He had never resolved the problem of the painted-over scratches. The PWC people had not done that. Only someone trying to conceal the fact that the door had been unlocked would do that. Ergo, someone had been using that old tunnel for something. Had to be.
He stood in front of the door and considered his options. For getting into Bancroft Hall, the right branch wasn’t possible. It had to be the left-hand tunnel. He felt for the keys, tried one, then the other, and the big door on the left side swung inward slightly with a creaking noise. Half-expecting a vampire to leap out at him, he pushed the huge door all the way open. Light from the main tunnel spilled down the steps, but no farther. Beyond was the familiar darkened arched ceiling. He pulled his Maglite and shone it down the dusty passageway. No snowfall of mortar dust-yet. He checked his watch. He had about twenty-five minutes before he was supposed to call in. Time enough to walk down the magazine tunnel to the powder room and take another look. He wondered if he should pull some of that air hose with him, but the Red Devils weren’t set up. Besides, it would take too much time.
He stepped down into the alcove below the floor level of the main tunnel. Then he went back to the door to see if it could be unlocked from the inside. It could. He tried it, then adjusted the bolt, leaving it protruding to prevent the door from closing if some back draft occurred out in the tunnels. Then he set out for the magazine room. He walked quickly this time, although as softly as he could, not wanting to set up any significant vibrations. The skin on the back of his neck crawled with the anticipation of falling dust, but actually the mortar seemed to be undisturbed this time. He looked behind him as the arched frame of dim light back at the entrance diminished into a smaller and smaller block. Then the tunnel bent slightly to the left and the light bled away. The only light now came from his flashlight, and it seemed to magnify all the cracks in the mortar joints between the old bricks. Once again, he thought he could feel the massive granite weight of the buildings above bearing down on him.
When he reached the magazine anteroom, he saw the glint of railroad rails embedded in the stone floor. He hadn’t noticed them before. He rubbed the dust off the rails with his foot and saw that they led under the heavy metal doors. Probably for ammunition wagons. The rails went on up the sloping passageway to the intersection with the gun pit tunnel. He shone the light around the entire anteroom but noticed nothing else of significance. He still couldn’t see any clearly defined footprints in all the mortar dust, not even his own from earlier that day. He stood there, thinking. This area was certainly near the foundations of Bancroft Hall, if not under the eighth wing. But he had to be at least twenty, thirty feet down underground, so how the hell…
He went back to the doors and felt the cold steel with his bare hand. Cold steel. He glanced at the manometer again, then ran his hand up the door to about where the air-water interface should be inside. No discernible temperature difference. Wouldn’t the water be colder than the air? Or, after all these years, would they simply be in equilibrium? He looked at the hinges, which were huge round pin-type fixtures, four per door. The doors must weigh a thousand pounds each, he thought. He thought he felt the air shift around him, and he listened carefully. He heard nothing, not even the subtle vibrations from street level that could be heard out in the main tunnels. He studied the hinges again in the harsh white light of the Maglite. The rivets holding them to the door were rusted. They probably had used dissimilar metals, not understanding the corrosive effects of galvanic cells.
He stared at the doors. He was missing something. He was sure of it, but for the life of him, he-Wait, he thought. There was a crack visible between the door frame and the door itself, especially next to the four hinges. Not much of one, but definitely a crack. He put the Maglite right up to the crack and tried to look through it. He couldn’t see anything. He fished for his pocketknife, unfolded a flat blade, and poked it into the crack. It slid right in.
So where was the water?
He walked back over to the manometer and then figured it out. There were two isolation valves, one at the top and one at the bottom. He tried to turn first the top and then the bottom valve to the right. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, he said to himself. The valves didn’t budge. That’s because they’re not open, he told himself. They’re shut tight, Einstein.
The clever bastard. He’d closed the bottom isolation valve, filled the manometer with water, and then closed the top valve. Any passing inspector would see the full manometer, assume the space behind the door was flooded, and never open the doors. But of course it wasn’t flooded. On the other hand, he’d better check.
He opened the bottom valve on the manometer, then the tube’s drain valve. Then he cracked the top valve. The water quickly poured out into the dust, forming tiny glittering beads in the white lime carpet before disappearing. Then he fully opened the top isolation valve. If the space behind the doors had been flooded, there should have been an arterial stream shooting out of the bottom of the manometer. But there was nothing. Not a drop. The clever bastard.
He went to the center of the two doors. There were iron ring plates bolted to the doors, and he pulled on one. It didn’t move. He pulled on the other. He thought he felt it move a fraction of an inch. He stooped down to check the bottom and found a vertical latch disappearing into the thick dust. He grabbed it with both hands, expecting it to be rusted shut. To his surprise, it lifted easily, almost too smoothly, and the huge door actually edged out toward him. He backed away from it, not wanting to catch a foot or hand underneath, but even the big rollers operated smoothly. The door was perfectly balanced, and it came open with hardly any effort at all. On greased hinges, no doubt, he thought. He pulled it all the way open and shone the light inside.
The powder room itself was about fifty feet square, with a smooth, twenty-foot-high domed ceiling that appeared to be made of concrete. No, he thought, it only looks like concrete. White cement had been parged over the brickwork of the roof, although imperfectly, as patches of brickwork shone through when he put the light on it. Heavy wooden racks lined the four walls, but they were all empty. In the two back corners of the ceiling, there were dark holes, about three feet square, which he figured had either been ventilation holes or pressure-release pipes in the event of a fire in the powder magazine. The hole on the left had a steel grating. The one on the right was open, and the steel grating was down in the dust on the floor, leaning up against one of the racks. What looked like the bottom of a wooden ladder protruded down out of the right-hand hole and rested on the top shelf of the closest rack.
Bingo, he thought. That hole leads up the surface. Or probably into the basement of Bancroft Hall. He couldn’t be sure of where he was in relation to the surface. He felt another subtle change in the air pressure and stopped to listen again. He heard nothing, only the sound of his own pulse thumping in his ears. He walked over to the hole and shone the light up the ladder, but he could see only blackness above the top of the ladder.
He looked at his watch. Only ten minutes left. No time to climb the ladder, and he didn’t particularly want to climb into yet another, smaller hole. He’d taken the maps of the Fort Severn tunnels home but then forgotten to bring them with him tonight-he’d had no intention of ever coming back down here. But the maps should tell him where this pressure-release pipe came out up on the surface. Now he had a decision to make: He could climb up there and pull the ladder down. Then somehow lock those steel doors from the outside. Or touch nothing and close the place up. Leave everything as it was. That way, if they secured the other possible routes into the tunnels from the Yard and then watched the oak doors, they’d have a better chance of catching their quarry. As long as he didn’t see Jim’s footprints in the dust, or notice that the manometer was now empty.