But there was another problem. Mr. McPhee’s fireplace was on the east side of the gym, bordering the Quad. Greg looked at the plans again. If this were the fireplace in Mr. McPhee’s apartment, then the tunnel in this blueprint would lead off toward the athletic fields, directly away from Stringfellow Hall and from the Homestead. Would they want a kitchen with a tunnel leading to the outside? Maybe.
But there was another fireplace in Mr. Farnham’s apartment on the south end of the gym. Mr. Farnham’s fireplace was on the west wall. So if you considered the fireplace in this drawing to be on a west wall instead of a north one, as Greg had assumed at first, then the tunnel led off not to the southwest, but to the southeast. Straight to Stringfellow Hall. Greg turned the blueprint ninety degrees counterclockwise and imagined the fireplace as Farnham’s. That was the one. The tunnel—if it was a tunnel, he reminded himself—connected Farnham’s apartment with the main building on campus. And Greg had found it.
He had maybe, conceivably, possibly found the secret passage Mr. Delaney was talking about, and it was right in a teacher’s home. It made so much sense. The reason nobody had been able to find the tunnel before was that it didn’t connect the Homestead itself with Stringfellow; it connected the old library of the school with Stringfellow. Sure, they would want to be able to get to the books if it snowed or something.
Greg was having a good time playing with the possibilities.
The gym was built so that when you entered the building from the Quad, you were actually on the second floor, the floor with the basketball court. The tunnel, being in the cellar of the old library, would then be on the basement floor, the locker room level of the gym. Was it behind a closet? Or maybe it was still open, with a piece of furniture in front of the entrance. Could Mr. Farnham know about it? He closed the blueprints carefully back into the large folder and left it, as he had been told to do, on the table in the Archives Room. Through the glass separating him from the library’s office, he could see Mrs. Shepherd typing index cards. He knocked on the glass and waved a combination thank-you and goodbye to her, grabbed his ski jacket, and ran out of the building. He could get into trouble for being out on the campus alone at night, but it was just a short run down to Bradley Hall. Thomas would want to hear about this. Maybe Mr. Farnham would even let them into his apartment to look.
A tiny voice of misgiving—that it had all been conjecture so far, that he could be making a mistake—whispered to him to slow down. He ignored it and ran for Bradley Hall, to the mixer.
SCENE 23
Cynthia Warden ran into the towering Felix Grayson in the lobby of Bradley Hall. Noise from both sides of the building indicated that the bands were indeed performing as promised.
She explained that her husband had lost Kevin Delaney’s key and that she needed some way of getting into the gym.
The information did not improve Grayson’s mood. “I sure as hell hope none of these kids find it,” he said.
“It’s at home somewhere,” she said.
He asked her if she had seen Kemper Carella, one of his missing duty men.
“No,” she said. “I’ve been trying to find someone who could let me into the gym.” She had tried to call Pat McPhee but had gotten no answer.
“Farnham’s back in that scene shop,” said Grayson. “He’s spent his whole duty day over here. Get a key from him.”
Cynthia hesitated. “I don’t want to bother him if he’s working,” she said.
“Bother him,” said Grayson. “He needs to clean himself up and start acting like a chaperone.”
“Would you like to walk back with me?”
Grayson looked to see if she was joking. “I’m getting some air,” he said. “The eardrums can stand only so much.”
They stood in the tiled lobby as students passed them going to and from the auditorium on the right and the art studio on the left off the hallway behind the stage. The idea for two bands had been Cynthia’s. One group played on the stage as a concert group; the other band was set up in the large art studio for dancing. Her plan had been to achieve intimacy in the dance space and still to provide an open concert atmosphere for those who wanted to sit and listen. From the traffic it seemed that all students wanted merely to move from one band to the other.
Cynthia turned away from the auditorium and maneuvered down the crowded backstage hallway. In the scene shop she found Daniel Farnham staining the frame of a four-poster bed. Farnham looked like one of the boys in his jeans and his old green Izod. Even the little mustache gave him the appearance of an adolescent who had not yet started to shave. Despite the closed door between stage and scene shop, they struggled to communicate, even with shouting. The conversation would have required mime and lip reading had the neighboring band not decided to take a break.
“Isn’t it terrific?” said Farnham, pointing to the bed. “I got it in a junk shop in town. Just finished sanding it and putting it together this afternoon.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to stain the pieces separately before you joined them?”
“Yes.”
Cynthia laughed. “But you’re doing it this way.”
“Nobody in the
