Chapter Seven -  The Chamber

WHEN WE GOT OUT OF EARSHOT, Bo said, "Poor old man. What a strange life he's led."

"Yeah. He grows up in what amounts to a wacko religious cult. Then he finds out that there's nothing to everything he's been taught ever since he was in diapers. Five or six generations of his family all endured this strange, isolated existence for nothing."

"So you think there's no gold?"

"He would know if anybody would. I'm pretty sure someone took it long ago. We'll check when we get back to the town."

The trip down was gloomier than the trip up. And just like the trip up, every so often the leaves would rustle a little too loudly or there would be a hint of motion at the corner of my eye.

We came up on the back of the Saranson Hotel. The door there was solid iron and the lock and hinges were rusted shut. We went around to the front, where the double doors stood wide open. They were thick oaken doors with frosted glass windows set in them. The rusty hinges squealed when I pulled the doors open.

I got a couple of flashlights from the jeep and hauled out the shovel and the pick I'd brought along. We went up the steps and through the doors.

The lobby, empty of furniture, took up half the first floor. Behind the registration desk, which was fixed to the floor, was the only other door that we saw. We went around past the desk where we found a very short hallway with three doorways, all of the doors missing. One obviously had been a kitchen, another the manager's office, and the third was the entrance to a stairwell. At the end of the hall was the empty shaft of an ancient service elevator.

"Where to?" Bo asked.

"Down. That's usually where basements are located."

"Wise guy." Bo gave me a light, painless kick in the shin.

We switched on our flashlights and descended the stairs.

The stairway ended with a small landing and a doorway on the right which led into the cellar itself. It took a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the dim light.

Besides our flashlight beams, a little light trickled down into the cellar from some small, grated windows at the top of the walls on each side. I figured the hotel had originally been built some time in the 1870's, but naturally the owners had added improvements over time. The cellar had a concrete floor that couldn't have been part of the original building. A huge boiler that had once provided heat for the guests now sat cold and rusting off to one side, but it had plenty of company.

The room was filled with cast iron radiators, laundry presses, antique sewing machines, broken furniture--every broken down machine or busted up piece of furniture in the hotel must have been left down there over the course of the half century or so that the hotel had been open. A huge, empty bay for the freight elevator was off to the left. A thick layer of cobwebs and dust lay over everything, and there was a strong musty smell throughout.

But the cellar was only about half as wide as the hotel.

Bo whistled softly. "Talk about packrats!"

"They don't seem to have thrown anything away. But we're not here for scrap iron. Do you see where Goblin broke the wall open?"

"Should be straight ahead."

We both directed our flashlight beams directly to the back of the room.

"See anything?" Bo asked.

"Not a thing. Let's get closer."

We picked our way carefully through the dead machines and ruined furniture. I laid my light on the floor so that the beam would light the area immediately in front of me, then knelt on one knee as I examined the wall.

"What do you think?" Bo said.

"Well, that cement doesn't look a hundred and twenty years old. And these stones aren't laid nearly as smoothly as the others. Looks like Goblin did a sub-standard patch job."

"So we dig here, then?"

I nodded. "We dig here."

She handed me the pick and went back upstairs to stand guard.

Goblin's job may have looked crude, but it was solid. Chopping away steadily at the wall, stopping once in a while to get my breath, I made steady progress. One by one, I pried out bricks and stones and tossed them aside. Before too long, I was barechested, covered with sweat and dirt, and breathing heavily.

Then the pick punched a little black hole in the stone and cement.

I was through the wall.

I stopped for a minute to allow myself a moment of satisfaction. Then I got down to the job of steadily widening the hole. It took only a little longer before I finally had a hole big enough to pass through.

I whistled. Bo trotted down the stairwell to my side.

We grinned at each other like a couple of kids.

"Ladies first." I gestured with my hand for her to pass through.

Bo crouched and stepped through the opening. There was silence for a moment, and then I heard her gasp.

"What?" I said.

"Come see!" she called in a loud whisper.

I grabbed up my flashlight and stepped through the stone wall.

I found myself staring down the muzzle of a cannon.

Next episode: Battle Underground