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“At least we know what to look for now,” Memphis offered.
“Spooky spirit sketches,” Sam grumbled.
“Nice alliteration,” Memphis said.
“Nice what?”
“Alliteration. It’s when you repeat the same consonant in a phrase,” Memphis explained.
“Huh. I was hoping it was something dirty.”
“Ignore him, Memphis,” Jericho said with a roll of his eyes. “We all do. Come on. We might as well get started.”
As the first hour stretched into two and they’d still found no sign of Liberty Anne’s possibly prophetic drawings, Sam groaned and tossed aside another book. “If I have to look through one more of these, I’m throwing myself off that balcony,” he moaned.
“Let me know if you need help,” Jericho said as he calmly restored Sam’s discarded book to its rightful place on the shelves.
Memphis laughed. Those two. They were like squabbling brothers. Their arguments were better than going to the pictures.
“Maybe it’s not even here. Maybe it’s in a collection somewhere. I could always ask Mrs. Andrews for help,” Memphis said, closing another heavy book with a thump of dust.
“Who’s Mrs. Andrews?” Jericho asked.
“She’s my favorite librarian at the One Hundred Thirty-fifth Street library. If she can’t find it, it can’t be found.”
Sam smirked. “You have a favorite librarian?”
“You’ve got a favorite speakeasy, don’tcha?” Memphis shot back. He raised his voice like a sidewalk preacher: “As for me, ‘I am large, I contain multitudes!’”
“Who said that? Calvin Coolidge?”
“Walt Whitman.” Memphis’s grin spread slowly, sweetly. “You’d know that if you had a favorite librarian.”
“I like having you around, Memphis,” Jericho said. He stood and stretched his cramped muscles. “Come on. Let’s try the cellar.”
Sam cocked his head, squinting. “You’ve got a funny idea of fun, Freddy. Ha!” He pointed at Memphis. “Alliteration! Besides, we already hauled up all the crates that were down there.”
“Maybe there’s something we’re missing. Let’s look again.”
Jericho kicked the Persian rug back and lifted the trapdoor set into the floor of the collections room. Memphis peered into
the dark hole.
“It’s just as charming as it seems. Dark. Damp. Tubercular. Possibly haunted,” Sam said. “Come on! I’ll give ya the grand tour!”
The three of them climbed down the rickety steps, dropping onto the dirt floor. Memphis coughed up a lungful of dust. He wiped his filthy hands against his trousers. The damp smell of the earth was close.
“Here,” Sam said, handing over a lantern.
Memphis struck a match and turned up the flame, and the cellar flared with dancing light. They were in a large room whose bricks were covered in fading murals. Ahead, though, the cellar’s brick gave way to the earthen walls of a tunnel that seemed to stretch for a mile. Memphis paused in front of a mural of a slave family reaching their hands toward the sun, the word freedom painted above it.
“Cornelius’s house was also a stop on the Underground Railroad,” Jericho said, coming up beside him.
“God bless Mr. Rathbone,” Memphis whispered. He put a hand to the cool, painted stones bearing witness to so many names, so many histories. In the mural, there were painted lines for the Underground, like scars stretched across the skin of the infected nation. There were wounds and then there were wounds. Some were so great Memphis had no idea how they could ever be healed.
“Where does that tunnel open up?” Memphis asked.
“Don’t know. And I can’t say I’m too keen on tunnels after those things chased us through the subway,” Sam said, coughing.
