Leslie smiled as Hammond explained with icy politeness.
'Why, into the Sandler mansion'' he said.
'We've broken a wall beneath the streets. We're all set to go exploring.' He let the words sink in, disbelief all over Thomas's face.
'You would like to join us tonight, wouldn't you? Now that we've made it safe for you to step out the door?'
Thomas leaned back in his chair and felt the scratchy beard growing on his own face.
'Why are you breaking down walls?' Thomas asked.
'What's the?' matter with the front door 'We don't wish to be seen' said Hammond icily.
'By anyone.'
Thomas looked at Hammond, then glanced back to-Leslie.
'The three of us? Tonight?' he asked.
'More, if necessary,' Hammond allowed.
'I wouldn't miss it for anything' Daniels said.
'It will allow me to answer several of my own questions.'
Chapter 33
'I had a set of electric trains when I was a boy,' Thomas said reflectively at seven minutes past two the following morning.
'And I ran them more efficiently than these trains' The three of them, Thomas, Leslie, and Paul Hammond, stood on the downtown express platform at the Eighty-sixth, and Lexington subway station.
The platform was not crowded, though not deserted either. A handful of early-morning stragglers waited for their late ride home.
Thomas stood by the edge of the platform. He looked to his left, northward, into the black mouth of the underground train tunnel.
In the distance he saw two headlights, gleaming like the eyes of an animal in the dark. A train was approaching.
'You're missing the point,' said Hammond, large bags under the Treasury agenes eyes.
'We're not waiting for a train to arrive. We're waiting for one to leave.'
'I'd almost forgotten' Thomas muttered. He, too, was tired. He considered the Christmas day when he was eight years old, the year his father had presented him with a four-hundred-dollar set of electric trains. An elaborate setup, it had been, three engines, passenger trains, yards and yards of track, two freight trains, mountains, cities, freight depots. Then what had William Ward Daniels done?
With his usual sensitivity, he'd prompted his son to invite in the poorest kids in the neighborhood, the better for them to see what their own parents could never afford. Better for Thomas to realize that he had so much, and the others had so little.
He saw a uniformed transit patrolman and turned away, afraid that any police officer might recognize him.
Leslie studied her surroundings, particularly the graffitied walls and defaced billboards.
'What a mess' she mumbled.
'Are all stations like this?'
'This one's cleaner than most 'Thomas explained. She looked at him and was surprised to see Ke wasn't smiling.
The train arrived. They remained on the rear of the platform.
They waited until the subway doors had slid shut and all passengers had either embarked or disembarked. Hammond tensely studied the surroundings. The transit officer was gone. Their platform was vacant and only a bent-over black woman with a shopping bag was on the opposite side on the uptown platform.
'Okay, now!' said Hammond tersely in a loud whisper.
'Follow me! and don't touch the third rail or you're finished '
Kneeling quickly on the edge of the platform, Hammond eased himself down onto the tracks. He turned and extended a hand to Leslie, who followed. Thomas slid off the platform at the same moment and let himself drop between the rails.
'Hurry! Hurry!'
Hammond urged.
With Hammond leading, they jogged northward as fast as they could, just short of breaking into a run. First one block, then a second. Hammond was obviously winded already. Leslie kept pace well while Thomas, anxious as well as excited, was starting to lose wind, also.
Two headlights appeared ahead of them, several blocks off.
'Duck in here I ' Hammond instructed quickly. They stepped from the rails into a side booth, designed to protect workers on a track as a train passed through.
They waited, out of sight.
'That one's early, damn it,' snorted Hammond, panting slightly.
'With the cutbacks they're only supposed to be traveling twelve minutes apart at this hour.'
'Maybe the last one was late' Leslie suggested.
Hammond shrugged. The train passed. Thomas watched it disappear toward the illuminated Eighty-sixth Street station. Hammond then urged them on a final block of tracks. Then they cut through a side corridor and slid upward through a small crawl space under Eighty-ninth Street for at least fifty yards.
The passage was unspeakably dirty and sooty. Hammond led the way with a flashlight he'd produced from his coat. The smell was foul and suggested stale urine.
'Don't mind the stench' said Hammond.
'We're above the sewer.
Not in it.'
'I'm grateful for the small amenities:' Thomas retorted. He glanced at Leslie, who, slid in front of him, between the two men.
'No place to bring a lady,' Thomas chided. No time at all to joke;
Thomas was concealing his claustrophobia. All four walls were just inches from him on each side. He felt as if the walls would suddenly spring in on him in the shadows and darkness, gripping him and holding him. Apparently, it didn't bother Leslie. Compared with having your throat cut, he reasoned, it wasn't much, after all.
He saw light ahead. He was relieved.
Hammond had slid from the crawl way and was standing, proud that at his age he'd made it. Leslie followed. Thomas emerged third, coming up at the feet of the others in an illuminated chamber. He stood. There were two other men, both dressed in the blue work uniforms of New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority. Neither man was a subway worker.
They stood beside a hole in a brick wall, a hole large enough to step through sideways and crouching.
The underground chamber, illuminated by battery-operated lanterns, was against the pantry wall of the Sandler mansion. Thomas had traveled a city block underground since leaving the subway tracks. It had seemed like four blocks.
'Like I promised,' said Hammond, trying to gather himself.
'We're going in- ' 'Have you been in already?' asked Thomas.
'We've been waiting for you,' said Hammond.
'We didn't know whether you'd be able to guide us or not' Thomas looked at the hole that had been chiseled through brick that was four feet thick. A less awesome entrance than the front door, he thought, yet having more dignity than the servants' entrance. His mind then traveled to Zenger, his father's partner.
Zenger, one of the citys leading attorneys twenty years earlier, had entered this house through the front door and had reemerged, as his father termed it, 'a different man' A recluse, a man who'd retired soon afterward.
'We had a quick look around the ground floor after we knocked through,'
