be the case. If it were but the two of them, I would be able to accomplish what I desired, and do so without bloodshed. If, on the other hand, there were armed men here, servants of the French Crown, things could get violent very quickly, and my chances of success were diminished. There was, however, only one way to learn. I climbed the stairs, and with a gentle twist of the doorknob I made my way into the main portion of the house.
IT WAS A LARGE HOUSE, and though Miss Glade had explained that the French agents could not risk servants, I remained skeptical that there would be no butler, no scullery maid, no laundry girl, no cook. Nevertheless, I found no one. Upon the first floor, I did as rapid a survey as I dared, measuring each step, avoiding every creak of the floor where I could. No one was awake, no one moved, and I heard nothing from abovestairs.
In what I would have earlier imagined to be Cobb’s study, I conducted as thorough a search as I could for the plans Miss Glade had described but saw no sign of the little octavo volume of the sort Pepper had been inclined to use. Indeed, it was clear that the space had been put in order, and I could find no signs that there were any private documents. Of course, having just entered the house through a private passage, I could not feel any certainty that there were no means of hiding the book that would escape my notice, but there was only so much I could accomplish in the dark of night with the necessity of quiet. Once I had Hammond in my power, I felt certain I could convince him to give me the book.
With the first floor effectively searched, I proceeded upward, wondering where it was that Edgar slept. A servant, after all, ought not to have his rooms abovestairs. I could, however, speculate on two reasons to explain the anomaly. First of all, because Edgar was the only servant, he would need to be close in case his masters-now master-had any needs in the night. The other possibility, and the one I was more inclined to accept, was that Edgar was no servant, at least not of the sort he pretended. He was, in other words, an agent of the French Crown like his masters. If that were the case, I should have to be most cautious of him.