"Wait a minute," said Harry. He realized he was sweating from his exertions.
"Yes?" said Livingston. He removed his brass knuckles and slipped them back into the pocket of his mackinaw.
"I can't go in there, Livingston."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean it's dark, and frightening."
"You would turn back now, now that we have gone so far?"
"We haven't really gone that far," said Harry. "Just down a dim hallway and then down a basement staircase. And across the basement. To, to –"
"To this secret doorway," said Livingston, "opening onto a secret tunnel."
"A dark tunnel."
"Every dark tunnel has its end," said Livingston.
In the dimness Harry saw Livingston take something out of his mackinaw pocket,
it was another box of the Ohio Blue Tip kitchen matches. Livingston removed a match, struck it on the side of the box, and his smiling plump face glowed in the light.
"See?" he said. "Illumination. Now take out that other box of matches I gave you, fire one up, and let's bust a move."
Harry paused, but then he took the other box out of his coat pocket, extricated a match, and struck it.
"I still think we're insane," he said.
Livingston had turned around, holding up his match.
"But first we should pull this cupboard back in place, so no one knows we've discovered the secret door."
"Why?" said Harry.
"Because," said Livingston, "the next staff member who comes down here to shovel coal into the furnace might notice that the cupboard has been shoved aside, and thus discern that someone – or some ones – has discovered the secret door.
Questions will be asked. Pompey might be questioned. The poor chap might crack under the pressure and confess that he told us about the secret door. He might be summarily cashiered. After more than half a century's faithful service attending that water closet. Would you want that on your conscience? I ask you, Harry."
"No," said Harry.
"Then help me with the cupboard. Look, someone has affixed two pieces of rope, placed there undoubtedly for this very purpose."
Indeed about five feet off the floor and three feet apart in the middle of the cupboard's back were two iron rings, each holding a loop of nautical-looking rope tied with what might well have been sailor's knots.
"You grab the one on the right, I'll take the left," said Livingston. "Keep your match in your left hand, and mind it doesn't go out."
In a matter of minutes and four matches each, Livingston and Harry had pulled the cupboard roughly back into its previous position, and now they stood in the darkness inside the doorway, both of them breathing heavily.
"Great," said Livingston. Sweat poured down his gleaming face under his hunting cap. "That should do the trick. Now let's close the secret door and explore this tunnel, shall we?"
"Must we close the door?" said Harry, trying not to whine.
"Yes, I fear we must," said Livingston.
He bent down and picked up the doorknob he had broken off, then went over to the door and gently placed the knob into the spindle protruding from the bore hole.
"There," he said, "it almost looks like before. Now the next guy who tries to open it will think he broke it, so we're in the clear, as is dear old Pompey, bless his noble heart. Now I need only close the door gently, so as not to make the knob fall off again, like so."
The door was closed, and Livingston turned to Harry, holding his match high.
"What new adventures await us now?"
"Look, Livingston," said Harry, "if we're going to do this, let's just get going okay? Because I am on the verge of panic as it is."
"Yes, of course, old man. Let's go at once. But carefully, and slowly, because we don't want to fall over on something and bust a leg."
"I'll be careful, but let's just go."
The next minutes were the most terrifying in Harry's life, at least thus far. The tunnel was only about six feet high and five feet wide, its walls and flooring of slimy stone. Several times they heard the hideous squeaking of rats or mice, or both. The air was cold and dank, and smelled of stale feces and death. Livingston led the way, and every minute or so he called a halt for them to relight matches.
After lighting his fifth match Harry was ready to turn and go back, but then he heard Livingston's voice.
"What ho, I see a glimmer, a faint glimmer, but a glimmer none the less."
"Oh, dear God," said Harry.
"Don't lose courage now, old man," said Livingston.
"I have no courage left to lose," said Harry.
Before their matches went out they came to the source of the glimmer, another door, bordered with a thin faintness of pale light. The door had a knob, Livingston gripped it and turned it, and the door opened. Revealing a passageway illuminated dimly by an overhead lamp some twenty feet ahead.
"Oh, my God," said Harry. "Oh, thank God. Thank God in heaven."
Livingston turned to Harry, and he blew out his match, smiling, and then dropped the match to the floor.
"There is no God to thank," he said. "But do you hear that, old man?"
Still holding his own lighted match, Harry turned his head and pricked up his ear.
"Yes," he said. "I hear it."
"And what is it, old man, that you hear?"
"It sounds like music, and voices, talking, laughing, shouting."
"It's that most blessed of all sounds," said Livingston.
"What is that?" said Harry.
"It is the sound of a bar, full of people making merry. Let us hie us hence, at once."
"Okay," said Harry. He had already drunk a lot this night, but now, more than any other moment in his life that he could remember, he needed a drink, perhaps two, and three was not entirely out of the question. He waved out his match and tossed it away. "Let's go," he said.
Harry closed the door, which had a sign on it with a hand-painted legend reading:
They walked down the hall, past the overhead light fixture, which housed a 25-watt bulb at best, and past various framed photographs of boxers and baseball players of the early 20th century, as well as racehorses and a full-length portrait of Diamond Jim Brady, and another one of Lillian Russell,and one painting of a doughboy in uniform apparently returning to the bucolic cottage of his youth and being greeted by his weeping mother and smiling younger sister.
The sounds of music and laughing and chatter grew louder, they turned another corner, and spread out there before them, shrouded in smoke and twinkling with lights was a barroom filled with people talking and laughing and shouting, and straight ahead in the far corner on a low stage was a small musical combo, with an enormous Negro man singing into a microphone:
"We're home," said Livingston. "Home, at last."
